The news is awash with the guy who died recently while working for DPD.
Lane, 53, collapsed and died from diabetes after being fined £150 by the courier company DPD for attending a hospital appointment to treat his disease. On Monday the Guardian revealed he had missed three other hospital appointments to treat kidney damage, partly because he was afraid of being fined. He collapsed at the wheel of his van while on deliveries a few months later before dying in January.
He may have died anyway. However, for once I find myself in agreement with the left here. The practice of “fining” people who go sick in order to cover their shift is not self-employment, it is exploitation pure and simple.
I am self-employed. I do my damnedest not to go sick. I will work around routine appointments and plan days off to allow for it. However, I get to choose when I work and for whom. If – as happened recently – I do go sick, it costs me in lost work. But I don’t pay them and would never sign a contract with anyone who expected me to find cover from my sickbed or to pay them for the privilege. As I say, this is exploitation. Any business that operates on such a basis has no business trading, frankly, because sickness is something that happens and they should be able to manage their operation accordingly.
Forcing people into this kind of situation is exploitation, it is not self-employment and never was. DPD are scum. I would actively avoid using them and I would never, ever work for them.
I’m presuming that this is being sold as an IR35-related substitution clause.
Then again classifying people as “self-employed” to avoid employment taxes when they are clearly part-and-parcel of an organisation is just sophistry.
This is one of the very few areas where I see a role for the state and the law. To protect people from this kind of exploitation. The law needs to come down very hard on those running DPD and any other business that pulls this kind of stunt.
I’m not sure I would go that far. It’s a shitty situation, but nobody is forced to take a job where they don’t like the deal on offer.
I’m assuming they get no sick pay?
At that end of the market people often have no option but to take what’s on offer. That gives the company power in the relationship.
True. But if they really have no choice but to take what’s on offer, they’re probably unskilled and not very employable. One ‘choice’ is to change that, skill up, and get better opportunities in the jobs market
Oh, I agree. But blackmail and similar coercion is rightly illegal in other contexts. This is very much blackmail being conducted by the powerful against the weak. Bear in mind that there will always be such people and there will be a need for low skilled work.
I’ve been the part owner of a company that has engaged in contracts with mining companies to carry out specific tasks which, if not carried out as per the contract, would attract very serious penalties in line with the financial costs the client would incur. Accordingly, it was incumbent upon us to ensure that every shift was fully crewed whatever level of absenteeism we faced. Why should it be any different just because you choose to operate as a one man band? If you contract to supply a service and can’t supply it, expect to pay penalties.
Because it’s a different situation. A large organisation can afford to absorb penalty clauses, or refuse to accept such a contract – and, yes, I’ve come across them. For a sole trader, you simply cannot afford to do so. Losing the work is bad enough as I had to do a couple of weeks back when ill. People get ill and having to try and cover the work from one’s sick bed or hospital is not a reasonable expectation – you are stretching it here to compare an individual on minimum wage with a large organisation that has the luxury of refusing contracts it doesn’t like.
And, frankly, penalty clauses are never reasonable and I would never accept a contract that involved them. I am genuinely self employed so I have the choice and choose to eschew such arrangements. Therein lies the significant difference.
However, importantly, this is not by any stretch of the imagination, self-employment, nor do the people on the receiving end have the same liberty to refuse to tender for the contract as I would if faced with the spectre of penalty charges. This is very clearly exploitation of people who are in a weak situation. It is very much an unfair contract – not to mention evasion of employers NICs and other employer’s legal responsibilities. They are employing these people in everything but name and misusing the term self-employment to get around those employer responsibilities. To turn you analogy around, if they don’t want to take on employer’s responsibilities, then go the full hog and have genuinely self-employed people with all that that entails – including not being available for work when it suits the contractor to do so and for there to be no exclusivity – which, if you dig into these arrangements is what is happening. I’m self employed and I decline work if someone has got into my diary first. I do not expect the client to try fining me because of it. I am not at their beck and call, it is a two way arrangement. I work for them if I am available. They don’t issue orders and I work for them when it suits and if I can’t, then too bad. That is not what is happening here, is it?
If the unions were any use whatsoever, this is the area where they are of a benefit. However, they have become so politicised, they are poison and best avoided.
Sorry, but there is no defence here that will wash. This is exploitation and needs to be stamped on good and hard. It gives free enterprise a bad name and plays straight into the hands of the Guardianista.
We were not a large organisation, we were six partners and about twelve permanent employees. When we won a contract, we’d need to find maybe fifty subbies of various skills. If any of the subbies let us down, for whatever reason, legitimate or otherwise, we’d need to find a replacement. If everything went well, the rewards were high, but if things went badly, the downside could be as serious as bankruptcy. The other five are still going, I sold my share as I wanted a different lifestyle.
There seems to be an obvious solution in this situation. The couriers should form their own partnership / company so that they can cover each other when one is sick or wants leave.
That would be one solution – however, you are still making a comparison that doesn’t hold up. This is employment being disguised as self-employment, which it clearly is not. Also, as a business operating with more than one client, you were not faced with the choice of accepting an unfair contract or facing no income because you can’t claim JSA if you have made yourself unemployed. These are people operating at the bottom end of the market with limited options. This is by any rational observation, an unfair contract using coercion.
The best thing about being self employed for me was that I didn’t have to accept any conditions I didn’t like. You really need more than one source of income to be considered self employed.
Also, the genuinely self employed are able to refuse work without penalty.
I thought the same when I read this rather sad story. I work for myself too. I co-own a microbrewery. the harder I work the more beer is brewed. The less I work the reverse is true.
Do we have the whole account and all the circumstances or just one prejudicial side of this situation?
And…
‘…Guardian revealed he had missed three other hospital appointments to treat kidney damage, partly because he was afraid of being fined.’
Partly? What was the other ‘part’? Was it the predominant reason? I’ll bet it was but then the Guardian would not be able to make the case of greedy capitalist scum exploiting poor working class hero.
Don’t focus on this one case. Several organisations do this and it is wrong as it is blackmail. If someone is genuinely self-employed, they get to choose when to work and for whom; usually with several clients. What DPD is doing here is deliberately evading NICs (and holiday and sickness benefits) by mis-classifying employees as self employed. They are not self-employed as they do not have the freedoms associated with it, but are being dumped with the responsibility for their own tax and NICs.
Also, the idea that a client can fine a contractor for not being available simply would not happen in a case of genuine self-employment as the contractor would tell them where to stick it. The only reason these organisations are getting away with it is because they are using low skilled labour with few alternatives on the open market. As such, it is exploitation. That this man died may have highlighted the situation, but it is an outlier, so I wouldn’t get too hung up on it. He clearly made some poor choices, but that doesn’t alter the fact that DPD are guilty of exploitation. That’s what matters here and it’s bugger all to do with capitalism and everything to do with people thinking it’s okay to get away with exploitation.