Answers · UK 2025/26

What rights do zero-hours contract workers have in 2026?

Zero-hours workers retain the same core statutory rights as other employees or workers with equivalent status -- National Minimum Wage, statutory holiday pay (accrued at 12.07% of hours worked or via the standard method), rest breaks, and protection from detriment for refusing work outside contracted hours -- with reforms strengthening rights to reasonable notice of shifts and compensation for cancelled shifts.

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Zero-hours contracts, where an employer is not obliged to offer a minimum number of hours and the worker is not obliged to accept work offered, have historically left workers with fewer practical protections than the security of a fixed-hours contract, but core statutory rights still apply and recent reforms have strengthened protections further. **Core rights that always apply** Regardless of having no guaranteed hours, zero-hours workers are still entitled to: - National Minimum Wage / National Living Wage for every hour actually worked - Statutory holiday entitlement, accrued in proportion to hours actually worked (commonly calculated at 12.07% of hours worked, reflecting that 5.6 weeks' statutory holiday is 12.07% of the working year), or paid via rolled-up holiday pay as a clearly identified addition to each payment for irregular-hours workers - Rest breaks and limits on working time under the Working Time Regulations - Protection against unlawful deductions from wages - Protection from unfair dismissal and discrimination on the normal qualifying grounds (though the 2-year qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal still generally applies based on continuous service, which can be harder to establish with irregular working patterns) **The right not to be exclusively tied** Zero-hours workers have a specific statutory right not to be prevented from working for other employers, and any 'exclusivity clause' purporting to stop a zero-hours worker taking other work is unenforceable, reflecting the fact that the employer offers no guarantee of hours or income in return for exclusivity. **Recent and upcoming reforms (Employment Rights Bill era)** Reforms progressing through Parliament (and increasingly coming into force through 2025-2027) aim to give zero-hours and low-hours workers a right to be offered a contract reflecting the hours they regularly work after a reference period, reasonable notice of shift assignments and cancellations, and compensation for shifts cancelled or curtailed at short notice -- addressing the previous lack of any statutory right to compensation when a shift you had prepared for is cancelled with little warning. **Worked example** A zero-hours retail worker regularly works around 25 hours a week over the preceding months, despite having no contractual guarantee of any hours. Under reforms being phased in, she may gain a right to request (or be automatically offered, depending on the final implementation detail) a contract reflecting these regularly worked hours, rather than remaining indefinitely on a zero-hours basis despite a consistent working pattern. Separately, if her employer cancels a scheduled shift with less than the legally required notice period once such requirements are in force, she may become entitled to a specified compensation payment for that cancelled shift. **Continuous employment despite gaps** Gaps between periods of work on a zero-hours contract do not necessarily break continuity of employment for statutory rights purposes, provided the overall arrangement and pattern of work supports an ongoing employment relationship rather than a series of genuinely separate, unconnected engagements -- this can be a complex, fact-specific question that has been the subject of significant case law, particularly relevant to qualifying periods for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights.