Tag: CBI

Private profit vs employees’ rights

When I moved to London to seek my fame and fortune I worked as a temp, making tea for the Head of HR at Channel 4.    I’d graduated to picking up dry-cleaning for the Head of Comms before  I landed a job in the press office.  I loved every minute of it – just as well as I “temped” there for almost a year.  Since then I’ve been a self-employed consultant and an interim manager  in a range of organisations, so I’ve spent almost half of my working life without benefit of holiday pay, sick pay or employers’ pension contributions.  This has been my choice and I’m not looking for sympathy, but it does mean that I know a bit about what it’s like at the sharp end of what is usually referred to as Britain’s flexible labour market.

New regulations to drown temp industry?

New regulations coming in this October will give temps and agency workers greater employment protection after they’ve been working for a company for 12 weeks.  Or, as the Telegraph put it: New regulations will drown temp industry.

Warning that unemployment will rise as companies off-load temps they can’t afford, the Telegraph warns that fewer jobs will now be created.

“No regulations and no left-wing shit”

I’d expect the Telegraph to back the bosses, so the opposition didn’t surprise me.  I’d argue that if you’re temping for a company for three months you’re doing a job not providing holiday cover, so you ought to have the same rights as your permanently employed colleague at the next desk.  One of the comments underneath the story is a bit of an eye-opener though:

It’s better to have a chat with agency staff, cut out the middleman and give everyone a better cash deal.  This is what I do.  No employment regs, no nonsense and no left-wing shit.  Any problems and the company will start up next week with a slightly different name.

Let’s pass over thoughts of how that “better cash deal” might be administered, and ask instead – when did offering reasonable employment protection to working people become “left-wing shit”?  Are we really saying that nothing is as important as maximizing profit?  That only bleeding heart liberals care about people’s rights?

Maybe the fact that I’m reading Chavs at the moment made the comment leap out at me.  Here’s author Owen Jones on the rise and rise of the “flexible workforce”:

We have been witnessing the slow death of the secure, full-time job,  There are up to 1.5million temporary workers in Britain.  A “temp” can be hired and fired at an hour’s notice, paid less for doing the same job and lacks rights such as paid holiday and redundancy pay.  Agency work is thriving in the service sector, but an incident at a car plant near Oxford in early 2009 illustrates where the rise of the temp has brought us.  Eight hundred and fifty temps – many of whom had worked in the factory for years – were sacked by BMW with just one hour’s notice … The workers, with no means of defending themselves from this calamity resorted to pelting managers with apples and oranges  … It’s not just agency and temporary workers who suffer because of job insecurity and outrageous terms and conditions.  Fellow workers are forced to compete with people who can be hired far more cheaply. Everyone’s wages are pushed down as a result.  This is the race to the bottom of pay and conditions.”

Agency Workers Regulations 2011

For anyone interested, here’s the TUC’s guide to agency workers’ rights   and guidance on the Agency Workers Regulations which come into force in October.  And for the record, I’m with the bleeding heart liberals on this one.

The rise and rise of the #Mumpreneur

A brief and good-natured Twitter spat between me and Marketing Donut about their “Mumpreneurs Week” made me think again about women and business. And I’m still baffled.

I am a mother.  I have a business.  Without me even having noticed, this  makes me a mumpreneur,  eligible to attend special conferences and receive my own awards.  I have no idea why.

I won’t repeat the  questions I raised in the “Is business really harder for women?” post except to say that on none of the mumpreneur supporter sites I’ve speed-read this morning have I found any advice that applies exclusively to self-employed mothers or answers a problem that’s only faced by mothers.  The advice – and it’s generally very good advice – is about time and resource management, about planning and budgeting, about choosing between working at home or finding premises, about marketing.  All of that stuff is relevant to start-up businesses whoever they’re run by.

The one issue that’s raised consistently on these sites that doesn’t featured much on the CBI‘s is, of course, childcare.  There’s an awful lot of “how heroic it is to juggle children and your own businesses” when actually the focus should be – “how heroic  working parents are to juggle childcare and working life in the absence of available, affordable childcare“.

A lot of us mumpreneurs (I’m trying to get  used to using the word – there may be a grant in it eventually) have opted out of regular working life and into self-employment precisely because it offers an easier way of managing the work/ life thing.

Personally when I was in full-time work I got tired of being tired: of running everywhere and always being late anyway; of worrying that I wasn’t  a good enough employee nor a good enough mother;  of having to negotiate flexible working hours but still not being able to attend school plays; of worrying about work when I was at home and about children when I was at work.  And I say this despite the fact that my husband has always done more than his share of childcare – not because he’s helping me out with something that’s really my responsibility, but because it’s a shared responsibility.

Being a parent and running a business is tough.  But in my experience it’s no tougher – and in some ways it’s a lot simpler – than being a parent and having a job.  Oh, and while I’m at it.  Why are there no support services for Dadpreneurs?