Right of Substitution not mirrored!

[babason]

Ah, the old nuclear option. It won't work, taxation and employment are judged on different bases: being put inside IR35 does not make you an employee. Plus it would do serious damage to the contractor market, since agencies would simply put you on PAYE terms with themselves.

Ahh...fair enough.

And can't you spot the inconsistency? You're negotiating business terms with someone who is quite happy to give you a contract that says anything at all since he doesn't care that it doesn't align to the upper one.

We haven't concluded negotiations yet. I raised it here as I wanted to check I wasn't being an awkward sod about it. As part of the negotiotion I will be insisting on a mirror clause. I agree, without it my contract would be worthless.

And the intransigence is because the agencies run the market, not us nor the clients, and they want to sell themselves as providers of staff, not as brokers of valuable skills. Why do you think you get three month contracts as opposed to "build me a website to do this"?

Because clients don't always know (or want to specify) what they want in detail.

Wake up and smell the coffee, please.

I suppose I'm not to supposed to see that as provocative either.....

[malvolio]

Because clients don't always know (or want to specify) what they want in detail......

So why are they invariably sold contracts in units of time? Ah, I know, it's to help budget planning. But how do you set a budget if you don't know what you want?

So why not simply buy services until no longer required or until a better supplier turns up - it's how I buy my newspapers and my LPG after all. Sadly, that's not what the agencies are selling, is it? Consider how much simpler your negotiations would be if everyone had agreed up front there was no element of service, it's for the supply of services.

The problem is that 90% of contractors still think like permies in terms of continuity of work and time-based deliverables. No wonder we can't re-educate the clients.

I suppose I'm not to supposed to see that as provocative either.....

You're haven't really worked out how Malvolio works yet, have you...

[tim123]

I am doing something about it. We are negotiating...

To be honest beating up on agents strikes me as pointless. All that would happen is that agencies would remove their dodgy RoS clauses. Where's the benefit to small suppliers?

The real issue is why are clients (or primarily client HR departments) getting away with such intransigence.

Because they are the ones paying the bill. If you don't like the terms on which they are prepared to offer the work, and those terms are not creating a shortage of applicants, they will offer the work to someone else.

IMHO the problem here is the agents. If the client has good business reasons for not offering a workable RoS, then however hard you push he wont offer a RoS (and be honest, if you were the manager of a development department, would you). If this is the case, the agents should be up front and say so. Then everybody would stop thinking it was as simple as a contractual clause (because it isn't).

The PCG should campaign for IR35 to lead to full employment rights. Watch those RoS clauses appear overnight!!!

No you wouldn't. You be far more likely to see companies refuse to employ Ltd Company freelances and insist that everybody was Agency-PAYE. Yours is not the only solution to the problem.

tim