I have had lots of anxious messages from people who've lost all work due to #Covid19 and fear they qualify neither for the grants to the self employed or the subsidies to companies that will pay 80% of the wages of those who are furloughed or kept on the books and rested. Many...
of these are placed by agencies on a temporary basis into schools as supply teachers, or into many other businesses and services on a short-term basis. They pay PAYE and so are not self-employed, but don't feel conventionally "employed". I have put their concerns to the...
Treasury which tells me that the agencies who manage their pay can put them on furlough and claim the subsidies of up to £2500 a month on their behalf. So they should put pressure on these agencies to do this for them. This should help some of them. But some...
do a mixture of agency work and pure freelance - and many of those may well fall through this safety net. There will be lots of injustices and hardship for those whose incomes have collapsed despite the size and generosity of this unprecedented bailout. Many of these...
injustices are due to the rise and rise over the past 30 years of the gig economy - an incredibly diverse employment ecosystem that provided flexibility for employers and those selling their skills and services, but is conspicuously and hideously lacking in security for...
millions of workers in a period of acute economic crisis.
