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Self-employment

Unfair contracts ‘beef up’ – Big tick for Albanese

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albanese-tickIn our comment earlier this week we heavily criticised the Albanese government for its plans to attack Australia’s 2.1 million people under the con of ‘gig protection’. We will continue to mount that criticism.

But today a huge tick for Prime Minister Albanese and his government. The government is moving with great speed to ‘beef up’ the unfair contract laws. This will give real protections to self-employed, small business people from bullying, unethical big businesses. It’s a game-changer for the economy in ways which few people, we think, would understand.

A brief background:

To the credit of the Labor Party, it has supported the creation of these laws since the beginning. In fact, in 2016 the laws would have been useless if not for the hard Senate negotiations conducted by Labor. Now the ALP is moving quickly to beef up the laws. We explained this in August this year.

Our summary of the new laws is here.
The Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill is here (with our highlights).

The key thing with the new laws is that there are big fines for breaching them. $2.5m for an individual and $50m for a corporation.

But back to basics. What do the laws actually prohibit? The laws make it clear that a contract is ‘unfair’ if it gives one party, but not the other, the ability to:

a)  Avoid or limit the performance of the contract.
b)  Terminate the contract.
c)   Apply penalties against the other party for a breach/termination of the contract.
d)   Vary the terms of the contract.
e)   Renew or not renew the contract.
f)    Vary the contract price where the other party cannot terminate the contract.
g)   Unilaterally vary the characteristics of the goods or services under the contract.
h)   Unilaterally determine if the contract has been breached or to interpret its meaning.
i)    Limit one party’s vicarious liability for its agents.
j)    Permit one party to assign the contract without their consent.
k)   Limit one party’s right to sue the other party.
l)    Limit the evidence one party can use in legal proceedings.

That is, the law balances the contractual power between big and small businesses. This is real, serious protection for self-employed and small business people. Now with real teeth, big business will be forced to comply.

To gig or not to gig. Is that the question?

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pub-gigIf you’ve ever been to a pub gig, you’ll have taken part in what the Albanese government wants to (effectively) close down. The Albanese agenda is starkly clear after Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke declared the ‘gig economy’ is a ‘cancer’.

Here’s a simple example of why we strongly oppose the Albanese/Burke agenda.

The gig economy is not something new. The Stones, Cold Chisel, AC/DC all did and/or do ‘gigs’. Gig is the contractual lifeblood of the entertainment industry locally and globally.

A gig is pretty simple. There’s a contract for a set price to do something. “Come to my pub. Play for three hours and I’ll pay you a thousand bucks”, says the pub manager. “Done”, says the singer. The singing done and the money paid. End of contract.

Somehow, for the Albanese government this is a ‘cancer’.

However, this familiar entertainment industry ‘gig’ model has taken new forms. Now gig work is available for ride-share, food delivery, aged and disability care, and odd jobs. The list goes on. And, yes, the entertainment industry has gig platforms. Gigsmash is but one.

What’s happened is that online technology has made gig work secure. Gig platforms enable anyone wanting to do a job to connect with someone needing a job done. The revolution is that job specifics and price are upfront and agreed by the parties. The gig platforms also make the payments and enable both the ‘doer’ and the ‘receiver’ of the service to rate each other.

It’s fantastic. The risk of not being paid is massively reduced. Think of how many times a pub manager has failed to pay the full amount agreed, screwing over the worker (singer)? It’s the security of payment and security and clarity of the gig work agreement that’s made this expansion of gig work so seemingly popular. And it’s all happened without government sticking its nose in!

But Minister Burke has promised to create laws that will require gig workers to have holiday pay as one eample.

So the pub manager will have to pay holiday pay on top of the $1,000 agreed. How is this to be calculated? Holiday pay is for full-time employees who’ve worked a full year. How is this to be calculated for 3 hours work and no more? Ouch! That has heads scratching! But let’s say it’s $10. It’s clear what will happen. The pub manager will only agree to $990 for the gig. $10 will have to be held back.

But when does the gig singer get the $10? Does the singer determine when it’s ‘holiday’ time or does the pub manager decide? Sounds like a recipe for scamming! So will Albanese/Burke then set up a massive new government-run department to manage gig workers’ holiday pay? Will the singer need to apply to the government for the $10?

But there’s more. Around 830,000 Australians do gig platform work in any year. But only 22,000 use gig for their full-time work. In other words, around 810,000 Australians (about 7 per cent of the workforce) only use gig work as part-time top-up work. How is gig holiday pay to be calculated for all these part-timers?

