Self Employed Australia

"Everyone needs an Advocate"

“Everyone needs an Advocate”

Collective Bargaining

Government report: Don’t destroy self-employed gig workers. We agree

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report-gigDespite the Albanese government’s description of self-employed ‘gig’ work as a ‘cancer’, a recent government report (interim) says that such work and workers should not be ‘stymied’. We totally agree and have made a supporting submission.

The Productivity Commission is a high-powered federal government economic research think-tank. What it says is important.

In its (interim) report it studies and makes recommendations on the gig/platform economy. It says:

Regulation should evolve to meet the workplace relations challenge of innovative new business models, without stymying their potential contributions to productivity.

This is a heap of common sense. We hope the Albanese government takes note. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!!

Our submission makes key points of fact.

There’s no confusion between an employee and a self-employed person:

  • An employee earns income through the employment contract.
  • A self-employed (independent contractor) person earns income through the commercial contract.

This legal fact is supported by research conducted by the International Labour Organisation and by international standards to which Australia is a signatory. Like the Productivity Commission, the ILO says:

National policy for protection of workers in an employment relationship should not interfere with true civil and commercial relationships…

We say that employment-structured firms are under competitive threat from gig/platforms and self-employed people. These firms are marshalling their well-entrenched political power to stop or limit the competition for power. This explains the ‘third way’ push which is on the Albanese government’s agenda.

The ‘third way’ push is highly dangerous. It has been rejected by the ILO and is causing great harm in the UK, for example. We explain this in our submission.

We also say that self-employed people are entitled to ‘protections’ but through commercial regulation not employment regulation. For example, protections are already available under laws covering unfair contracts, work safety, collective bargaining (under competition rules), minimum rates guarantees and dispute resolution.

But there is urgent need to reform the workers’ compensation schemes, for example, to allow individual self-employed people to register directly with the schemes without being forced into ‘employment’. Currently, self-employed people are banned from workers’ compensation, a glaring discrimination.

We explain these issues and more in our submission.

Campaign to defend self-employed people: It’s going to be a battle

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self-employed-battleWith the election of the Albanese government, there’s been a frenzy of academic, union and Labor government commentary about how big changes are coming for self-employed people. There’s the:

  • Demonisation of the ‘gig’ economy, as if every gig worker works in some sort of oppressive Dickensian environment.
  • Pushing of ‘employee-like’ independent contractor concepts and of bringing such people into employment regulation.
  • Calls to change the definition of self-employment/independent contracting.
  • Renewed attack against owner-drivers.

Let’s be clear. The Albanese government has stated its intent to implement new, aggressive policies around each of these issues. Workplace Relations Minister Tony Bourke explained on ABC Radio the ‘big shift’ that’s to happen.

Frankly, we (SEA) have been around too long (since 2000) and we are too experienced to fall for the spin that this is to ‘protect’ self-employed workers. These types of agendas have been promoted by the broad Labor movement (unions, ALP, Labor academics) since the 1990s. The agenda is to squeeze the life blood out of people who are, and want to be, their own boss. We know the game.

But this time is different from the last three decades-or-so. With The Greens and at least one independent Senator, Labor has the numbers to push its agenda through parliament.

Their agenda is, of course, damn nonsense and will be cancerous to the livelihoods of Australia’s 2.1 million self-employed people. You won’t know the cancer is there until you start feeling the pain.

However, don’t expect something different from the Dutton opposition. After the Morrison government’s 2019 win, the Coalition demonstrated a brain deadness on small business issues.

  • Yes, it introduced some good ‘pay small business on time’ requirements but didn’t go far enough.

But,

  • It continued to allow the ATO to bully, harass and oppress small business people without any checks and balances.
  • It failed to implement the beefing up of unfair contract laws that were ‘ready to go’. Did it do a deal with the big end of town to put this off?

Now for some balance. While we’re warning about, and will campaign against, Labor’s destructive agenda for the self-employed, there’s some good news.

The upshot is that we have a battle on our hands. The are some positives in the Albanese government’s small business agenda, but also some shockers. We’ll be producing considerable commentary and analysis to explain the good and the bad over the coming months.

Albanese plan to smash Australia’s 2 million self-employed

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election-2022-smashThere’s now clarity on what Albanese’s Labor intends to do to self-employed small business people if elected. Labor intends to attack us.

The ALP Secure Jobs Plan says:

“Labor will extend the powers of the Fair Work Commission to include ‘employee-like’ forms of work…” Labor intends to attack “…new forms of work such as gig work.”

