HEREFORDSHIRE TOP & WALSALL BOTTOM OF WEST MIDLANDS LEAGUE FOR PROPORTION OF SELF EMPLOYED IN THE WORKFORCE

GMB supports tribunal claim for sacked City Sprint worker to expose bogus self employment in the courier industry

There are 15,900 self employed workers resident in the County of Herefordshire. That is 15.2% of all workers in the county of working age. This places Herefordshire at the top of the regional league for the proportion of workers in the area who are self employed. By contrast at the bottom of the regional league is Walsall with 7,600 self employed workers or 5.2% of all workers in the area.

For the UK as a whole there are 3.4million self employed workers amounting to 9.4% of the total workforce of working age. For the West Midlands there are 267,700 self employed workers amounting to 8.4% of the regions workforce.

These official figures come from a new analysis by GMB of the level of self employment in all areas of Britain. The data is from the Annual Population Survey for the year to March 2007. The table below sets out the official figures for all areas in the region.

This new study coincides with the lodging of a “test case” employment tribunal for GMB “self employed” member Paul Whieldon from Walthamstow North East London who was sacked from his job as a pushbike courier in the Shoreditch area of London by his employer of five years CitySprint. He requested that he be allowed not to work on Christmas Eve so that he could spend the time with his partner of 18^th years, Kim, who’s celebrating her 40th birthday on that day in Stoke on Trent. The request was refused and he was sacked by phone. The company claimed that he was a self employed contractor and that they were ending their business relationship with him. GMB will seek a ruling that Paul’s self employment was bogus and that he is entitled to the protection of employment legislation pertaining to employed workers.

City Sprint employ up to 1,500 “self employed” couriers across the UK, including this region as follows: Brentwood, Croydon., Heathrow, Ilford, London, Watford, Gatwick, Guildford, Hemel Hempstead, High Wycombe, Maidstone, Medway, Basingstoke, Newbury, Oxford, Southampton, Bristol, Cheltenham, Plymouth, Swindon, Birmingham, Coventry, Midland Centre, Nottingham, Cambridge, Ipswich, Milton Keynes, Cardiff, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Levels of self employment in the West Midlands

Joe Morgan, GMB Regional Secretary for the West Midlands said “GMB supports genuine self employment and has a range of branches catering for self employed workers like taxi drivers, builders and others.

However GMB’s knowledge of the working practices in a number of industries has led us to gain considerable experience in the areas of bogus self-employment and the impact which labour law has on the interpretation of contracts.

GMB plan this test case at the Employment Tribunal to examine whether City Sprint and other employers by classifying employees as self employed contactors are abusing the law and evading National Insurance payments to the detriment of their workers and the taxpayers.”