Whatever Albanese/Burke do, it’s destined to be a mess. The proposal/promise is illogical. It doesn’t fit the reality of how people work. It’s dumb. Its dangerous. It will do much harm.

We will keep arguing against this.

New UK PM sets benchmark for self-employed (tax) rights

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truss-albaneseWe’ve been campaigning for more than a decade for major reform to how the ATO treats self-employed small business people. And since 2000 we’ve studied how the UK tax authority (HMRC) treats the UK’s self-employed. Both the ATO and HMRC seem to have been trained at the same bureaucrats’ ‘bully school’. Both defile the ideas and practices of justice and fairness.

But late last week, the new Truss government took a giant leap by repealing tax administration laws that HMRC has been using to bludgeon the UK’s self-employed. The Albanese government should take note.

What drove the UK repeal was a realisation that the UK laws were doing major harm to the UK’s economy. But more, the issue was cancerous for the Conservative Party’s political future.

The UK issue goes back to 2000. The UK tax authority, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), views all self-employed people as tax dodgers. In 2000, laws were introduced (called ‘IR35’) which enabled HMRC to declare self-employed people to be employees. The trouble is that, invariably, when the courts looked at HMRC’s declarations, HMRC lost. But they kept destroying small businesses.

In 2017 HMRC shifted tactics. Instead of directly attacking self-employed people, additional new rules, called ‘Off Payroll’, required the engaging business to be responsible for deciding if a person was self-employed or an employee.

In 2021 HMRC applied the new Off Payroll rules to the private sector. This is where disaster struck (again). Third-party operators had evolved since 2017 who claimed that they could manage the Off Payroll rules. The public sector, followed by the private sector, forced self-employed contractors to work through these third-party operators. But far too many of these operators ran their own tax-dodging schemes, stole from contractors, and operated outside the UK to avoid UK laws.

In August 2022 the London School of Economics reported that UK self-employed numbers were down by 500,000, and dropping. It said, “The economy is not going to recover until we start treating them (self-employed people) better.”

This message about economic reality was delivered shortly after Boris Johnson had resigned as PM, but it was already resonating throughout the UK. Rishi Sunak was Johnson’s Chancellor. He introduced Off Payroll to the private sector in 2021. When Sunak made his pitch to become Conservative Party leader he was hammered on social media for his trashing of the self-employed. Liz Truss promised to do something about IR35. Truss won the leadership.

What has caught everyone by surprise is that the new Chancellor’s announcement last week is a complete destruction of Off Payroll. This is a massive embarrassment for HMRC but shows the extent to which the Truss government is seeking a total reset. Dumping Off Payroll is a headline part of a substantial package of UK business encouragement reforms aimed primarily at easing regulatory complexity.

What has all this to do with Australia? Business regulation complexity and bureaucratic stupidity grinds down economic growth. The UK’s HMRC has been doing huge harm to the base of the UK economy, self-employed people.  The ATO is doing the same in Australia. At some point we need a government that will seek a fix.

It’s about collecting tax within a framework of legislated fairness and justice. Here’s our model for a solution. (YouTube)

In London on joint international self-employed defence campaign

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London-QueenI’ve been in London over the last week-and-a-bit. We (SEA) have a long association with several UK self-employed associations and have been working with them on common issues to defend self-employed people. Hence the London presence.

The two big issues are:

  • The UK tax authority’s (HMRC’s) unfair treatment of self-employed people. (Sound familiar to the ATO??)
  • Identifying whether an individual is an employee or self-employed and what ‘rights’ each has.

Reforming tax administration

After many months of planning we were lined up for meetings/presentations with UK MPs in Westminster. These meetings were to discuss how HMRC could be reformed along the lines that we’re campaigning on for reform of the ATO. That is, using the USA laws covering the IRS as a template. However, the passing of the Queen and her funeral have meant that all these meetings were cancelled. Once the Royal transition is complete and the UK Parliament starts operating again, we’ll be working with our partners to re-initiate the campaign.

Our aim is to see if we can get a common movement in UK and Australia for reform of the HMRC and ATO. The treatment of self-employed people by both administrations is terrible, and their intimidatory behaviours share similar features. With a joint campaign effort we may increase our chances of achieving fairness for self-employed people.