Last Monday (2 May) this was further made clear at an Albanese street-walk rally in Brisbane. The Australian Financial Review reports from the rally that Labor will legislate to invent new law that says that self-employed people are a ‘little bit’ an employee, like being ‘a little bit pregnant’. It’s clear that the policy is directed at giving unions control over gig workers and any other self-employed person they choose to target. Hairdressers, for example!

The policy is a direct lift from the Californian law called AB5, introduced in early 2020. It was a job killer which hit the most vulnerable self-employed people. Think of single mums running their own transcription business from home! Closed down! There are thousands of examples.

The United Kingdom has an old 1986 ‘little bit pregnant/employee’ independent contractor law. This was used by the UK transport union in 2021 to attack gig ride-sharing. It’s thrown commercial contracts into chaos in the UK.

Albanese’s Labor says it wants to do ‘nice’ things such as giving ‘little-bit-employee’ self-employed people access to collective bargaining, superannuation and the minimum wage. But this is a beat-up.

Self-employed people (us) already have easy access to collective bargaining authorised under competition laws. Superannuation is clearly required when an individual, self-employed persons (not structured as a P/L company) works for a business. The Independent Contractors Act requires that independent contractors should not be paid less than employees.

The truth is that self-employed people are protected under commercial law regulations. Think of the unfair contract laws. Albanese’s Labor wants to drag us into the mess of union-controlled industrial relations law. Forget it!

And quite recently the Australian High Court reaffirmed that self-employed people operate under commercial law. The Court also stated that UK-type (little-bit-employee) laws are not part of Australian law.

Further, the International Labour Organisation, a United Nations body, declared in 2006 that national laws should not interfere in the commercial relationships of independent contractors.

The Albanese plan defies international labour rulings and secure (High Court-determined) contract law. It is a repeat of the disastrous Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal introduced by the 2012 Gillard Labor government. This ‘protection’ invention was about to destroy the businesses of 50,000 self-employed truckies before the Turnbull government abolished the Tribunal.

The obsession Labor has with the ‘evil’ gig economy is silly. Only 0.19 per cent of the Australian workforce earned their full-time income through gig work. But Labor is using a near-hysterical, anti-gig campaign as an excuse to attack self-employed people.

It’s clear that if Labor wins government, we (self-employed people) will have a big fight on our hands to retain our right to be self-employed. It’s about our right to decide how we want to earn our living and to control our working lives. Labor wants to attack that right.

Small business hugs Karl Marx? That’s a turnaround!

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karl-marxIn the nineteenth century, the father of communism, Karl Marx, ‘created’ class ideology where ‘evil’ capitalists always exploited the working class (who were little more than wage slaves). The worker–bosses war has been fought ever since. Workers have been allowed to strike and bargain collectively through unions to secure their rights against the exploitative bosses.

However self-employed, small business people upset this simple idea because we are both the worker and boss in one. How is it that we can ‘exploit’ ourselves? This has resulted in confused law. It’s confused unions who try hard to force self-employed people to be employees so we can be ‘exploited’ and join the union class. It’s pretty silly really.

But the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) has come to the rescue. The ACCC regulates the economy, checking that big businesses doesn’t use their dominant power to exploit consumers. But now the ACCC has taken another step to stop big businesses using their dominant power against self-employed, small business people. The ACCC is making it really easy for small businesses to bargain collectively with big businesses.

Small business collective bargaining has been available for a few years, but you needed significant legal knowledge to do it correctly. And you had to receive ACCC approval. Now it’s very simple. It:

Only requires a one-page form. No lodgement fee.

Authorisation is then automatic.

Your business turnover must be less than $10m a year.

The ACCC link is here.

What does this mean in practice? Here are some simple examples:

If you are (say) an IT contractor supplying services to (say) a government department that applies a standard pay rate across all similar services, a group of IT contractors could get together to negotiate a different rate.

If you are a retailer and want to bulk buy a product from a supplier, you could get together with other small retailers to negotiate a better price if you buy collectively.

If you are putting in a tender to supply (say) HR services to a large company, you could get together with other HR independent contractors to put in a collective tender.

This collective bargaining process offers opportunities to at least partially match the bargaining power of big business and government by self-employed, small business people. It creates real, additional opportunities for small business.

Combine this with the new pay-on-time laws and the planned ‘beefing up’ of the unfair contract laws and Australian small business people are really starting to receive a fair go in the Australian economy. These are big, important reforms.

The only problem is that unions and others who passionately believe in Karl Marx’s workers–bosses war might feel a bit annoyed. If class ideology is suppressed by new, fairer market regulation, how do unions and others still maintain the battle?