SCOTLAND'S colleges are under fire for their increasing use of zero-hours contracts.
Figures from a freedom of information request show there are more than 1000 members of staff in the further education sector on the controversial contracts.
The request, from the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union, also shows that more than 60% of these members of staff are women. Of the 30 colleges that responded to the EIS, 18 said they had some staff on zero-hours contracts.
The contracts are controversial because they tell staff how many hours they may be required to work, but the employer has no obligation to provide that employment.
They can benefit employees who want flexibility over working patterns and can be used for staff who are working just one or two hours a week.
However, critics argue their use leads to a chronic lack of job security and believe they are spreading from low-paid jobs to the public sector and employers such as the NHS and universities.
Penny Gower, president of the Further Education Lecturers Association, which is affiliated with the EIS, attacked the trend.
She said: "Zero-hours contracts are an abomination in the further education sector, which is already one of the most casualised workforces in Scotland.
"We will continue to fight the use of zero-hours contracts until these discriminatory contracts are eradicated from our colleges."
However, Colleges Scotland, which represents college management, said zero-hours contracts were part of a range of options open to institutions to ensure they were offering students relevant courses.
John Henderson, chief executive of Colleges Scotland, said: "Each college determines the most appropriate terms and conditions for the staff they employ to ensure they can best serve their communities and students."
An EIS report into their findings said most Scottish colleges had given zero-hours contract-holders some of the same employment rights as their permanent employees such as maternity, paternity, pension, holidays and occupational sick pay.
However, the amount of holiday leave varied from 8.3% to 30%, occupational sick pay is not paid by five colleges and there is poorer pension provision identified in two colleges.
The report concluded: "The EIS opposes the use of zero-hours contracts as they create an unbalanced or one-sided relationship between the organisation and the individual contract holder who may be exploited by the organisation.
"Zero-hours contracts rob individuals of full and fair employment rights and prevent them from gaining employment stability or financial security."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article