Since the 1979 Thatcher government, but even more since the 2008 market crash there  has been a massive increase in inequality in Britain. While levels of employment and financial measures show the period since 2008 as an “economic recovery”, the benefits have been shared extremely unequally, with the 1% increasing their wealth and the vast majority experiencing living standards that are, at best, static.

Casualisation is at the heart of this growing inequality, weakening the power of workers against capital. Unemployment may be historically low compared with other periods of economic downturn, but the “reserve army of labour” now includes millions of people who, although they are working, are constantly under threat of unemployment and must constantly hassle for their next piece of work. In 2023, the Work Foundation at Lancaster University found that 6.8 million people are in severely insecure work in the UK, of which 1.1 million are on zero-hours contracts.

This is “back to the future” for the working class, because day-labour was the norm in many industries until well into the twentieth century. It is obvious that sustained worker organisation, such as in trade unions, is more difficult for atomised workers, who are forced to compete with one another for work. Nevertheless, casualised dockers, miners, and other workers did manage to organise, and a powerful labour movement was able to achieve collective bargaining, secure employment, and pension and other benefits for most workers.

The weakening of labour rights and deliberate destruction of trade union power by Thatcher and every government since have had the predictable result – a return to nineteenth-century casualised work.

This new-style casualisation has a number of forms:  a “gig economy”, based around technology-enabled platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo; zero-hours contracts which do not guarantee any actual work but do require the worker to be available when required; outsourcing to wholly-owned companies and agency work with worse terms and conditions than the real employer; and short-term contracts which vary from a few hours to a few years in duration.

Some industries reply massively on casualised labour: construction; hospitality; care work; cleaning; delivery. In some areas, there is widespread agency working and false self-employment.

Casualisation extends to all areas of work, including highly trained workers such as doctors and aviation pilots. UK law distinguishes between “employees” with specific guaranteed rights such as sick and holiday pay, and “workers” with fewer rights. Academia is one of the most casualised sectors in the UK, second only to hospitality. The vast majority (67% in 2020) of researchers are employed on fixed-term contracts and many more are nominally “open-ended”, all subject to termination when the funding runs out. Teachers and lecturers in both further and higher education are often employed on hourly-paid or zero-hour contracts. According to the University and College Union (UCU), 16,808 staff in FE and 66% of tutors and learning support staff in adult and community education in England were on zero hours contracts in 2023.

Casualisation is an equalities issue. Black workers, women, disabled, and LGBTQ+ are disproportionately likely to be in non-permanent employment. The Work Foundation found that women are 1.2 times more likely than men, and black workers are 2.7 times more likely than white workers, to be on zero-hour contracts. Many young people will never have known secure employment with good conditions and benefits – workers aged 16 to 24 are 5.9 times more likely to be on zero-hour contracts than workers across older age groups.

Casualisation is a health and safety issue. The fear of no work – and therefore no pay – can create mental health difficulties. The threat of losing a job encourages workers to take risks, for example a delivery driver who drives dangerously or an office worker who works far in excess of contractual hours.

Job insecurity discourages collective organising. Workers are transient and often vulnerable. Although it is technically illegal for someone to be discriminated against for trade union activity, it is easy for an employer to find some other justification, and even easier if sacking simply means not renewing a contract. Together with the atomisation of workers who may never meet at the workplace, this makes it harder to fight for workers’ rights and for safer jobs.

But casualised workers are starting to fight back. As we saw a hundred years ago, workers are still able to organise and are increasingly doing so. UCU has long had a campaign to “Stamp Out Casual Contracts”. The Communications Workers Union successfully balloted 9,000 call centre workers across the BT Group for strike action – one of the most casualised and isolated workforces. Newer unions, such as the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, are organising cleaners, Deliveroo riders, video game workers, and many others in the new casualised economy.

These initiatives, while welcome, are still small. the IWGB for example has only around 7000 members. The traditional larger unions affiliated to the TUC may regard the new-style trade unions as in competition to their entrenched position. More established unions also sometimes fail to prioritise action against casualisation.

With the election of a Labour government, we demand solid improvements to labour law around casualisation. “Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People” is currently being going through parliaments as the Employment Rights Bill. As we report elsewhere, there are many shortcomings with this bill, and we can expect further weakening as Labour gives way to the wishes of the bosses.

The bill does promise a long-overdue law to restrict zero-hours contracts, so that employers will have to offer a minimum number of hours of work based on an average over a reference period (to be defined as the bill progresses). There are some improvements in the amount of notice that an employer must give for cancellation of a shift. This leaves intact the fundamental problem – that hours of work are at the employer’s will, not that of the worker. Zero-hours contracts must be banned, no ifs and buts.

And the Bill leaves other forms of casualisation intact. We demand the right of all workers to secure work with good pay and conditions, ensured through collective bargaining.

NB Featured image: UCU members on picket line with flags and stickers. These are almost certainly casualised workers. Photo: Steve Eason