Zero Hour Contracts

A Zero hour contract is a contract where you are not guaranteed hours, but instead work overtime where and when you are needed. In other words they call you in when needed.  Some weeks you could work ten hours and the next thirty.  It a fairly unpredictable hour system, and as a result.  A lot of criticism has been made towards these types of contract are they have been used for fairly unhelpful ends.  

So with this in mind I thought that I would ask all Welsh councils the same question which was:

“Please can you tell me how many people are on Zero hour contracts in your authority at time of writing”   

A fairly simple question with a fairly simple answer.  Before I give the answers (Which were shocking in the extreme) I am going to give some background.  As Magic Mike From Monmouth pointed out sometimes this can be a more difficult question to answer as sometimes there are things as seasonal work which do affect the number, in the main stay they are able to give a reasonably interesting answer.

So here are the results:

Name	Contracts
Blaenau	0
Bridgend	316
Caerphilly	0
Cardiff	4312
Carmarthenshire	0
Ceredigion	0
Conway	0
Denbighshire	0
Flintshire	5
Gwynedd	50
Anglesey	0
Merthyr Tydfil	0
Monmouth	0
Neath Port Talbot	0
Newport	0
Pembroke	0
Powys	1231
RCT	0
Swansea	0
Torfaen	0
Vale Of Glamorgan	0
Wrexham
Welsh Government	0
National Assembly for Wales	0

Most of the councils who didn't have any zero hour contracts actually said with pride that they didn't have any.  In fact Kerry for Denbighshire took a great amount of pride telling why they didn't have them as well. It did make me quite proud of Wales as a whole.

When I was writing this the highest I got was Flintshire, with 5.  The Bridgend and Powys making up to even more. Then Cardiff answered me.  Thats a lot of zero hour contracts. Which makes me wonder why.  It could be due to the seasonal weather they have more at the moment (But then again places with a beach would then raise their amount, wouldn't they?).  Even the Welsh Government doesn't have any!  It does go to show the MASSIVE differences between each council.