Great payroll scandal

A new report for construction workers’ union UCATT exposes the scandal of bogus self-employment in the building trade.

The report reveals that half of construction workers are officially classified as self-employed, but this is largely because employers in the industry actively collude to achieve this. The main method is through payroll companies, which carry out no real activities of their own, but exist solely to conceal the reality of employment contracts. Employers benefit from switching their staff to self-employed status because they no longer have to pay employers’ National Insurance, holiday pay or other benefits.

False self-employment is estimated to cost the Treasury almost £2 billion a year. The Construction Industry Scheme makes it very easy for employers to switch workers who are not genuinely self-employed to self-employed status.

The report is at: https://www.ucatt.org.uk/visageimages/greatpayrollscandal.pdf