Sarah Butler and Hilary Osborne 

Everyman cinema chain is next to drop zero-hours contracts

All staff at the boutique group will be offered minimum hours of work, following similar moves at rival Curzon Cinemas and Sports Direct
  
  

The Everyman Cinema Great North Road Barnet London.
The Everyman in Barnet, north London. Five of the chain’s 19 cinemas will be zero-hour free by the end of the year, says chief executive Crispin Lilly. Photograph: David Levene/the Guardian

The Everyman cinema chain is set to move hundreds of staff off zero-hours contracts by the end of next year, joining a wave of companies turning against the controversial employment contracts.

Crispin Lilly, the chief executive of the boutique cinema group, said five of its 19 outlets would be free of zero hours by the end of this year and the rest in 2017.

The group began experimenting with guaranteed monthly hours at its Birmingham branch and has already introduced that system in new outlets in Harrogate and Chelmsford. In the next few months two further sites, including Leeds, will switch to the system, which promises at least 40 hours a month.

Lilly said: “If all goes well we want to take it across the chain. Some people say, ‘why not do it tomorrow?’ but we want to make sure that when we move existing sites we don’t lose good employees in the process. We’ve proven it delivers the same level of flexibility that zero hours did but zero hours has been much maligned by [businesses] that treated it badly.

“Our staff have never had problems with zero hours but it has become a bad word and there are employees out there who would not come to us if we’re associated with it.”

He revealed the plans alongside a trading statement in which Everyman said revenues had risen nearly 51% to £12.1m in the six months to June as it opened a string of new sites. Box office takings at established cinemas fell by about 2%, in line with the wider market, as some box office blockbusters failed to ignite. Successes included Jungle Book and The Revenant but none was as popular as Jurassic World in 2015.

Lilly said takings had picked up briskly in July and August with the release of The BFG, Suicide Squad, Ghostbusters and Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.

The appeal of the boutique chains has been tarnished by rows over the use of zero-hours contracts and low pay. Film fans have criticised poor pay and conditions when they are paying as much as £18.50 a seat to watch a film.

In January last year, the Curzon chain moved all 200 cinema staff at its 14 sites off zero hours and onto the living wage.

Cineworld, which owns the Picturehouse chain, told the Guardian it continued to use zero-hours contracts across the business but implemented them “on a ‘responsible use’ basis, which allows staff the same benefits pro rata as their fixed-hours counterparts.”

Picturehouse said it offered staff the choice of zero- or guaranteed-hours contracts.

Everyman’s move comes after retailer Sports Direct said it would offer 18,000 workers at its shops contracts guaranteeing at least 12 hours’ work a week following heavy criticism of its employment practices, although it has emerged that this change could take until the end of the year.

Earlier this week Greene King said it would move thousands of pub workers at chains including Wacky Warehouse off zero-hours contracts after fellow pub firm JD Wetherspoon announced it would allow 24,000 staff to choose between a zero-hours contract and one offering fixed hours.

 

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