Reply to: Opt in or out

[malvolio]

Nope. What Denny/Malvolvio needs to do is answer the question or stfu :

Why would the regs discriminate between contractors and individuals in terms of the time at which the opt in/out should be decided ?


Boo

I've answered that once, in some detail. It depends who you work for and who the contract is between. I'm not going through it again.

And the name is Malvolio. I know you're not Denny, but nor am I.

[Boo]

For anyone to answer your question Denny you need to define:

Nope. What Denny/Malvolvio needs to do is answer the question or stfu :

Why would the regs discriminate between contractors and individuals in terms of the time at which the opt in/out should be decided ?


Boo

[SueEllen]

So I repeat the quesion :

Why would the regs discriminate between contractors and individuals in terms of the time at which the opt in/out should be decided ?

For anyone to answer your question Denny you need to define:
1. What's the difference between a contractor and an individual?
2. The difference between an temp, contractor and freelancer

[Boo]

Well if you want history lesson from someone who participated in the whole negotiation and does actually understand what they're talking about...

No, Malvolio, I do not want an irrelevant history lesson from one of the clowns who sold out the contractors to the agencies interests.

I want you to explain the answer to the question which you have been set and not to continue wriggling in your vain attempts to escape. The question you repeatedly refuse to entertain was :

Why would the regs discriminate between contractors and individuals in terms of the time at which the opt in/out should be decided ?

Your failure to provide any shard of an excuse for this belief destroys your argument that the regs can bear your interpretation.
Someone, somewhere, sometime will believe the PCG's preposterous self-serving fiction and will end up in court parroting the PCG's official line. Their fate will be to be laughed out of court. It is completely irresponsible for you to continue spouting your nonsense when you know yourself that you have no answer to the unanswerable.

...snip more fatuous guff...

Hence the opt out was negotiated. It is not a mistake, provided you have the wit to understand what it means and how it should be invoked.

The opt out boils down more or less precisely to this :

1. Independent contractors may fulfil certain of the obligations wrt checking the bona fides of their staff themselves, instead of the agency doing it.
   
2. Agencies may refuse to pay ICs if the client doesn't pay them.

No. 2 above is the most massive own goal in the history of contracting and amounts to the sell out of contractors' interests to the agencies to which I referred above. It is a continual source of embarrassment to the PCG and hence their concerted wriggling, obfuscation and deception regarding the opt out conditions.

The PCG publication is pretty much a definitive guide to the regs and was written with legal advice and in consultation with DBERR and other informed, qualified sources.

The PCG document was written by the same people who betrayed their membership and sold them out to the agencies interests. It has all the credibility and standing of the Papiermark in 1924 - it is definitively paper, but entirely devoid of value.

You have been invited about 6 times in this thread to provide any justification at all for your standpoint. You repeatedly refuse to do so, instead repeating over and over the disengenuous refrain that the BERR co-wrote the PCG advisory when it was actually written by the same fools who engendered the catastrophically awful decision to sign away their members rights.

Why do you think your opinion is worth anything when you are unable to defend it except by mis-abscribing the authorship of the document which inspired it ? If your opinion as to its truth was worth anything you would be able to say why it is true.

So I repeat the quesion :

Why would the regs discriminate between contractors and individuals in terms of the time at which the opt in/out should be decided ?

Answer me now, or your increasingly frantic and irrelevant bletherings will be shown up for the self-serving pap that they are.

Answer, I say.

Boo

[malvolio]

1. The PCG have made a preposterous "mistake" in negotiating the opt out clause form the regs.
   
2. The PCG say that the situation can be mitigated because the opt out does not apply if is is received by the agency after interview.
   
3. You say that the PCG's interpretation of the words "introduction or supply" is correct.
   
4. You produce in lieu of reasoned argument a snippet from a PCG publication.

You are an official 5-straw bumpkin, Malvolio. And the fact that you have repeatedly declined to give any possible reason that the regs should discriminate between contractors and individuals in terms of the time at which the opt in/out should be decided shows that you don't have one.



It seems to me that the person who is putting forward reasoned arguments in defence of their position should not be the one who should "shut up and go away". Much rather the person arguing by reference to "authority" in terms of failed lawyers, conversations with BERR officials which never took place and that last refuge of the charlatan : PCG official opinion.

Have a nice one,

Boo

Well if you want history lesson from someone who participated in the whole negotiation and does actually understand what they're talking about...

The regs are aimed at protecting genuine agency temps, not freelance contractors. They did not specifically exclude freelance workers and it was felt, with some justification, that a set of regs intended to ensure agency temps get proper employment protections from with their agency or the end client might well work against the best interests of genuine freelancers, who neither want nor need such protections.

