I was on a site today and the manager was covering for holidays for two weeks and was sent by an agency, he was telling me how he had been ripped off by these agencies (I am sure it must be illegal).

He saw an advert for site managers for £18 p/hr and it stated on the books or self employed, when he rang up he said he wanted to be on the books and was told that they would pay £15 p/hr only if he was on the books. He agreed to this and signed up. He was told by the agency that he would be working for an 'umbrella' company, who would be paying him directly and the agency took only a fee, which would be deducted from his £15 p/hr, leaving him with about £13.50 p/hr.

When he got his first payslip he noticed a his tax and NI had been taken off and an additional £200 +, when he asked what it was for they said it was to cover what they had to pay in 'employers NI contributions' as they said they were not willing to cover this, the amount deducted also included an 'admin fee' for this deduction.

By the time he had his nett pay, he worked it out to be about £8 p/hr.

When he looked into this further, he found out that the umbrella company was a subsidiary of the employment agency. He asked the builder if he could work direct for them instead and they said the 'didn't want the hassle'

I hope to hell these Tory's don't get another shot at the next election, because with things like this and zero hour contracts being brought in during a coalition, imagine what it's going to be like with a right wing Tory majority.

Did you ask if he was in a union?

It was what started the conversation, I got to site after listening to Milibands gut churning display of panic today in his press conference. Labour politicians seem to think it's their party and forget what it's routes are. We need a few more Pat Walls and Dave Nellists in there, but honesty and integrity seem to be frowned upon by Miliband, Balls and co.

Too reliant on chauffeurs I guess.

If he was in a union, I'm sure they'd be only too pleased to look over the terms and alert HMRC if they think anything untoward is occurring. Mind you, I could understand anyone's reluctance in the construction industry, given what happened with the blacklist. Why the likes of McAlpine, Wimpey and others aren't doing time like the Shrewsbury 24 did is beyond me

This could be a too obvious question, but why doesn't he take the self employed £18 an hour option - he'd certainly be left with more than £8 and the accounting work involved for a labour-only contractor is minimal.

No sick pay, no holiday pay, dealing with tax yourself etc.

Yours, self-employed person

I know, I've been there myself, for twenty-odd years, I'm now employed but still treat my employment as if I were self employed, I have only taken one sick day in god knows how many years and that was when I was hospitalised, and I won't be taking all of my allowed holidays this year AGAIN because I'm used to not taking holidays and frankly can't be d - I'm lucky in that I'm an independant unit within the company, work from home, am very self-reliant, clear the mess up after everyone and keep the customers happy.

As for the tax, as a stand-alone self employed person its not that hard really is it, you should try being a Limited Company and employ staff - now that is a pain in the bollax and I won't be going back there again.

Talking of Tory Britain, rlhow the Conservative Party gets multi-million pound donations from 'single' sources, yet stops it being very obvious.rl

Thankfully there is rlSearch the Moneyrl. they have been conducting a twitter campaign, bombarding CCHQ Press Office and individual MPs with requests for more information. Needless to say, many have now blocked them

Back to the OP.

Not an uncommon arrangement in construction these days unfortunately. We get clients coming in for tax returns completing who worked through umbrella companies and have since gone back to working directly through agencies.

They can't make deductions from his salary and call it "employer's NIC", so they'll charge an admin fee instead which covers their E/ers NIC liabilities. They will be recharging the agency for his wages no doubt, so effectively the umbrella company is employing him at zero cost to them. The agency gets him working at a fraction of the hourly rate they would otherwise have had to pay him as a self-employed person.

Frankly, he's going to be better off taking the £18p/h self employed option and having 20% knocked off under CIS, then getting a nice, reasonably priced accountant to do his tax return. I can recommend somewhere that does them for £150+ VAT

So in other words, we're seeing a casualisation of labour – this sort of thing, zero-hours contracts (isn't that a contradiction in terms?) etc.

Brilliant. Clearly the way forward.

But not flexible enough for Cameron, don't forget that the EU is absolutely strangling British businesses with red tape around employment, oh yes.
What we need is more poverty and underemployment, so that the masses will fight each other for the chance of a job.

I lobbed a grenade onto the Hull FC board with rlThis threadrl

No matter how loyally I may support the club, I cannot accept any company not paying staff in the name of providing experience through an "internship"

Yep. Agencies are advertising jobs and guaranteeing weeks or months worth of work whilst there's either only a few days work or none at all simply to get people on their books. When there is work they call on the day and get them to go anywhere within around 100 miles. Causing people to get their hopes up and in some cases turn down other work for no reason. Not to mention the impracticalities for many people of not knowing whether you'll be working tomorrow or not or where it's going to be.