Small biz warns on contractor law

@Chris Thomas Alpha

You're not a yank are you? If you are then I fear for your co-workers - you are one blue screen of death away from rampaging through the office with a semi-automatic rife.

Wow.

Just...wow.

Re: Agencies can stfu!!!

An obvious troll, nobody would even consider getting out of bed for 5 quid an hour, not even 20+ years ago. My first and only permie job paid a touch over three times that in the early 80s.

In case you are being serious, then maybe you should improve your negotiating skills instead of putting all your energy into whining after the fact.

Agencies can rot

I have used them for about 15 years... and in all that time I have found ONE decent one....

To be honest, I think I was lucky to find them.

Now back to looking for that needle

Tony

@Agencies can stfu

Having been an IT contractor for the past 14 years I don't want to have the same benefits as a permanent employee. If I did, then I would become a permanent employee.

Most contractors already have their own company to trade through, although that is becoming increasingly difficult thanks to the IR35. The thing that stops you from presenting yourself to companies directly for work are the companies themselves. As was mentioned 90% of jobs are advertised through pimps (excuse me, 'agencies'), to approach companies directly would mean that I'd have spend a vast majority of my time phoning around searching for jobs. With the pimps that searching is done for you. I would prefer it if the companies requiring contractors advertised directly, but then they get hounded by the agency vultures making it difficult not to go through them.

I get paid more because I don't get holiday pay, I don't get sick leave, I don't get paid for bank holidays and my pension comes from me. If I have the same benefits as an employee, it won't be long before I can only take 4 weeks holidays a year and can't claim a majority of my computing expenses.

@Chris W

"nobody would even consider getting out of bed for 5 quid an hour"

Actually, I think you will find that many people do. In fact, many people have no choice. It works out as more than you get on the dole, and especially if you have a family to support, what choice is there? £200/wk is better than nothing, in the end. You will find that many honest, hard working people will accept whatever work they can just to give the best possible life to their family, even when they know it is barely worth the effort.

Personally, I would have to be quite desperate to accept such a job, but I would do it rather than live on the dole for too long.

Re: Agencies can stfu!!!

The problem is that almost all companies will only deal with 'recruitment agencies' as they believe it makes their job easier. All it actually saves them is the Cv search/interview stage and if they are truly temps (as opposed to contractors....a very big difference which the government stubbornly refuse to acknowledge) then they get given whatever the agency pick regardless of how well they suit. When you look at the margins most agencies run at you can see that it very quickly becomes viable to 'in-house' this sort of thing but good old inertia (and the odd 'thank you' present to senior staff) keeps the companies going back to the agencies.

@Chris Thomas Alpha

Keep on in there mate. I was stuck in the same hell, but I eventually got out of it.

All the power is with the employer as the agency want the customer to use their staff, so if the customer doesn't like the look of your face, you're out. What discrimination law?

@Chris W - When, if you don't work for £5 an hour, you won't even have a bed to not-get-out-of, you've got no choice.

Agency staff usually get crapped all over; even by the reputable, well known agencies. This change has been a long time comming.

@IT Contractors - 12:33

But you're a small part of the picture, I can understand that you're in a situation where it's beneficial for you, but considering the number of IT contractors pales by comparison to the number of agency workers in other areas, nobody will feel that sorry for you.

When you have to get out of bed at 5am and work 12 hours on 5-6 quid an hour because your agency is stuffing you and you can't do a dammed thing about it, nor have enough time, or opportunity to find another job. You'll see the world in a different way.

I'm happy that you never had, or don't longer have to deal with that world, but a lot of those people out there do, everyday and there is a hell of a lot more of them, than you. Think of those people as well, when you're sunning yourself in spain like I am, either on holiday or living there and your past schoolmates are breaking their balls to earn 200 euros a week, you might agree more with that pov.

@Chris

Tescos pay more than £5/hr. Mickey Ds pay more than £5/hr. If you're getting paid less than a Tescos shelf-stacker, you're letting yourself get screwed over.

Oh yeah, and word up, guy. As a school leaver, you *are* the smallest cog, because you know FA about anything. Breeze into a well-paid job and get a mortgage? Not happening. You get paid according to what you've got to offer, and if you've got no skills or experience, you get paid to match.

Me, I did four years of degree in electronic engineering (so a course with a career at the end of it), had summer jobs all the way to keep myself financed, got a good grade, and got straight into a job to get myself experience as quick as poss. It was still 3 years after that before we could afford a house, and that needed both my wife's wages and mine - we could have paid the mortgage on mine, but we'd have had literally nothing left for food, never mind a car or petrol for it, or a night at the pub. Hell, it was 6 months after I graduated before me and my wife could afford to move out of the shared house where we rented a room. A flat where we didn't have to share a bathroom and kitchen was like paradise. I wasn't pissing and whinging about that though, bcos I knew I didn't have the experience to make myself worth the extra money. But I *did* moan when my mates elsewhere in the company were getting paid more than I was for the same skills and doing the same job, bcos I wasn't prepare to be a doormat.

