Restaurant Brands is ending zero hours contracts for staff at its food chains, including KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks.
Restaurant Brands, which owns KFC, has ended zero hours contracts. Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
Under the controversial contracts, employees have to be available for work but have no hours guaranteed. Restaurant Brands say this will end in July with a new collective agreement negotiated with Unite Union.
Restaurant Brands chief executive Russel Creedy said when the union approached the company about providing better certainty over working hours, he immediately saw change was needed. He said the company had never really practised zero hour contracts, and this change provided better security for both workers and company.
“Having permanent staff who stay with us, loyal, long tenure, is part of a successful business model for our industry,” he told Radio New Zealand.
READ: Zero tolerance for zero hours
Unite Union national director Mike Treen said the move was a giant step forward for the industry.
“Restaurant Brands is a public company, and I think that they recognised New Zealand society has moved on; that it's no longer acceptable in 21st century New Zealand for this type of contract to exist, so they're looking for a way to move with the times.”
“It is time for New Zealanders to tell these profitable multi-national chains that they need to stop taking advantage of their often young and vulnerable workers and put an end to a labour practice that the people of New Zealand have made clear they find unacceptable,” Treen said.
Fast food chain McDonald's maintains it is still in talks with the Unite union about scrapping controversial zero hour contracts, but the union says discussions have broken down.
McDonald's says negotiations for a new collective employment agreement with Unite, a union that represents about 12 percent of its employee, include security of hours. However Mike Treen said the talks had broken down over the issue of zero-hour contracts. He said Burger King and Wendy's were also refusing to drop the controversial contract.
LISTEN: Megan Whelan speaks to fast food workers about zero hour contracts.
A worker at a KFC restaurant on Auckland's north shore, Lucan Turnball, says he's happy about this new agreement and had sometimes struggled to pay for rent and public transport when he lost work hours under his contract.
“I won't have to worry about losing those hours that I have to definitely get to be able to pay the rent, to get to school, to get to work.
“Having that guarantee is one big thing that I'm definitely impressed and happy with.”
A version of this story first appeared on radionz.co.nz.