Labour’s union donor ‘used zero-hour contracts’

London Evening Standard/LondonEd Miliband suffered a damaging blow yesterday as Labour’s biggest union bankroller was caught in a storm over allegedly using “zero-hour” contracts.Hours before the TV debate between party leaders, Miliband was hit by the row over claims the Unite union was using zero-hour contracts despite publicly campaigning against them.Unite was accused of hypocrisy after a lecturer, seeking to blow the whistle on the union’s employment practices, took his case to a tribunal.The union denied employing tutor Martyn Reuby, a Unite member for 42 years who worked at several colleges, or using zero-hour contracts which it has condemned as “exploitation”.But in a humiliating ruling for Unite, which has given millions to Labour, it was found to have employed Reuby.The judgment emerged a day after Miliband put banning the vast majority of zero-hour contracts at the heart of Labour’s general election campaign.Amid accusations that dozens of its MPs and town halls had employed people on zero hours, Miliband was hit by more controversy when one of his big name business backers admitted employing unpaid interns in the past.Designer Wayne Hemingway was challenged over a 2013 advert placed by his company for a 20-hour-a-week internship for “expenses only”.“We have changed, so what?” the founder of fashion brand Red Or Dead told the BBC. “We realised it was wrong and we changed two years ago.”He was one of 100 signatories — drawn from a cross-section of the country — of a letter endorsing Labour’s plans to crack down on zero-hour contracts and “put working people first”. Miliband has condemned unpaid internships as “exploitation” and Labour has called for a four-week limit on them to prevent young people being exploited. Hemingway told the Standard he now paid wages to long-term interns but still gave expenses only, such as travel and meal costs, to college students on work experience.Meanwhile the employment tribunal’s decision over Unite — which the union says it is appealing — paves the way for Reuby, 59, to bring a whistleblowing claim. More than 100 other tutors on the union’s £2.3mn-a-year training programme may be affected by the ruling. In submissions to the tribunal Reuby, who ran courses at institutions including Lewisham College and Sussex Downs College, claimed he was sacked after expressing his views about Unite using zero-hour contracts and the denial of basic employment rights for tutors. Unite had claimed Reuby was self-employed, meaning he would not be able to bring a whistleblowing claim.