Self Employed Or Employee

[Mazdaman1]

My son worked for a shop fitting company as self employed. He was told he would be paid £75 a day. The day would be on average 10 hours sometimes more sometimes less but he was told it would average out over a week. In the first four days he worked 61 hours and drove 1300 miles delivering shelving to various shops in Scotland. His longest working day was 19 hours when he started driving at 6.30 in the morning and finished loading the works van for the following days work at 1.30am the following morning. He was driving a big transit van belonging to the company and sleeping on a sofa in the accommodation they provided for him. He was constantly getting texts from the company chasing him on how many units he had delivered and put up.
Is this true self employment? Had he known how long a day would be or how far he would have to drive he would never have agreed to do it.
Should he have been driving for that many hours?

[bednobs]

does he have to pay hisown tax?

[Buenchico]

See "Working out employment status for an employee" here:
https://www.gov.uk/employment-status/employee

[Peter Pedant]

and dont forget the case law
I am surprised so far no one has volunteered that there was an important Supreme Ct decision on this

https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2017-0053-judgment.pdf

which is short for the successors of the House of Lords
and at para 25 forwards it seems pretty obvious that he is ....
an employee
has to do it himself
cant delegate and cant pick and choose

the problem is getting them to recognise it

You need a union to fight this sort of thing

[New Judge]

Yes I recall Mr Mullins being most upset at the Supreme Court's ruling against him. His firm's practices constituted the most blatant examples of self-employment abuse imaginable. I seem to recall him threatening to wind up his company and set up abroad (he was already "disappointed" with the result of the Eu referendum). He said he could not afford the increased costs that employing people properly would bring. As far as I know he's still here.

[Maydup]

Even at 10 hours per day £75 represents less than the minimum wage which is currently £7.83 per hour. If the work was on a self empluyed basis then he should be able to send an invoice for the work done. For four long days, he should invoice the company for £1,000, see what happens then.

If I were him I would go to an agency and get some delivery work under better terms. There's plenty of it.

[Guilbert53]

Sounds as though he is being totally taken advantage of.

Tell him to get another job.

[fiction-factory]

If he is self employed he should decide whether the terms are acceptable. If they are not he should try to negotiate better terms or walk away.
Yes, this is a grey area and some firms knowingly use self employment contracts when they know their staff should actually be employees.
How is he paid- cash? via payroll? Does he invoice them?