'One million workers could be employed on
controversial zero-hours contracts, four times more than the number estimated by
official Whitehall statisticians, according to a survey of businesses.
The scale of the practice, whereby employees have to
be available for work but are not guaranteed any set number of hours, prompted
fresh calls last night for a ban on people being hired without the promise of a
guaranteed minimum number of hours.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development
(CIPD) calculated that up to four per cent of workers could have been forced to
accept such contracts.'
