Black and Asian women ‘twice as likely to be on zero-hours contracts as white men’

Insecure work is ‘tightening the grip’ of structural racism in the workplace, the TUC has warned

The Trades Union Congress has called on the government to ban zero-hours contracts (PA)

Black, Asian and minority ethnic women are twice as likely to be on zero-hours contracts as white men, new analysis shows.

One million people across the UK are on zero-hours contracts, a sector in which ethnic minority workers are overrepresented compared to white workers (4.3 per cent compared to 3 per cent), in a situation the Trades Union Congress (TUC) describes as “structural racism in action”.

Black and minority ethnic women are the most disproportionately affected group, followed by black and minority ethnic men (4.7 per cent compared to 4 per cent). The gender disparity transcends ethnicity, with white women significantly more likely than white men to be on zero-hours contracts (3.6 per cent compared to 2.4 per cent).

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady has called on the government to publish its Employment Bill – which is expected to better protect workers’ rights – and to ban zero-hours contracts.

“Insecure work is endemic in modern Britain, with more than a million people still having to rely on zero-hours contracts to make ends meet, and it is black and ethnic minority workers – particularly women – who are getting trapped in jobs with the worst pay and the worst conditions, struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table,” she said.

“The time for excuses is over. Insecure work is tightening the grip of structural racism on the labour market, and deepening gender inequalities. We need to end the scourge of insecure work once and for all. That’s how you start to tackle the structural racism that holds black and minority ethnic workers back. And that’s how you take meaningful action to fight for gender equality in the labour market.”

The union said that it also wants ministers to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.

Zero-hours contracts hand the employer total control over their workers’ hours and earning power, the TUC has said, which means workers never know how much they will earn each week, while their income is subject to the whims of managers.

The union argues this makes it hard for workers to plan their lives, look after their children and get to medical appointments, as well as making it more difficult for them to challenge unacceptable behaviour by bosses because of concerns about whether they will be penalised for doing so by not being allocated hours in future.

The analysis comes as the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted workplace inequalities. For example, minority ethnic workers are overrepresented in insecure jobs, which have limited rights, and face disproportionately high Covid-19 mortality rates as well as low pay.

Recent analysis found unemployment rates among minority ethnic workers are still more than twice the rates for white workers, while around 1 in 12 black and minority ethnic women are now unemployed compared to around 1 in 29 white workers.