The millionaire businessman Julian Richer is bankrolling a campaign that aims to stamp out the use of controversial zero-hours contracts in Britain.

Zero Hours Justice, which launches today, plans to hold free legal advice clinics around the country for zero-hours workers to identify people whose experiences in the workplace could provide the basis for legal action that could help to change the law.

“I’d love to do a Gina and beat the government,” said Richer, in a reference to the anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller. “​We will seek to expose zero-hours contracts as sham contracts when they do not represent the truth of what is actually happening.”

The campaign, which has the support of the TUC, will be backed by a national advertising campaign as it seeks to “move the needle” of public opinion on a practice that has become common in many workplaces.

The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union president, Ian Hodson, who is fronting the campaign, said workers on zero-hours contracts felt “powerless to complain” even if they were suffering serious problems at work such as bullying and sexual harassment.

“The response from managers can be threats to cut their hours of work,” Hodson told a TUC conference on zero hours last week. “But they simply can’t afford to lose any pay, so what can they do?

“We have cases where managers text people to come straight in. But when they arrive, they find the same text was sent to several workers and only one is needed. And they don’t get their travel costs back, so it’s like being on negative pay.” Workers on zero-hours contracts were being rejected by landlords and unable to get a mortgage, he explained, adding: “Nobody should have to live like that in 21st century Britain.”

With the government unlikely to introduce legislation to outlaw the practice, Zero Hours Justice, which has its own legal team , plans to use “strategic litigation” to bring about change. It also plans to use its website to “name and shame” companies using such contracts in order to encourage consumers to vote with their feet and shock employees who do not realise that colleagues, often through agencies, are being employed on that basis.

Richer said: “We want people to come out of the woodwork who might have a case that we can back. If we can win a tribunal against one council then hopefully other councils would take notice of the finding and review their own practices.”

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Richer, who last year gave control of his Richer Sounds hi-fi and TV retail chain to staff, champions the need for employers to provide secure, well-paid jobs for their staff. The self-made millionaire has long argued that a happy workforce was key to his own success and is passionate that other companies should follow his example.

“I can’t imagine anything more likely to cause misery than not knowing day-to-day whether they will have enough money for food or rent,” Richer said. “These evil ways of exploiting people at work must be banned. If we can’t give working people basic security, we should be ashamed.”

Richer, who also backs Tax Watch UK, the investigative thinktank that pores over the finances of multinational companies and wealthy individuals, added: “I’m not a mad maverick, jumping around from one thing to another. There is a clear theme of trying to encourage better business because it is the right thing to do.”