It also had the potential to inhibit people who wanted to grow their businesses, mostly by virtue of the enforced limits on payment terms and handcuff clauses that would be a real problem to someone starting out and aiming to reinvest and grow.

The regs were not going to be rewritten so as to exclude freelancers, since there is not (yet) a clear legal definition of what one is. It was also thought that that would leave too much room for unscrupulous agencies to get out of providing the proper protection for more vulnerable workers such as farm labourers, cockle pickers and the rest.

Hence the opt out was negotiated. It is not a mistake, provided you have the wit to understand what it means and how it should be invoked.

The PCG publication is pretty much a definitive guide to the regs and was written with legal advice and in consultation with DBERR and other informed, qualified sources. You can believe what it says, it's not the rantings of a disembodied voice on these fora (and that's not me, I've been here too long). And frankly you need to get outside your cosy little corner and look at the whole 4.1 million freelance worker world before you start accusing people of being bumpkins.

But you aren't going to listen so frankly WGAS

[Boo]

OK, let's ask someone more informed and who has sought legal opinion. From the Guide to the Agency Regulations:

"A. PCG believes that the term “introduction” means before the client has received your curriculum vitae. "

1. The PCG have made a preposterous "mistake" in negotiating the opt out clause form the regs.
   
2. The PCG say that the situation can be mitigated because the opt out does not apply if is is received by the agency after interview.
   
3. You say that the PCG's interpretation of the words "introduction or supply" is correct.
   
4. You produce in lieu of reasoned argument a snippet from a PCG publication.

You are an official 5-straw bumpkin, Malvolio. And the fact that you have repeatedly declined to give any possible reason that the regs should discriminate between contractors and individuals in terms of the time at which the opt in/out should be decided shows that you don't have one.

Now will you please shut up and go away.

It seems to me that the person who is putting forward reasoned arguments in defence of their position should not be the one who should "shut up and go away". Much rather the person arguing by reference to "authority" in terms of failed lawyers, conversations with BERR officials which never took place and that last refuge of the charlatan : PCG official opinion.

Have a nice one,

Boo

[malvolio]

OK, let's ask someone more informed and who has sought legal opinion. From the Guide the Agency Regulations:

Q I understand that I must opt out before “introduction” to the client. What
constitutes an introduction?

A PCG believes that the term “introduction” means before the client has received
your curriculum vitae. If the client decides to interview you without seeing your CV,
then the interview itself would probably count as the “introduction”. If you do not
even attend an interview, perhaps because you have done work for the client
before, then actually starting work would become the last cut-off point by which
you would be allowed to opt out

Now will you please shut up and go away.

[Boo]

I need to agree a contract (in principle) with the agent before he negotiates on my behalf with the client.

This is completely invented : it is almost never the case that agencies agree contract terms before putting a contractor forward to the client. In fact, if you explain to them that your rate requirement depends upon the other terms of the contract then that is the quickest way of persuading them to either put you forward at a negotiable rate, or else to drop you entirely.

In any case the issue here is at what point in time does the opt in/out status have to be defined, and there is nothing in your remark which suggests a reason why it should be before interview time, when no other contract term need be defined by that time.

The regulations specifically govern the arrangement between the agency and contractor and will need to be in place before the agent goes to the client.

The regulations govern the relation between the temp, whether a contractor or an individual and the agency. If you support the proposition that the contract between contractor and the agency needs to be in place before interview, then you need a reason for your assertion the equivalent contract does not need to be in place at the time an individual is interviewed.

If you had troubled to read the thread then you would have known that was the issue on which Malvio's decreasingly relevant remarks have led him to rely. Of course the obvious interpretation of "introduction or supply" does not really rely on a thesaurus for comprehension.

It's pointless the regulations kicking in when you've completed a multi-layered set of contracts then suddenly have to work out whether you're opted in or not with all the massive implications the regulations have for the governance of the contract.

Hahahaha ! You are a finger puppet for Malvolio and I claim my £5

The opted in/out status wrt the regs has no implications whatsoever for the client, so why is interview with the client relevant to the time the contract terms must be agreed between contractor and agency ?

I know I'm right. I know the other posters above are right.

Well, please remind me to have you at my side when I have to explain to a judge why your preposterous interpretation of the regs is right : "Craig knows he's right and he knows everyone who agrees with him is right too, m'lud." That should do the trick nicely. You'd have put the whole of the rest of the legal profession of a business if you'd carried on in the field

That all said, I'm not a lawyer and am very proud of that fact

Did you get a good enough degree to become a lawyer ?

Boo

[malvolio]

Why would that determine the point in time at which the opt in/out status of the contract must be determined ?



You've run out of road, Malvolio.

Boo2

[Boo]

Because some are employees and some are not?

Why would that determine the point in time at which the opt in/out status of the contract must be determined ?

End of discussion, this is getting increasingly pointless.