Self-employed status and ‘rights’

We did, however, go ahead with a planned workshop session on self-employed status and ‘rights’. Included in this workshop were like-minded friends from the USA. This issue is ‘hot’ in the UK and USA (think California outlawing self-employment). Even though the media were present, we’ve recorded the workshop and presentation and will also release this once the Royal transition is complete. This issue has great importance for the UK, the USA and Australia. In Australia the Albanese government is committed to ‘smashing’ the self-employed. And the Albanese government, we predict, is likely to replicate very confusing UK ‘little bit pregnant’ laws to achieve its aims.

We’ll have a lot more to say about this and to explain the issues over the coming weeks/months. But at this stage we’re putting together a UK/USA/Oz ‘team’ to focus on the common themes to defend the right of people to be self-employed. We’ve gotta be organised!

More soon.

Apparently we’re a ‘cancer’ according to the Albanese government

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cancer-aged-care-gigWorkplace Relations Minister Tony Burke recently called gig work a ‘cancer’. Give us a break! What a ridiculous overstatement.

Let’s get real. Only 0.19 per cent of workers earn their full-time income through gig platforms. Yes, 0.19 per cent! That’s it. But, on the back of this cancerous depiction of gig work, the Albanese government intends to clamp down on it.

People who do gig work are, by definition, self-employed. Attacking gig means attacking self-employed people. Burke’s comment is insulting to self-employed people.

But if we’re going to apply such politically emotive language to policy analysis, where’s the real ‘cancer’?

Take the aged care sector. This is one sector Minister Burke identified as having a (cancer) problem.

The 2020–21 Royal Commission into Aged Care exposed abusive treatment of people in aged care. It was and is a massive scandal. The Royal Commission recommended that self-employed people and gig work be banned from aged care.

However, the Royal Commission offered no evidence as to why self-employment/gig should be outlawed. Was it because self-employed people abused elderly people? The Commission was silent. The fact is, however, that 96 per cent of people working in aged care are direct employees of aged care providers. Surely this overwhelming percentage would suggest that the problem lies in employment, not with self-employment/gig.

Facts speak louder than assumptions.

Care workers in aged care are on rock-bottom low wages. This leads to high worker turnover and lower quality care. Low pay rates occur because the award minimum pay rates, in practice, are the maximum being paid.

But the evidence is that the 4 per cent of workers in aged care who are self-employed are routinely paid more than employees. This evidence, which is accepted as valid, comes from Mable the largest gig platform operating in aged care. The higher rates occur because the self-employed workers are free to negotiate their remuneration directly with the people they care for. This doesn’t happen with employees.

The Commonwealth funds aged care. But there’s evidence to suggest much of that money disappears into a black hole. Look at these facts.

Funding for the top level in-home care is around $114 per hour. Aged care ‘providers’ are overwhelmingly not-for-profit charities and manage the money. They pay their ‘employed’ award workers roughly $32 an hour (casual). Add workers’ compensation premiums and so on and the cost is $35 an hour. The providers routinely charge another 32 per cent ($36 an hour) for their services of assessing and monitoring need, and organising workers.

There’s a gap, therefore, of $43 an hour of unexplained and unaccounted Commonwealth funding. What’s going on?

This month, media leaks from a yet-to-be-released Health Department report state that 9-in-10 in-home care providers don’t meet minimum government price transparency requirements. Some 275,000 older Australians receiving government-funded home care can lose up to 60 per cent of their allocated money in provider fees.

This ‘disappearing’ money is being spent on “excluded items” such as holidays, TVs, renovations and more. Maybe a good portion of this expenditure is justified? But is this where $43 an hour goes?

What is obvious is that the front-line employees doing the care are paid rubbish. Surely within existing funding budgets there is ample room to pay workers more. There’s a lot of fat in the system. Self-employed gig workers individually can and do negotiate higher remuneration. This doesn’t happen with employees.

What really emerges is that it’s the employed 96 per cent of workers in aged care who are being exploited by the ‘employment’ system.

The ‘cancer’ in aged care looks much more like the result of employment management systems than the outcome of gig platforms. In fact, gig-organised self-employment could well be the answer to a sick aged care system.

The Albanese government should take off its ‘cancer’ blinkers. Gig and self-employment offer real solutions, not problems.

Unions and labour lawyers in panic. High Court disaster!

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contract-kingA major High Court decision in February this year has sent unions and labour lawyers into a panic. The High Court declared that when deciding whether a worker is an employee or self-employed that the written contract is king!

