Zero hours contracts are all over the news, with McDonald’s workers finally standing up to their bosses, and a sympathy protest in Falmouth too.

It takes guts for someone in precarious employment to stand up to a multinational conglomerate, which would sack them without even flinching, and I applaud the workers for their historic stand, but wonder: do they want to have their Big Mac and eat it?

The strikers, echoed by local Labour councillor Anna Gillett, want flexible working hours, but at the same time demand an end to zero hours work.

An economy such as Cornwall’s, with its seasonal peaks and troughs and reliance on the service sector, needs flexibility. Zero hours are one way to provide that, both for employers and workers.

Yes, they can be abused, and that needs to be addressed. One of the few useful recommendations to come out of the recent fig leaf known as the Taylor Review of working practices was the recommendation that workers have the right to demand fixed hours contracts. Although real reform would mean employers need a good reason to refuse such a request too.

Everyone should be able to escape zero hours, but I don’t believe such contracts should be banned, as they provide much needed flexibility for students, second jobs, and many others.

Instead, as Ms Gillett noted, we should be campaigning for a fairer wage for all, not just in a McDonald’s in Cambridge but in Cornwall, where we have one of the worst discrepancies between wages and living costs in the UK.