Some people welcome the flexibility of a zero-hours contract. But their growth is symptomatic of a wider issue - increasing job insecurity and falling living standards in David Cameron's Britain.
In the interests of competitiveness in a globalizing world economy, governments of all complexions introduced labour-market reforms that promoted flexibility but accentuated the precariat's insecurities.
Although the precariat does not consist simply of victims, since many in it challenge their parents' labouring ethic, its growth has been accelerated by the neoliberalism of globalisation, which put faith in labour market flexibility, the commodification of everything, and the restructuring of social protection.
Zero-hours contracts are a low proportion of the workforce; they provide a route into employment and flexibility for staff. They benefit business, consumers, and taxpayers by keeping costs down, and they boost productivity, allowing the efficient use of labour.
Since taking office, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have transformed the Temporary Foreign Worker Program - which was originally designed to bring in temporary workers on a limited basis when no Canadian could be found - into one that has brought in a large pool of vulnerable workers.
My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair.
Technology is just one of the factors affecting the world of work. Economics, demographics, sociological trends, and government policies are four other core influences reshaping labour markets and determining how we will work for years ahead.
Leaving the European Union is likely to have an impact on the workforce in sectors such as catering, construction and agriculture. I see an opportunity here for both prisoners and employers, particularly those operating in these sectors.
Every Labour government has left office with higher unemployment than when it entered.
Successive governments in the U.K. have worked to create a more flexible labour market, which also meant labour insecurity. They allowed wages to drop and non-wage benefits to shrivel, creating worse inequality than statistics reveal.
What we need is much more flexibility for the labour markets.
The New Labour doctrine that skills training was the responsibility of employers was flawed. The idea that employers should take on a bigger role ignores the reality that employers have no incentive to train staff to leave. We can hardly expect Tesco to train checkout staff to become dental nurses.
We need a new model of social protection. Let us accept that jobs are not the magic solution - and that in a globalised market, job guarantees are a false promise. Let us accept flexible labour, too. But in return, let us have a society in which everybody has a right to basic security and a more equal access to other insurance-based schemes.
Reforms to product and labour markets, education, innovation, green growth, competition, taxes, health - they are the things that should be the object of our primary focus in the context of a long-term strategy to restore sustained growth.