Now I've got experience to trade on, I'm contracting. And on that score, I'm with the AC above. Yes, the hiring company pays my company twice what a permie gets. But from that I have to subtract company tax, accountant's fees (mandatory for running your own company), liability insurance (mandatory again), personal tax, NI, sick days, holidays, time between contracts (which can be a long time), pension, and any training I need. And the biggest thing there is the time between contracts - if you can keep that small then you're quids in, but if the economy goes to worms then you're stuffed. For 4 months over Xmas there were about a dozen contract roles going in my field in the whole of the UK, and several hundred people chasing each one, and I'd just had my contract terminated with two weeks notice. It sucked, but I wasn't pissing and whinging about it, because I knew that risk was *why* I was getting paid better when I was working.

@ CTW et al

There is a big difference between what you (and I) consider "Agency Staff" and "IT Contractors", however it appears that the government (and Brussels too) either cannot see that, do not want to see that or see it but don't care.

First proper Perm job I had (early 90s) paid £6150 per annum for 37.5 hours alternate week shifts of 06:00-14:00 and 14:00 to 22:00 and we had agency people from Kalamazoo who did the same work but got paid significantly less.

Now I am a Contractor earning contract rates which are definitely higher (in cash terms) than equivalent permies - with the extra going to cover the additional costs, risks, uncertainties, flexibilities* and skills*.

I can clearly see why agency staff such as yourself would both want and need a change to give you some degree of parity as you clearly are not being financially compensated for the loss of holiday / sick / training / employment protections that permanent staff get. I think it is unreasonable that such situations are still able to exist in a society where we try to think we are progressive and at least some degree of socially conscious.

Equally though I do _not_ want holiday / sick pay / training / employment protections as I am being paid to forgo them, and the only obvious alternatives are either to reduce rates or limit contract terms to 12 weeks - as a matter of interest it is unlikely that 12 week rolling contracts (or very short breaks between "separate" 12 week contracts) will be acceptable as a way to circumvent this law - we already see equivalents in the travel expenses rules.

As hiring contractors for 12 weeks only would be seriously detrimental due to training / familiarisation lags the only thing that would change is that rates would drop. Which I certainly don't want. I assume most employers wouldn't want that either - however they probably more don't want having to give any benefits to agency staff either.

* Yes I know some permie staff are as or more flexible/skilled than some or many contractors but when we are brought in it to roles it is often because we are more flexible & skilled than the footsoldiers.

@Trevor 10

>like receptionists and cleaners.

One of the summer jobs I had whilst at university was working for a contract cleaner, the sort that does the deep clean of banks, offices, etc on a weekend, I got 5 quid an hour for that. I've also been paid the same for working on a pig farm.

In these comments there are two types of contributors, those that think the world is against them and whine about not being handed opportunities and those that have grabbed the world by its balls and made the best of what they had to work with. I look at it this way, optimists and pessimists can be defined exactly the same way, they are both people who get out of life what they expect from it.

Oh, and if I do have an ivory tower to look out of I can assure you I built it off my own abilities.

@Graham Bartlett

You think your life was hard, try being a school leaver with no real good qualifications and parents that can't support you, you need a job, so you find one, with the agency, because it's all you've got in front of you, you need it, and NOW.

You take the job, you work 12 hours a day, it pays for your flat and little more than that, you want to show me a collage qualification I can take? The only option I have left to me is to find a job which trains and allows me to move up.

Of course, I need to break away from the agency to do that, because otherwise I'll only see 50% of my payrise, the rest will goto them.

The problem with your post, is that it sees itself as the way life is, whereas actually, reading your story, I can tell you that actually, you got by quite nicely, compare yourself to some of the people I know back from my home town and you'll soon realise how lucky you were.

They are in a dead end part of the country, with nothing but agencies creaming the best whilst leaving you with nothing, working you 12 hours a day and with no expectations past that, you know, there is a limit to the numbver of course that you can stay awake before you need to goto bed and sometimes it's not possible to take another job, or study.

You're fucked and there is little you can do but hope to be saved by something.

Temps are sometimes not temp

Part of the problem is that sometimes temp workers are not temp at all, but permenant workers in disguise.

why hire someone permenantly and have to pay them benefits, etc when you can just get a cheap sucker to work indefinitely for you whilst you can kick him out the door with 1 hour of notice.

Sometimes permenant means temporary

@chris w

There is an extra dimension that isnt accounted for here. Luck.

Sometimes you can work like a pig and still be in the same shithole you started out in when you're 40, othertimes, like in my situation, you can find luck and hard work together help you.

