Help me

dougiec78

My boss has emailed me to say that as of the 1st of December she wants the staff to go self employed and raised out hourly rate from £10 to £11 an hour, how do I stand with holiday pay that should be owed to us for the Christmas break as we will not be working for 14 days 

MikeJXE

That should be paid because the holiday entitlement is collected earlier in your employment 

elsien

Is this a pretend self-employment when actually you still have to turn up when they tell you to? Have they said what they plan to do if the staff don’t want to go self-employed?
Are you happy to lose the protections an employee has, annual leave,  sick pay, national insurance et cetera for the sake of an extra pound an hour?

baser999

If you’re going to continue turning in everyday and working as if nothing’s changed then it’ll surely be difficult to argue that you’re self-employed as far as HMRC are concerned.

General_Grant

MikeJXE said:

That should be paid because the holiday entitlement is collected earlier in your employment 

Annual leave is allocated at the beginning of a holiday year on the basis that the person remains employed for the entire year.  If they leave before the end of the year, they don't get all their entitlement.  The OP is looking at a situation where they would not be employed for at least one of the 12 months in a holiday year.

However the employer is seeking agreement of staff for the termination of their employment, perhaps without as much notice as that to which they are entitled.  

Paying £11 rather than £10 would not even cover the loss of statutory paid holiday.

Marcon

dougiec78 said:

My boss has emailed me to say that as of the 1st of December she wants the staff to go self employed and raised out hourly rate from £10 to £11 an hour, how do I stand with holiday pay that should be owed to us for the Christmas break as we will not be working for 14 days 

Not her decision - HMRC have the final say in whether or not someone is self employed. 

Undervalued

Marcon said:

dougiec78 said:

My boss has emailed me to say that as of the 1st of December she wants the staff to go self employed and raised out hourly rate from £10 to £11 an hour, how do I stand with holiday pay that should be owed to us for the Christmas break as we will not be working for 14 days 

Not her decision - HMRC have the final say in whether or not someone is self employed. 

Only for tax purposes!

An employment tribunal can sometimes take a different view when deciding if somebody is eligible to bring a claim. Neither is binding on the other!

marcia_

Undervalued said:

Only for tax purposes!

An employment tribunal can sometimes take a different view when deciding if somebody is eligible to bring a claim. Neither is binding on the other!

 Not just for tax, also for employment rights and benefits.

https://www.gov.uk/employment-status/selfemployed-contractor

Grumpy_chap

dougiec78 said:

My boss has emailed me to say that as of the 1st of December she wants the staff to go self employed and raised out hourly rate from £10 to £11 an hour, how do I stand with holiday pay that should be owed to us for the Christmas break as we will not be working for 14 days 

This is a short question withy potentially long queries that arise and which the OP will need to understand.

I would split this into two parts.

First, the current employment.  How is this structured?
How are factors such as holiday pay, sick pay etc all treated at present?  It seems as though there is paid leave?
What employment rights does the OP have at the current employment?
Length of service?
Notice period?
I assume the OP is not on zero-hours contract.

Second, what happens in the future.
From what the OP says, the new role will be within IR35 (tax rules for "disguised employment")
An increase of 10% is not going to be sufficient to cover the change from employed to self-employed.
Does the new contract propose to pay for holiday etc?  It sounds like it would not.  Therefore, the new rate needs to be the current rate plus X weeks of holiday etc., then divided by the number of working weeks.
Also, the new rate needs to cover employer's NI contributions, employer's pension contributions.
The company will need to provide an IR35 determination.
The OP could get some advice from an Umbrella Company as to working out the equivalent rate.

Certainly, before firm comment can be given to the OP, or the OP can make a decision, there would need to be more information available.  It may well be that the OP does not have that information at this stage.

Exodi

elsien said:

Is this a pretend self-employment when actually you still have to turn up when they tell you to? Have they said what they plan to do if the staff don’t want to go self-employed?
Are you happy to lose the protections an employee has, annual leave,  sick pay, national insurance et cetera for the sake of an extra pound an hour?

I hold the same view -

For that £1 extra - the OP loses holiday entitlement worth approx 77p and employer pension contributions likely to be around 30p - 50p (depending on employer).

Just these two alone puts the OP objectively worse off. And we haven't even started on things like sick pay, national insurance, redundancy/notice, maternity, loss of any other company benefits (e.g. life insurance).

I'd imagine you wouldn't even breakeven at £12 per hour.

GiantTCR

dougiec78 said:

My boss has emailed me to say that as of the 1st of December she wants the staff to go self employed and raised out hourly rate from £10 to £11 an hour, how do I stand with holiday pay that should be owed to us for the Christmas break as we will not be working for 14 days 

Sounds like an illegal move to me and a clear way for your boss to cut her tax bill.