rolling contracts over 12 months and entitlements?

vibe666

i was just wondering about entitlements (paid leave, sick days etc.) of people in long term contracts (and by 'people' i mean me, obviously ).

I've been contracting in the same place for goign on 2 and a half years now, with an 11 month contract that they are replacing every 11 months.

i've been told that this is so they can avoid having to give me basic entitlements that would be afforded to permanent workers which i would get if I was in the contract for more than 12 months.

someone else has told me that regardless of their changing the contracts after 11 months, that as i've been in the same job for the whole time i'm still entitled to these things which i'm not even entirely sure what they are anyway.

is this true?

leeroybrown

Your post is a little ambiguous. When you say 'contracting' do you mean selling your services at a fixed rate in the classic sense of the word 'contracting'? Or do you mean that you are a normal PAYE employee of the company working on successive fixed term contracts?

If it's the former then no, there are no benefits other than monetary remuneration associated with a job 'contracting'. If it's the latter then the fixed term workers act applies and means that they actually have to treat you in the same fashion as a permanent employee. There are also rules governing the number of successive fixed term contracts they can employ you on.

Take a look a this page.

vibe666

sorry for the ambiguity.

i'm the director of a managed limited company and my services are contracted to the place i work AT by the company that manages my company. to make matters more convoluted, the work i do is actually for a 4th company who's IT infrastructure is managed by the 3rd company.

so its:

me > my company > my management company > my 'employer' > their client

not sonfusing at all.

leeroybrown

In that case I'm pretty sure you'll be selling your services (via your own company) to your employer at a specified rate including service VAT. That does allow them to avoid giving you any of the benefits of a full time or fixed rate PAYE employee.

I would hope that your contract rate makes up for this lack of benefits/security.

JackieChan

My situation is very similar to yours and as LB states its the services of your company that are been provided and not you as an individual so you have no entitlements. To be honest as a director I'm very surprised that you were not aware of this.

nesf

leeroybrown wrote:

In that case I'm pretty sure you'll be selling your services (via your own company) to your employer at a specified rate including service VAT. That does allow them to avoid giving you any of the benefits of a full time or fixed rate PAYE employee.

I would hope that your contract rate makes up for this lack of benefits/security.

Exactly, OP you are responsible for your own rights not the company you work for. It's up to you to make sure you take your breaks, get the correct holidays etc. They don't owe you anything but what's on the invoice at the end of every month.

vibe666

take it easy, i was just asking!

'director' is a very ambiguous term these days.

i'm told by my management company that there are 7 'directors' of my managed company and none of us even know the names of the other directors, never mind actually meeting them.

i've been using the managed company for over 4 years now and i've only ever met people from the management company 2 or 3 times in that period and plenty of the guys i work with now have never met them at all.

but none of this bothers me at all. i earn a good wage for what i have been doing the last couple of years (considerably above the going market rate for my area) and it has allowed me to move into a position recently that i would otherwise never have had a chance to get into. sticking where i am now and getting a couple of qualifications under my belt, i could easily double my daily rate in the next 12 months.

through the management company i only lose around 21% of my earnings between paying them and my tax, and they allow me to claim back around 80% of what i would otherwise have lost to the taxman anyway, so i'm happy enough with what i'm getting, i was just wondering about the entitlement thing because of something someone had said to me. it's no bother though really, it's not like i'm going without.

nesf

Well so long as you are happy and all your tax stuff is being sorted then I'd say there's no problem with it and you are correct, director is quite a vague term there days.

vibe666

nesf wrote:

Well so long as you are happy and all your tax stuff is being sorted then I'd say there's no problem with it and you are correct, director is quite a vague term there days.

yeah, i'm pretty happy i suppose. i like the idea that i get to claim back a lot of the tax i pay, but at the same time, sick days and holidays are very different when nobody is going to pay you for not being there.

its a trade off i guess, but at the end of the day its starting to work out pretty good knowing that i'm earning enough now to make it worthwhile. when i started out contracting here it was €10 an hour, which really wasn't worth it.

nesf

vibe666 wrote:

yeah, i'm pretty happy i suppose. i like the idea that i get to claim back a lot of the tax i pay, but at the same time, sick days and holidays are very different when nobody is going to pay you for not being there.

its a trade off i guess, but at the end of the day its starting to work out pretty good knowing that i'm earning enough now to make it worthwhile. when i started out contracting here it was €10 an hour, which really wasn't worth it.

It is a trade off. Working for yourself carries with it as many issues as PAYE work. I'm convinced that "being your own boss" really only works for certain kinds of people and the same for being a PAYE worker.