We’ve waited until we received detailed legal analysis of the decision before making comment, which we can now do. We’ll send out several news alerts on this. It’s extremely important.

In simple layperson’s terms the High Court has said that:

  • If a written contract is clear and comprehensive, a court must primarily rely on the written contract in coming to a decision.

This seemingly knocks out what’s been used for the last 40 years or more. Courts have applied the ‘multifactorial’ test, which is a basket of behavioural indicators only one of which is the written contract. The High Court has said that the lower courts have misunderstood the situation and that the High Court has always had the view that the written contract is supreme.

This has sent unions and labour lawyers into a spin. The multifactorial test has been great for lawyers and unions because they could retrospectively examine a case going back years. It is a great source of income for lawyers and has allowed unions to intimidate businesses and self-employed people.

But the High Court has said that it has a duty to create certainty, stating that the multifactorial test:

“… is apt to generate considerable uncertainty, both for parties and for the courts.”

And

“It is the task of the courts to promote certainty with respect to a relationship of such fundamental importance.”

We see this as extremely important. There are 2.1 million self-employed people in Australia. We have a right to clarity and certainty. The High Court has done the right thing by society in its drive for clarity.

But there are others who want uncertainty. This is bad. And the pressure is already coming on the Albanese government to pass legislation to create uncertainty. We will campaign strongly against this.

But first we want to ensure that there is clarity about what the 99-page High Court judgement says.

We’ve prepared the following links for SEA members:

We’ll have more information and comments soon.

Paying small business on time. Albo: Please keep the good bits of the ABCC!

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paying-on-timeThe most important, practical issue facing all small business people is getting paid on time. But when working for a large business, far too many of us self-employed ‘mugs’ discover that we’re being used as a cheap source of finance for our ‘clients’ through delayed payments.

Payment reporting

The Morrison government set up a ‘big business–pay small business on time’ reporting system. The Small Business Ombudsman’s latest analysis of payment times shows that ‘more than half of big businesses are missing their own deadlines for paying their small business suppliers’. This is damning of Australian big business. It’s a rort that’s being going on for decades.

Construction sector ‘pay on time’

But there is one brighter spot. In the construction sector, subbies are routinely screwed over by big builders paying invoices really late. However, the construction regulator, the ABCC, runs a system requiring builders to pay subbies on time. It’s very effective.

This is because the ABCC’s power enables a significant ‘closing of the stable door before the horse bolts’. The key is that the ABCC’s powers rely on commercial triggers, rather than complex legal or administrative processes.

That is, construction contractors risk losing access to Commonwealth government-funded contracts if they fail to pay their subcontractors on time. It works really well. The outcome is that big builders don’t dare pay subbies late. The commercial risk is too high.

However, the construction unions hate the ABCC because the ABCC takes militant unions to court for breaking the law. Now the Albanese government is to close the ABCC to keep the unions happy. Okay. Fair enough. We all understand the political play.

Please keep the good bits, Albo!

We’re asking the Albanese government to ‘please keep the good bits of the ABCC’. In other words, keep the processes in construction that ensure that small business subbies are paid on time. It’s really important.

Numerous attempts by governments to find regulatory fixes for late payments in the construction sector have a poor record. The ABCC’s model, on the other hand, has worked.

  • When payments are within agreed/required terms, better cash flow management operates throughout the sector.
  • Better financial discipline operates through the sector when builders do not/can not exploit subcontractors as forced financiers of their businesses.
  • When payment times are tight and major builders go broke, the loss exposure of subcontractors should be/is limited to the agreed/required terms of trade. That is, loss exposure should be limited to (say) 30 days of trading instead of (say) 90–120 days of trading.

Our interest is of course the construction subbies—that is, the self-employed people who actually work on the tools, physically doing the building—and the myriad of self-employed specialist construction consultants as well. But frankly, proper payment times are good for everyone.

Great news! Albanese ‘beefing up’ unfair contract laws

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albanese-unfair-contractGet ready for a profound disruption to some core big business operations in Australia. And this is great for small business people, consumers and (believe it or not) big business as well.

The Albanese government has committed to introducing new unfair contract legislation in the current parliamentary sitting period. Labor promised this in 2019—a pledge we totally endorsed. We again strongly endorse this move by Labor.

We campaigned for seven years for the unfair contract laws for small business and achieved these in 2016. But the laws have proven to be too weak.

