Notice Period

[ratewhore]

QED. Why would you do that? It would be an employment contract and IR35 caught.

Sorry, you have just demonstrated why the analogy holds: I take on contractors to do defined pieces of work and I take on contracts for defined pieces of work. Both may be time limited in some way, usually to simplify the client's budget management. The failure to appreciate the difference between that and a six month turn-up-and-do-what -you're-told-and-please-can-I-have-employee-like-protection is the difference between in and out of IR35. Or, if you prefer, the difference between a freelance and a pseudo-permie.

We're actually in agreement Mal in terms of the difference between contractor and pseudo-permie. I was making a general observation on the plumber analogy. For a lot of contractors, I would suggest the six month turn-up-and-do-what-you're-told contract is what they get.

[Turion]

Employees have Notice Periods and cannot be termitated without due process. Contractors don't, and can be terminated immediately if the client so desires. Does that demonstrate the effect on IR35 status clearly enough?

Two points to make here:

1) You say that to be clear of IR35 a contractor cannot have or do anything that a permie does. Ok, as an example, does that mean when you are on a client site you do do use the staff toilets? After all, the employees use them so if you use them it surely must breach IR35. What do you do - take your own bucket?

2) You compare IT contractors to plumbers et al. As already stated, this is an incorrect analogy. A plumber may do a weeks work with one customer and then move on. A contractor typically works much longer continuously at a single site. That is a big difference and needs a termination clause to facilitate a legally defined method of ending a the supply of service. Who knows what can happen during a 6 month gig.

[tim123]

We're actually in agreement Mal in terms of the difference between contractor and pseudo-permie. I was making a general observation on the plumber analogy. For a lot of contractors, I would suggest the six month turn-up-and-do-what-you're-told contract is what they get.

I agree.

I would just love to be intervied, and be offered a subsequent contract, to perform an agreed "project task", even in the most general of terms.

I have never ever in 25 years had an offer like that. It is always "come and join the team and you will be allocated whatever project responsibility is most in need on the day that you arrive".

With some clients, it is even hard to extract from them whether this task is most likely to be "design", "code" or "test". And it is not unknown to be told that it will "definately be "design" and when you get there it is "test". On one occasion I arrived to be allocated to a completely different project to the one I was interviewed for.

If you aren't prepared to accept such "offers", then they will find someone who will, and the only protection that I have from being 'conned' into taking on a job that I never would have agreed to if asked, is to have a notice period.

And as I have said before, I work predominately for a small number of very large multinations who employ lots of contractors, so I KNOW that there are tens of thousands who accept contracts on these terms. So I have a BIG problem with people posting advice about not agreeing to such contracts with implications that you have a choice, and it is your own fault for doing so.

tim

[malvolio]

I have never ever in 25 years had an offer like that. It is always "come and join the team and you will be allocated whatever project responsibility is most in need on the day that you arrive".

Which might explain our differing perspectives then. My last 10 contracts over 12 years have been task-related, varying from "Deliver a working Heldpesk" to "Develop and manage a strategic plan to move 2000 servers to a new datacentre".