You've run out of road, Malvolio.

Boo2

[Wanderer]

End of discussion.

Agreed.

We are all wrong and Boob is right. Simples.

[craig1]

You have misunderstood what they said to you.

If you have legally qualified friends then why not point them to this thread and get them to publicly express an opinion as to which of us is right ? Otherwise it is completely futile to say "I've got a friend, right, he's really big on all this stuff, and he says your friend's an * who doesn't know what he's talking about". Which is all your remark actually signifies.

Boo

Craig1, LL.B.(Hons) Law, specialising in contract and commercial law. This was in a time when I was naive enough to think law was an ethical career and long before I became an IT contractor. I saw the light and went for a proper job.

Although my law degree is a bit old now, the general principles judges will fall are still the same, when there's a term that has more than one interpretation a judge's first instinct is to fall back on the interpretation that fits most closely with established law in other areas. If you look at the standard contractor's arrangement, it's a contract within a contract, I need to agree a contract (in principle) with the agent before he negotiates on my behalf with the client. The regulations specifically govern the arrangement between the agency and contractor and will need to be in place before the agent goes to the client.

It's pointless the regulations kicking in when you've completed a multi-layered set of contracts then suddenly have to work out whether you're opted in or not with all the massive implications the regulations have for the governance of the contract.

I know I'm right. I know the other posters above are right. For me to think you're anything bar a troll you'll have to be a lot more convincing than simply reaching for the thesaurus to make yourself sound educated.

That all said, I'm not a lawyer and am very proud of that fact

[malvolio]

Why on earth would Parliament have decided that some people had to have contract terms decided before interview and others not ?

Because some are employees and some are not?

End of discussion, this is getting increasingly pointless.

[Boo]

"Introduction or supply" is exactly as I described: "introduction" as in knowing precisely who you are or "supply" as in sending over one of your employees with roughly the right skill-set. If they were synonymous, the Regulations wouldn't have used the two words, or would have used "and" instead of "or". The only failing in precision is to define fully the word "Introduction", but from talking to the people at DBERR who wrote the damned thing, I'm satisfied my explanation is correct.

The words "introduction" and "supply" are not synonyms and the reason for them to be conjoined by "or" is because the "introduction" of the worker into the workforce and the "(commencement of the) supply (of services)" are the point in time at which the contract becomes effective for the two different cases. The sole point of that part of the legislation is to ensure that the opted in/out status of the temp is decided before the contract becomes effective, whether the temp is introduced into the workforce or whether the supply of services takes place outside the clients' workplace.

It is fatuous to aver that the regs make the distinction between two different classes of employee, one who needed to be interviewed and another who didn't.
You avoided the question last time so I'll ask you again : Why on earth would Parliament have decided that some people had to have contract terms decided before interview and others not ?

The reason you have no answer is because the proposition is nonsense. If the issue comes up in court then you will need to provide an answer just to contradict the obvious and sensible interpretation I gave. It is irresponsible for you to put forward as fact a POV which has such a shaky foundation, what if someone believed you and came a cropper ?

As for your post about "people at the BERR" who allegedly fed you that poppycock, it has the same made up feel as SueEllens "friends" who are lawyers. Funny, isn't it, how everyone who espouses the standard nonsense on this issue knows someone important who has a superior knowledge to anyone else but that person themselves is never seen themselves to post under their full regalia about what those clauses mean ?

The reason is that the PCG line you so obsequiously follow is devoid of all rational support so you have to resort to "my dad's bigger than your dad" style arguments.

Boo

[malvolio]

You are wrong. The wording in the regs is precise: "introduction or supply". It has the following meaning : "introduction (into the workforce) or (commencement of) supply (of services)".

Your word-guffery above made no reference to the wording of the regs and made no reference either to the reasoning behind that wording. A court will, if it finds ambiguity in the wording, interpret the law according to rational expectations of the lawmakers intent. You did not provide any rationality in support of your view that Parliament intended a distinction between temps employed by agencies and temps employed by Ltd Co.s contracted through agencies.

In order to make your point in any way convincing, you need to show why a court will come down in favour of the view that Parliament meant for Ltd Co. contractors to agree terms before discussing the work with the client, whereas agency temps need not agree contracts until after that point in time but before starting work. Why do you believe that ?

I know you will not answer my point because there is no reason on Earth why Parliament would have made that distinction.

Boo

"Introduction or supply" is exactly as I described: "introduction" as in knowing precisely who you are or "supply" as in sending over one of your employees with roughly the right skill-set. If they were synonymous, the Regulations wouldn't have used the two words, or would have used "and" instead of "or". The only failing in precision is to define fully the word "Introduction", but from talking to the people at DBERR who wrote the damned thing, I'm satisfied my explanation is correct.