Australia’s unfair contract laws are arguably the world’s first (and in global terms possibly the only) laws that have addressed the issue of bad standard form contracts in a holistic way. The laws were introduced for consumers in 2010 and extended to small businesses in 2016. Insurance products were included in 2021.

Why the laws

Some lawyers say unfair contract laws are wrong because they override the principle that a contract once entered into is set in concrete, even if it disadvantages one party. This is a perverted view of contract. The Australian unfair contract laws effectively codify in statute the elements under common law that make a commercial contract a proper contract.

As examples, unfair contract laws hold that if a standard form contract enables one party but not the other to unilaterally change the price of a contract, or cancel a contract or change its terms, then the contract is ‘unfair’.

Why the need to ‘beef up’

The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission has been responsible for enforcing the unfair contract laws. Since 2016, the ACCC, with then chair Rod Sims at the helm, has consistently expressed frustration at big business ignoring the laws.

Until now, unfair contract terms could only be ‘voided’. There were no penalties for their use. Unfair contracts could only be sanctioned after they had done harm. This enabled ‘let’s screw people over’ big businesses to laugh off the laws.

To his credit, Rod Sims led the charge for a ‘beefing up’ of the laws. A ‘beefed up’ Bill was presented to Parliament earlier this year. It is this Bill that the Albanese government has as a template for making unfair contracts ‘illegal’.

If Albanese implements the template Bill, unfair contracts will be illegal with civil penalties of up to $100,000 for individuals and $10 million for corporations. A court will be able to make an order if it thinks there might be a loss. In other words, harm can be prevented before it occurs. Other provisions give real bite to enforcement.

Further, the current $300,000 threshold for the size of a contract subject to the laws is being removed. The size of a small business is being lifted from 20 to 100 employees.

On any assessment this is a major economic reform. It will protect consumers. But just as importantly, small businesses will discover a new level of equality of power with big businesses as both buyers and sellers of goods and services. Australia’s 1.3 million self-employed sole traders will have protections from bullying clients that they have never had before.

It’s a huge step forward.

 

‘They’ plan to screw over 2.1 million Australians

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dark-menaceLet’s be clear. There’s a cabal of unions, labour academics and self-interested businesses that are gunning to destroy the right of Australians to be self-employed.

Their strategy is brilliant in its simplicity. They plan to push through new Federal legislation that will throw into chaos the law that defines who is self-employed and who is an employee. This will directly harm the capacity of Australia’s 2.1 million people who are self-employed—people who, by definition, are their own boss.

That’s right. The Australian Bureau of Statistics identifies 2.1 million of us comprising:

  • 1,391,900 self-employed (own boss) who don’t have employees and
  • 805,800 self-employed (own boss) who have employees.

The ‘cabal’ is mostly targeting the 1,391,900 self-employed who don’t have employees. Think hairdressers, owner-drivers, care workers, gardeners, personal trainers, and the massive numbers of IT, accounting (and more) consultants to identify just some. What the ‘cabal’ is calling for is legislation that will strip away your right to be your own boss. They want forced employment.  Such law will also have an impact on the other 805,800 self-employed.

The cabal wants legislation that invents ‘employee-like’ arrangements.

Understand what this would do. It would destroy the integrity of the commercial contract. It would give smart-arse lawyers the ability to carve out and deconstruct the very legal basis of commercial activity upon which our society is based and which defines who is self-employed. It’s a sneak guerrilla attack. But once in place it will have devastating effects.

Legislating to invent employee-like arrangements is to take social or psychological concepts and to fashion law on those concepts. It’s incredibly dangerous for our society. It’s something the High Court seemingly commented against in a ground-breaking judgment in February this year.

The High Court said (See par 44):

The employment relationship with which the common law is concerned must be a legal relationship. It is not a social or psychological concept like friendship.

That is, the employment contract, and its opposite, the self-employed contract are legal concepts. This comment by the High Court was within the context of the most important judgement on the definition of self-employment in 50+ years.

After more than 50 years of legal confusion the High Court said (See par 58):

It is the task of the courts to promote certainty with respect to a relationship [employee/self-employed] of such fundamental importance.…

and

The parties’ legitimate freedom to agree upon the rights and duties which constitute their relationship should not be misunderstood.

The fact is that people have a right to determine their contractual (self-employment) relationship themselves. Employee-like legislation would strip away that right. It would create massive uncertainty in defiance of the certainty the High Court says should exist.

Unfortunately, Labor’s federal ‘Secure Jobs Plan is to create ‘employee-like forms of work’ legislation.

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.