The Zero Hours Provisions of the Employment Rights Act: Diversionary Tactics

Abstract Labour law scholars always face a dilemma when faced with manifestly inadequate attempts to deal with problematic labour market practices. On the one hand, imperfect legal regulation is often better than no regulation, but, on the other hand, such regulation can often foreclose the possibility that more adequate regulation—or more appropriate institutional solutions—be introduced in the future. This dilemma presents itself particularly acutely in the context of the new Zero Hour provisions of the Employment Rights Act 2025. Developing a contextualised assessment of such provisions, this article draws attention to the potentially significant political implications not only of the provisions themselves, but the wider narrative in which they have been embedded. This narrative, it will suggest, not only helps legitimise the woefully inadequate nature of the Employment Rights Act’s package of reforms, but also, risks closing off scope for meaningful debate about the vast array of policy options that could, and arguably should, have been mobilised to address the real causes of the prevalence, and harms associated with, Zero Hours arrangements today.