Zero-hours contracts epitomise a pervading malaise of casualisation or flexibility, as employers and their political mouthpieces prefer to call it.

Ed Miliband’s decision to ask former Morrisons human resources director Norman Pickavance last September to examine exploitation linked to this scourge of organised labour was reminiscent of how royal commissions were used to kick difficult problems into the long grass.

Miliband made clear where he stood at the time, so he will not be surprised that Pickavance has echoed his original thoughts.

It speaks volumes that the Labour leader chose a business representative rather someone from the trade unions or a labour movement advisory body such as the Institute of Employment Rights.

He suggested in September that some zero-hours contracts are “useful,” citing doctors, supply teachers and “young people working in bars.”

Supporters of zero-hours contracts portray them as mutually beneficial for employees and employers, but the vast majority of workers would prefer proper jobs.

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) chief executive Peter Cheese has suggested that opponents of zero-hours contracts are “out of touch with the modern workplace.”

But there is nothing modern about casualisation. It is a throwback to an era when most workers had no security whatsoever.

Zero-hours contracts have been growing exponentially, with a major company such as Sports Direct tying 20,000 of its 23,000 staff to this form of exploitation.

About a fifth of all social workers are on zero-hours contracts and over half of all universities and further education colleges use them.

Although the official figure for workers labouring under this bondage is about 600,000, the real number is higher as employers are increasingly emboldened to play the flexibility card.

The aforementioned CIPD that estimates over a million workers are on these contracts.

Labour should be more assertive of workers’ rights and less amenable to employers’ sob stories about their supposed need for flexibility.

Greater flexibility for the few demanding it equates too readily to exploitation for the many.

The precarious nature of this employment also has implications for workers seeking to enter into financial contracts such as rent or hire purchase agreements.

It is understandable that trade unions prefer the concerns expressed by Miliband to the cosy complacency of Tories and Liberal Democrats, but they can see that bosses will be able to drive a coach and horses through the Pickavance-Miliband prescription.

Setting a six-month deadline after which a worker doing regular hours would be able to request a fixed-hours contract could lead to jobs being terminated before that deadline.

The same applies to the 12-month period for permanency to be triggered automatically.

Some vulnerable, isolated workers may be prepared to forgo their legal right to ask for a legal contract, having little faith that a confrontation with a major company would be resolved in their favour.

Miliband’s Achilles Heel, in common with Tories, Liberal Democrats and even Ukip, is the implicit acceptance that the vast majority of employers are reasonable and that therefore legislation, or even codes of conduct, to tackle “abuses” of the system should be prepared on that basis.

Bosses always complain about overregulation, but their complaints should be set against workers’ experience which militates against such charitable interpretations.

Labour failed during 13 years in office to redress Tory workplace legislation favouring bosses over workers. 

Without a determined attitude to reverse this pro-employer inequality, its proposals will be cosmetic only.