Example 1: Whilst I was in my crappy little hole, I knew a guy who was great at welding and wanted to get into the Navy, didnt make it, wasnt enough places and the next year, couldnt afford to study more and had to make do with what he had, he was 40, worn thin, worked hard like a motherfucker and was earning not that much more than me.

Example 2: I started to program computers and for years did nothing with it, except more and more and more programming until I knew enough to be dangerous, then started to look professionally, found a girlfriend in spain who worked at my hellhole and tried my hardest to get out of it. I was lucky enough to find a company to try me out, after I moved country. I looked for a long time and got plenty of rejection before that day arrived.

Sometimes luck is what really determines your destiny, hard work, is sometimes not enough

Overheads

Don't forget that if you are working away from home, B&B and petrol for the week can easily take up ~£5/hr of the rate ...

@Lee

Fair point.

However -- you can't physically work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the most significant elements of the legislation can either effectively be disregarded in the majority of cases (redundancy - AFAIK not applicable for fixed term/job and finish contracts), legally replaced with cash in lieu (notice periods for rolling contracts), or are basically cash equivalent anyway (annual leave).

Considering you're able either to negotiate your pay and terms, or have them favourably negotiated on your behalf by an agent who is a world away from the "reel 'em in and suck 'em dry" agents forced on those unfortunate enough to be at the bottom of the food chain, I think the distinction between those folk and people like yourself is in practice still very clear indeed, whether the law says so or not.

@blackworx

I agree with much of your second post - if you look back at my other posts you will find as much. However my post to you was in response to your post:

By blackworx Posted Thursday 30th July 2009 14:37 GMT

Q: Does the legislation affect limited company and sole trader freelance contractors?

A: No. It covers only people who are temporary EMPLOYEES, usually of employment agencies.

Q: Why then are the comment threads for these articles full of contractors having a pop at the legislation and whining about being "forced" to accept rights aimed at improving the lot of temporary employees?

***************************************************************************************************

Which is completely different to your "rebuttal". We are "...whining about being "forced" to accept rights aimed at improving the lot of temporary employees" because we don't want it for us.

We either do want it for agency staff or at the very least aren't bothered either way - but we want to be treated differently - based on teh fact that our situation is different.

However, to take your response:

"Considering you're able either to negotiate your pay and terms, or have them favourably negotiated on your behalf by an agent who is a world away from the "reel 'em in and suck 'em dry" agents forced on those unfortunate enough to be at the bottom of the food chain, I think the distinction between those folk and people like yourself is in practice still very clear indeed, whether the law says so or not."

This is rubbish - the legislation would force end clients to give me things like holiday pay, sickness and most importantly restrictions on termination/treatment - things they don't want to give me and I don't want from them. It suits me that they can terminate my contract at any time for any (or no) reason - mainly because it suits them and gives more incentive to employ me and pay me - once the work is done I move on and everyone is happy.

Look, I don't know what you are trying to achieve now, but your initial post looked like simply an exercise in proving you are smarter and better than us contractors because we are worrying about legislation that does not affect us. I showed you it does affect us and you suddenly mean that we can't work 24 hours a day 365 days a year and somehow we can negotiate out of legally enforced terms and conditions - T&Cs that if we can negotiate out of so could the agencies providing "those at the bottom of the food chain" - which they certainly would if they could. Which argument just makes you look like a spoiled kid who screwed up and is trying to make out that you really wanted to piss your pants and shit your bed and it is us that are stupid for not seeing that.

payback!

It is far from the only or major user of temps. The legislation was framed to also protect the huge numbers of staff in semi-skilled or unskilled jobs. There are temps right across the spectrum of employment that earn barely above the minimum wage while agencies enjoy a return on the temps labour in excess of 100%.

Nice to see some payback for this - its long overdue.

Simple answer

This legislation should only apply to those paid less than twice the minimum wage (after agency fees) and three times the minimum wage on bank holidays and weekends.

This would protect us from the negative effects of the legislation, while stopping rip offs for the lower paid.

@Lee

Seriously - WTF?

Er yes, I do realise your initial rebuttal was in response to my second post, which was admittedly antagonistic, but - really - nice one on missing the point of my reply and degenerating into a piss-poor attempt at winding me up on that last try. And there was me thinking from the measured tone of your initial rebuttal that you were (unlike me) able to rise above such childish antagonism.

Excuse me>

"... which they fear will cost the UK economy as much as £1.5bn a year."

So the employers are part of the British economy and their workers are part of - what? Do they employ nothing but Poles and Romanians who wire their paychecks back to the mother country?

I'm sick of reading this sort of one-sided crap. It's about time employers' groups woke up to the concept that the money they pay their staff is watering their own fucking garden, by putting money into circulation that strengthens the economy they're dependent on.