As the contracting sector expands, fuelled by increasing numbers of contractors and freelancers, those institutions dealing with the issues of work and worklessness may no longer be fit for purpose and require reform.
This is according to the Fabian Society in its new report New Forms of Work. In it, ten commentators, including PCG’s George Anastasi, Professor Patricia Leighton and Professor Andrew Burke, offer an overview of the debate on the future of work.
“We need to take a long, hard look at whether our labour market institutions are fit for the changing nature of work,” explains Fabian Society general secretary Andrew Harrop.
“With the relative decline of full-time, permanent, long-term jobs and the growth of insecure, short-term and part-time work, it is time to consider change in the design of benefits, tax and job programmes as well as the priorities of the trade union movement.”
The report considers how the UK’s institutions of taxation, government policy, social security, worker representation and trade unionism must adapt to a growing shift away from full-time permanent positions towards more flexible, short-term or part-time positions.
Leighton’s contribution on creating policy fit for purpose highlights that “policy needs to develop in a positive, not defensive and negative way”. She believes that the issues of IR35 and ‘disguised employment’ are a distraction from the real issues of policy.
PCG’s Anastasi warns that “the rise in self-employment is being arrested by a confusing jigsaw of policy and regulation”. He proposes that contractors and freelancers should be treated as the small businesses they are, not lumped into the same category as ‘vulnerable temporary workers’.
And Burke’s view is that, until there is a widely accepted definition of freelancers and freelance work, they will be consigned to “play a pivotal, yet largely unheralded role in the modern British entrepreneurial economy”.
“Freelancing has grown to become a crucial component of the UK economy – in both the good times and the bad,” insists PCG managing director John Brazier.
“The report from the Fabian Society highlights some of the key issues at the heart of our way of working and offers real insight into how businesses and the government can facilitate freelancing for the benefit of all.”