ACT proposes rules blocking contractors from claiming employee rights
ACT proposes rules blocking contractors from claiming employee rights
The ACT Party is proposing to more clearly define who contractors are so they cannot challenge their employment status in court.
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As far as I can tell, there are 2 types of contractors.
The first type, is contracting because they have a set of valuable skills that they can charge a premium for. Because of this, employers will hire them on and pay a premium for it, the contractor has to consider all the extras that are involved, lack of holiday pay, ACC levies, as well as ensuring their own future. It's a choice to forgo job security and in return they can live much more comfortably.
The second type, is contracting because the employer is forcing the issue, or a contracting job is the only thing this person can find, these roles are usually not paid a premium, and these people aren't making a choice of forgoing job security. Instead, they are being short-changed by the employer, who is taking advantage of this arrangement, to avoid having to have these employees on payroll.
ACT mention in the article that this results in lower prices and more choice, the only way this can happen is that the employee gets shafted. In my industry, real contractors are much more costly than FTE's, and is usually only done because they are offering a particular set of skills, or a way around headcounts when the work just needs to get done.
To add, I once worked in a company that had "contractors" working next to me, it was eye opening chatting to them, as they were not doing this by choice, and were desperate to be made full time employees, they were certainly not living the lavish life that all my previous contractor colleagues were afforded, and it was sad to see people being taken advantage of like that.
Yes, and the first type of contractor is not arguing to the courts that they are an employee. Only the ones getting taken advantage of do that.
This isn't going to fix anything except make sure that the gig economy continues to fuck workers. I say that as someone covered by this potential legislation- there's clear rules around who counts as an independent contractor and I've never had problems keeping to those rules because I want to retain my status as independent. You can't contract out of things like the CGA or basic labour laws, and that should continue to apply here. Seymour is cutting the courts ability to decide on the edge cases in favour of a broad brush that will absolutely result in more "independent" contractor gigs cropping up and further downwards pressure on workers and wages.
Can someone explain why a supermarket can't just decide all new employees are contractors and then not give them sick leave of annual leave?
Essentially, the law defines the nature of that kind of work "employment". I.e. you have a rostered shift, provided a uniform, prescriptive work duties, staff-discount benefits. Generally long term.
Contrast to a specialist on a building site: provided their own tools, task/goal and deadline, but more or less autonomous (i.e. install the electrical wiring by Tuesday). Generally short or fixed term.
There are a lot of "traits" that the law indicates are employee or contractor traits for a contract.
Anecdotally, in my personal experience, the software industry is rife with abuse of this. Plenty of contractors bulking up a small team of employees for years.