Ending Zero Hours Contracts must stay firmly on the agenda - Ian Hodson, National President BFAWU

Some people believe that zero-hours contracts offer flexible working hours. They think that they enable them to choose the hours that suit them.

Unfortunately, many people find that this is not the reality and they are used to control workers with threats of losing hours if they say anything that contradicts the employer or raises issues around safety or even sexual harassment.

Usually, the only flexibility is for the employer rather than the worker.

However, there are even more unfair reasons underneath than the headlines around the so-called possible flexibility benefit issue around a zero-hours contract. When you look at the impact it has on your life, both short and long term it doesn't just impact your ability to build a secure long term future as banks and landlords are not likely to entertain you with a mortgage or rent a property due to your insecure employment and typically low pay that goes alongside it, but also the fact that if the employer you work for goes bust, they don’t have to pay your notice or redundancy and neither does the government. When you come to retire, you find that you are not entitled to your full state pension as you fell below the minimum income threshold, which means that your poverty continues even into your retirement.

What's also clear is that employers like to keep zero-hour contracts because it’s good for their own wealth. In fact, the IOD, the Institute of Directors, and the CBI have been putting pressure on the Labour Party to reverse its decision to ban outright zero-hour contracts and water it down to talk about the mythical type of exploitative forms of zero-hour contracts if your boss want accept you as a worker and provides no rights they are all exploitative. Great for bad bosses, bad for workers and bad for the UK.

When you look at Britain's GDP over the decades, and you look at how employment practices have changed with changes to legislation which have reduced working people's rights in the workplace, you recognise that not only has this destabilised working people's security, but it's undermined Britain's opportunity to grow its economy. Growing our economy is something politicians constantly talk about but continue to refuse to actually tackle. And the most significant contributor, job insecurity, with all the data showing undervalued workers are not as productive as workers in other countries that don’t operate a race to the bottom.

Britain's GDP is at its lowest ever and shows no sign of improving to the levels of the so called bad old days of the 70s when it was growing at up to 6.5% now we are lucky if it reaches 1.5% and this should be laid at the door of the government and of business. This business model of insecure employment may have created opportunities for vast wealth for individuals at the top of the food chain, but it's done absolutely nothing for the country's economy or its people.

As a country, we need to recognise that when we talk about levelling up, that means that people have secure employment, housing security, and an income that enables them to afford not just the basics of life but the ability to enjoy life which in my opinion are essential. It’s why during this election, ending zero-hours contracts has to be firmly on the agenda. We must refrain from allowing the next government to push this idea of allowing any form of exploitation of workers to continue, if a new deal is to have any real meaning we must ensure that we have rights in the workplace. We cannot accept any less for a country that is supposed to be about its people and we must put their needs first. The government of whichever colour gets elected must demonstrate that by ensuring an end to the exploitative nature of employment, and that means banning zero-hours contracts outright.