What is the number of staff employed either directly or indirectly by Carmarthen County Council on zero hour contracts?
Minutes:
What is the number of staff employed either directly or indirectly by Carmarthen County Council on zero hour contracts?
Response by Councillor Emlyn Dole, Leader of the Council:-
“This is a question that is asked with some regularity by our Trade Union colleagues, and my response to you today is the same as that given, with the same regularity, to the Trade Unions.
In relation to the first part of your question relating to direct employment, we do not have any zero hour contracts, so the number is zero. We do have however, casual workers who we call upon to deliver some of our services, as and when the needs arise. Perhaps I should clarify the difference between the two, as the terms ‘casual contract’ and ‘zero hours contracts’ are often used interchangeably, and can lead to confusion.
Under a casual contract, there is commonly no obligation on the employer to offer work to the individual and, crucially, no obligation on the individual to accept the work offered. Quite often this mutuality of obligation does not arise, therefore the individuals are classed as ‘workers’ and not ‘employees’.
The ‘zero-hours’ contract differs from a standard casual worker agreement in that the Employer is under no obligation to offer work, but the individual is usually obliged to be available , and to accept work when offered.
Turning to ‘indirect employment’ then, I can confirm that for all Procurement activity valued over £25k, our Procurement Unit undertakes what are called Sustainable Risk Assessments with the relevant officers within the departments that are procuring services, to ensure that environmental, social and economic issues are assessed, understood and managed in all key procurement decisions that relate to the procurement of goods and services. These are contained within our Procurement Specification. One of the areas we consider is ‘whether these is the potential for contractors’ employees to be exploited?’ Our Tender specification safeguards against this happening.
One of the consistent queries we’ve had over the last few years has been in relation to ‘zero-hours’ contracts in our provision of the Domiciliary Care framework which was awarded back in July 2015, we looked at the contracted hours of our supply chain in this area, and we stipulated back then that the providers appointed on to this subsequent framework were not to employ their staff on ‘zero-hours’ contracts to fulfil the Council’s requirement.
Members will also be aware of the Code of Practice relating to the Ethical Employment in Supply chains, where zero hours contracts are not used unfairly, and we are working with Procurement colleagues in Pembrokeshire, through our Pilot Procurement shared service, and with our HR division to determine what we need to put in place to meet the expectations of the Code. Again, just for information, Welsh Government are expecting all Local Authorities to sign up to the Code by the end of this calendar year.
To conclude then, the number for both elements of your question is zero.”
Councillor Prosser asked the following supplementary question:-
I know from personal circumstances that a lot of care workers are now being employed on self-employed basis as a way around zero-contract hours. Would that be considered when looking at procurement of new contracts?
Response by Councillor Emlyn Dole, Leader of the Council:-
That will be considered, yes. Under that code of practice that we are obliged to sign up to, it is for those who haven’t seen it, it is the up coming appointment in supply chains, under that code after Mark Drayford gave the introduction, there are the ‘Commitments’, there are the ‘Ways of implementing the code of practice’, as well as ‘who is expected to sign up’ and we are on that list as are all of the public services and bodies in Wales and we will be doing that as I said in my previous answer. To relate, that usually comes as a result of the domiciliary care that we provide and I did say that back in July, 2015 the previous administration of the coalition between Plaid and Independence, led by Plaid, we did put that in place to ensure that happened and we are still on a different route because I have to say that under previous Labour administrations, domiciliary care was outsourced to the private sector, where 70% in house went to 24% in house. We at the moment are reversing that trend and bringing it back in house. Not only are we trying to ensure that the ethical standards remain for procurement to private, that we are reversing what happened under previous Labour administrations by bringing more of that domiciliary care back in house.