Christine:  If we just move on to our final topic of the morning, Seamus. So tough economic times, as we know. Zero hours workers and people in the gig economy are probably among the most vulnerable. This is an ever-evolving area of law. So what's happening? What's the latest on it, Seamus?

Seamus:  Well, we've had so many developments in relation to zero hour workers. It's really controversial, as you'll know. It works well for a lot of workers, it suits a lot of workers, but it also leaves a lot of workers exposed and it can lead to abuse of those workers as well.

So we know we've had our recent cases, our Uber case where we have clarification around the . . . where you have the courts giving sort of determinations and clarifications around what makes a worker and what makes an employee.

Zero hour workers in Northern Ireland, it is permitted. It's not always liked, it's often criticised, but I was looking at a quote there and it said that there were approximately 11,000 zero hour workers in Northern Ireland. And these are these gig economy employees that we hear about quite a bit. And usually, we don't hear about them in the greatest of circumstances. They are those circumstances where they have been open to abuse, where they haven't been given their proper rights and obligations, and things like that.

Where we're at, at the minute, specifically in Northern Ireland is the Assembly Committee for the economy has started an examination of the Employment (Zero Hours Workers and Banded Weekly Working Hours) Bill. It's a mouthful.

Christine:  It just rolls off the tongue.

Seamus:  There we go. And the bill aims to ultimately replace zero hour contracts with banded weekly-hour contracts in cases where specifically a worker's hours are set out in the contract that will reflect the actual hours worked each week. And this is sort of bringing that aspect of zero hour working in line with what we have over in GB.

So there's a good article if anybody wants to look at that Lewis Silkin have done up. Just some of the points from that are that the bill plans to make exclusivity clauses unenforceable within zero hour working contracts, and that this aspect of being protected from detriment and dismissal if there's a breach of the exclusivity clause.

So that's a big issue because we know from what the courts have told us in relation to our various cases that exclusivity is really the key issue when it comes down to determining whether you're an employee or a worker, or what your circumstances are.

The other aspect is that there's an entitlement to three hours' pay where a zero hours worker is called into work, but is given less than one hour of work to complete. So this aspect where you're rang up, somebody isn't available, "Can you come into work?" A zero hour worker gets there, does an hour's work, and then they're sent home because it's not busy. It's this protection of at least a minimum of three hours' work.

And the zero hour worker will be able to request placement in a band of weekly working hours based on their actual hours worked. So if you look at the hours that you have been working over a period of weeks, you can then make a request that these are the minimum hours that you'll get.

And just looking at some of the bands, Band A is from three hours up to but not including a maximum of six hours. Band D is 16 hours up to a maximum of 21. And then you're moving into G, which is 31 hours, but up to a maximum of 36. And then H is, basically, 36 and more. So you can see some of the protections.

And what the bill is looking at is essentially merging the NI legislation with what we have in GB in relation to the exclusivity clauses. But also, interestingly, it's amalgamating some of the legislation that they have in ROI, in the south, in relation to those bands that are there.

But if it does come into force here, and it's one certainly to watch for, it will benefit the low-income workers, and you would imagine it'll be a welcome change for circumstances as they are at the minute.

But look, it's always a controversial one with zero hour workers, and I think specifically if we talk about hospitality. We're reading a lot about closures of restaurants and bars, huge loss of employment across that basis, and hospitality then saying that they simply can't afford because of increase in food and in energy and everything else.

There has been an ability to dip in to zero hour workers on the basis that there are maybe redundancies that have been made for other staff, or that sort of vacuum that has been left where a lot of employees during COVID that worked in hospitality left because it wasn't sustainable for them, and that vacuum is being filled by zero hour workers.

So this would be interesting to see how that impacts upon the likes of those in logistics and in hospitality, and what that might look like for employers going forward, and whether it helps or it doesn't help. Ultimately, I think that's the issue. But that's the sort of recent and most up-to-date information that we have on our zero hour workers specifically here in Northern Ireland.