Contractors are independent professionals and self-employed. Whether they trade as limited companies, sole traders or as partnerships, it makes no difference. The key fact is that we’re about defining our own destiny.
So, when the Trades Union Congress (TUC) decides that workers should not control their own destiny, but are actually victims, what are the unions’ agendas? They certainly don’t represent the ‘working man’ anymore, not least because nearly half of the UK’s workforce is female.
Working patterns are changing, which includes men and women taking control of their own destinies. In fact, the number of self-employed workers in the UK is set to overtake the number of public sector workers during 2018. Where is that likely to leave unions?
PCG has responded to the TUC’s encroachment into the contractor space, and quite rightly. “The way we work is changing and it does not help our economy for backward-looking bodies like the TUC to fight against this change. Vulnerable workers need to be protected, but to tar all self-employed people with the same brush will do nothing for those who really need the support of a trade union,” says PCG CEO Chris Bryce.
The TUC has picked an agenda, and then tried to fit the few facts it has around it. Where there is no empirical evidence, the message from the TUC is simply that it is “concerned”.
In contrast, as Bryce explains, independent professionals have flourished during the recession: “Research conducted by PCG shows that daily rates for independent professionals have increased since 2011 – a stark contrast to the declining salaries of employees during that time.”
The growth of the well-paid freelancer is also a symptom of the internet making it much easier for clients to find and hire people with the right expertise and experience. And they can do so at short notice, for a set period of time and to achieve a specific outcome.
Before the internet, the commercial barriers of short-term recruitment made it more sensible to hire an employee full time and accept there would be some downtime when there was less work than available manpower.
Now, with alternatives such as PeoplePerHour, Elance, and oDesk, businesses of all sizes can directly find and hire people for short-term tasks from all over the world. They can also use sites like LinkedIn – and even Google – to find just the right people for their needs. Imagine the cost of trying to run an operation like that even 10 years ago!
So, where does that leave the unions and their role in the contracting sector? 21st century working patterns are changing, and the unions, which played such a valuable role in protecting people in the last century, must change with them.
But, following their condemnation and rejection of self-employment, are the unions pushing themselves further away from representing workers than they’ve ever been?