Social Security Minister Susie Pinel told the Assembly that the terms and conditions of employment were agreed between the staff and the agency and that the department had been advised by the Jersey Advisory and Conciliation Service (JACS) that this was preferable to short-term contracts.
The minister said although zero-hours contracts had been given a bad name in the UK, Jersey employers were ‘aware of their responsibilities’.
She said she did not agree with Deputy Geoff Southern, who had questioned whether the contracts breached JACS guidelines and set ‘a poor standard for other employers’. He also suggested that zero-hours ‘suited management down to the ground’, but deprived workers of pensions and sick leave – including those who had worked at Social Security for a year.
‘Temporary staff allow the department to deal with unexpected work,’ said Deputy Pinel, referring to the two-month Jobsfest and additional work generated by Freedom of Information requests and records management requirements.The minister said that holiday pay was included in the terms of employment, but that pensions and sick benefit were ‘not statutory in any contract’.
But Deputy Southern argued that workers should be made permanent if they had been in the job for a year. ‘Is it not the case that JACS recommend that contracts should be reviewed after six months at least? And is it not the case that 11 workers have been at Social Security for 12 months and not received the same terms and conditions as those people working alongside them? Is this not a poor example?’ he said.
Deputy Pinel said that of the 260 full-time posts in the department, one in four had been filled by people who had come from agencies and then been made permanent.
ISLANDERS will be able to use their smartphones to pay for parking by next year, the Transport Minister has said.
11 – Social Security staff on zero-hours contracts for a year
£200,000 – saved per year from tax threshold freeze for over-65s
15,000 – pensioners in Jersey
Speaking in the States Assembly on Tuesday, Deputy Eddie Noel said that an app was due to be introduced to allow parking in Jersey’s streets and car parks to be paid for via mobile devices.
The Deputy confirmed that the new system – details of which were first revealed in February – is due to be introduced in the
second or third quarter of next year.
It follows years of calls for an alternative to paycards, which critics have said are outdated and inconvenient. There are no plans, however, to scrap paycards altogether.
Deputy Noel said: ‘People will be able to use their smart phones to pay for parking, which will be run alongside the existing paycard system.
‘The current situation is that off-street parking is something that needs to be addressed and Transport and Technical Services is doing this.’
QUESTION time this week should have been an absolute pleasure.
For one thing, there were several really ‘good’ questions – such as how much money is Transport and Technical Services making from Sand Street car park, how are the States protecting confidential details held on their computers from cyber attacks, and is it possible to stop the person buying your house from pulling out on the very Friday it is due to go through Royal Court.
As usual, the answers did not live up to the promise of the questions. There were no simple answers, or the answers were not yet available, or (in the case of cyber attacks) we just have to trust those who know better than we do.
By the time our elected representatives had ploughed through requests for the report on the Dean’s suspension (still waiting) and human rights on cannabis (ask the European courts), I was already tutting under my breath and drawing black stars against several howlers that I found particularly unwholesome.
The first offender was Deputy Andrew Lewis, who has been seen driving a rather portly vehicle. Bearing in mind this possible conflict of interest, he took it upon himself during the question on car parks to ask Transport Minister Eddie Noel whether any thought had been given to enlarging the size of parking places in town to fit the bigger cars.
Given the size of Jersey roads and the increasing problems of traffic, it would have been more in keeping with public sentiment (and certainly my own) if more thought was given to limiting the size of the vehicles to fit existing parking spaces.
A second ‘black star’ performance came from Chief Minister Ian Gorst during a question about the freezing of tax thresholds for the over-65s – one of the little budgetary Christmas presents for our pensioners this year.
Asked what he intended to do to close the widening gap between the rich and poor, Senator Gorst contended that the main reason for the disparity was not his ministers’ political mismanagement, but a result of the Island’s high housing costs (which, of course, his Council of Ministers were already putting to rights).
It was St John Deputy Tracey Vallois who – having resigned some weeks ago from the shackles of ministerial control – brought to the Assembly’s attention that a previous decision to raise the rent paid by those in social housing might be a significant factor in this equation. And would the Chief Minister be prepared to reassess it, she asked. Twice.
