‘Not all budding entrepreneurs’

Nearly 90 percent of jobs created in the past three months have been in self-employed roles, prompting warnings over the spread of low-paid insecure work throughout Britain.

In the most recent three month period 104,000, or 88 percent, of the 118,000 new full-time jobs are classified as self-employment, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

In total 15.1 percent of the UK’s workforce is self-employed, with an average wage of just £13,500 a year. Despite unemployment being at its lowest point in more than a decade, many self-employed workers do not earn enough to support themselves.

Of the 4.6m self-employed workers in Britain, 1.7m earn less than the minimum wage and by 2020 that number is set to rise to 1.88m.

The TUC said the increase in self-employment was not due to a boom in aspirational entrepreneurs, but rather a symptom of an economy based on exploitative employment practises.

“While it’s good to see more people in work, the huge increase in self-employment raises questions about the nature of these jobs,” said TUC general secretary Francis O’Grady.

“These newly self-employed workers are not all budding entrepreneurs. Many don’t choose self-employment, being forced on to contracts with fewer rights, less pay and no job security.”

The move toward a so called “gig economy”, where workers are forced into piecemeal employment with little or no protections, has been brought to the fore this week.

On Wednesday drivers working for the online taxi service Uber took the company to a tribunal to argue that they are not self-employed and are entitled to workplace protections and rights.

Meanwhile an investigation by the Guardian exposed the plight of self-employed Hermes couriers, some of whom are paid less than the legal minimum wage. Hermes’ exploitative terms and conditions also mean that all of its 10,500 delivery drivers are denied holiday and sick pay and pension contributions.

To counter the tide of self-employed work, the TUC called for public investment in infrastructure and house building to create secure full-time jobs and apprenticeships that pay proper wages.

“We need more decent jobs,” O’Grady said.  “Not working conditions like those exposed at Hermes, where workers were pushed on to self-employed contracts with fewer rights.”

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner called on the government to strengthen legislation to prevent employers from forcing workers into self-employment.

“In recent years we have seen an acceleration in the race to the bottom on our pay and working conditions, with companies finding increasingly creative ways of taking advantage of loopholes in our employment rights,” Turner said.

“We should be closing those loopholes, strengthening trade union and employment rights positively and, through an investment-not-cuts economic policy, creating and growing decent jobs in this country.”