The increase in what is commonly referred to as the ‘Gig Economy‘ has resulted in a reduction of employment rights and benefits. The approach of the UK government is to ensure that individuals are aware of their rights – which only mean that individuals are more aware of the fact that they have no rights. All of which still leaves the balance of power with the employer.
This can be ended at a stroke – all we need to do is ensure that companies may only sell a service which they deliver directly.
By prohibiting that components of a service are sub-contracted, the result will be that the whole service MUST be delivered by the employees of the contracted company – which means that the company itself is directly responsible for ensuring that its own standards of employment law as well as the legal requirements are met. This in turn means that large companies can no longer exploit smaller companies in the market and reduce rights.
You want to run a food delivery service Deliveroo – you deliver with your own staff, on the books, and supported by employment rights. Simple.
Bye-Bye gig economy – Bye-Bye abuse.
… And good bye economies of scale, good bye SMEs, good bye competition, good bye jobs…. Hello the ever growing global market giants, hello reduced product choice, hello cost and price inflation.
Perhaps eutopia is not always so black and white after all?
The conclusions you draw are (although possible) not a necessarily the result of prohibiting outsourcing – indeed, one could argue that the very possibility of allowing large corporations to outsource provides them with the possibility of bidding for projects for which they are not competent – see Serco, see G4S etc. The very prohibition of outsourcing could encourage the development of small and specialised enterprises dedicated to the delivery of a specific service.
Nevertheless – eutopia is not the goal here, the objective of this is to assure fair and equitable employment rights for all – and that (for me) is without price.
Oh – and welcome to the site!
How many organisations in the ‘Gig Economy’ allow their operatives to join a trade union? If the answer is none, I wonder why.
True, there is no utopian working environment but maybe we can work towards it? All firms must be allowed to hire specialist contract workers on occasion but possibly only a certain percentage of a contract can be delivered in this way and can never form more than 15% of a workforce either over a year or on specific contract.
Nevertheless, all workers should be employed under the same conditions of service including pension, sick pay etc irrespective of being hourly paid for a short term contract or as a permanent employee. In this way the employer may find that there is more hassle with meeting the casual members of staff conditions than their casualisation structure is worth.
So what would industry look like if the automobile industry was unable to outsource a range of specialist services which did not pertain to their core skills, for example certain IT specialisms?
Companies would need to employ specialists directly, teams would inevitably be smaller and less able to deliver the same levels of innovation or speed. Jobs would be lost as companies struggle to meet the increased cost of operations. Prices might reach a point that consumers could no longer afford the products, sales would reduce and the remaining employees cut from the balance sheet.
I have sympathy for the core of your argument, but an extremist response might sooner see you fairly unemployed, rather than fairly employed.
The argument that prices would rise, and thus sales would drop and thus jobs would be lost is perhaps pernicious – this is saying that we produce things so we can sell things so we can employ people to produce more things – a clearer case of ourobouros you will not find…
Nevertheless, there are perhaps other ways to ensure fair employment – perhaps legislating that companies paid even their outsourced services to the same level and terms and conditions as they pay their own staff…
Sub- ontra ting limits can be put in place, and we’ve done it here in NZ in some pockets.
Between 2011-13 I represented the civil construction industry in the renegotion of national contracts for state highways with our equivalent of your Highways Agency.
They wanted to reduce 78 maintenance contracts to just 9. The model risked effective killing most of the small enterprises. Following two years of negotiation, we finally negotiated guaranteed minimum levels of sub-contracting to no less than 20%, by value, which also had to be evenly distributed across all trades.
The original proposal would have seen all work awarded to just five giant companies. This, I argue, would have placed too much power in the hands of those few employers…. And then you could be assured of an imbalance.
Earler this year, I successfully argued that these contracts should be included in the forward work schedule for the Office of the Auditor-General (refer the public ally available draft annual plan). In 2021, the OAG will formally review the impact of these contracts on the marketplace and their effect on the future competitiveness, capacity and capability of the roading sector in NZ. Thankfully, there will still be some small players remaining with whom we can conduct an investigation.
How many giant construction companies in NZ directly employ their skilled workers?
Not many in the UK do, and certainly not Carilion, they used mainly self employed sub contractors and kept them waiting for payments for work completed for 90 days.
When they collapsed (after safeguarding their own executive bonuses and pensions) many of the sub contractors also went to the wall.
The principal of out sourcing the public sector means that governments take a ‘hands off’ approach, the idea is that the private sector knows best. That is how the ‘free market’ operates. And as can be widely seen in the UK with Carilion, Serco, G4S, Capita, Virgin Health and the fiasco that is the the privatised railways, it does not work very well.
This week in NZ… Perhaps this concept might find the middle ground?
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/358954/bolger-working-group-could-take-nz-back-to-70s-national-warns
Radio4 Today:-
a retired railway worker is having his Carillion pension cut because the Government sold his old employer to Carillion as part of a privatisation.
He had never worked for Carillion at any time.
Blame goes to…
FYI:-
Research a Cheshire company called “de Poel” for an explanation about modern employment and the Governments’ role in it.
Perhaps you could view it this way…
… We produce things, so we can sell things, so we can make money, so we can buy things. A clear case of ourobouros? Indeed. Even the planet spins on an axis chasing its own tail!
We might like to consider the greater good, but let’s not kid ourselves. The system only cares about people as far as necessary work units and consumers.
Theres nothing wrong in your desire to make a positive change. However, if you want to change this outcome, then the whole system needs an overhaul. Not just an isolated tweak to a single sub-system.
Ourobouros it may be; poorly principled and flat out wrong too. However, our systems are highly interconnected and the picture needs to be considered as a whole. If not, then there will always be unintended consequences to contend with.
The UK government needs to wear a large chunk of the Carrillion Cape of shame.
As a contracting party the government failed to undertake appropriate levels of due diligence in order to manage its risk exposure. Carrillion low cash holdings, high debt and massive forward liabilities were clear for all to see.
However, procuring departments reconciled Carrillion liquidity against the value of their projects on a stand alone basis. At an All-of-Government level nobody considered the total value of cross-government liabilities against liquidity of the preferred supplier. That is an elementary failure of the many siloed procuring teams. Yes, Carrillion over reached themselves, but where was the “smart buyer” in this mess? Wherever they are, it seems to a long way from shouldering any of the responsibility.