Obviously, however should you have a disgruntled employee bring a claim, I suspect that most courts are more likely to sympathise with the Ministry of Labours view.

How many of the ~100 employees also do similar work for other people under the umbrella of this self employment? Are they free to change what they charge you to provide this service?


http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tg/rc....html#P76_1700

Under H&S legislation, even if they are a legitimate subcontractor, you are still responsible for their safety and well being. A general contractor recently got fined $43k for failing to make sure a worker was trained and adequately protected after a subcontractors employee fell from a roof. The subcontractor was sentenced to 30 days for putting fall protection gear on the guy after he fell to hide the facts!

100 was the peak number. Not sure how many we have now but many less, perhaps 25. It's very rare that anyone works two jobs at once, typically they're placed at a client, usually a government department, quango or large financial institution, and work there full time for several years. I myself have had the same contract, sometimes full time, sometimes part time, since 1986. Amusingly, I know a contractor at the CCRA who's been there since the early 80s; I know his tax return doesn't show him as being an employee.

White collar contract work is an established mode in Canada and is, I think, becoming more popular mainly because it frees the employer from legislation related to equality and employment security as well as from the cost of benefits. This sort of contract is just an artifice, the person is effectively an employee but it suits no one to say so. It's quite different from the mode of work in the construction or hospitality industries where the employees are often without status and cannot be paid above the table.

Health and safety regulations are hardly pertinent to computer people.

And thats the key. But it is illegal (like most things in canada granted), and a disgruntled employee would be in a strong position to shit disturb (except for the fact they might never find work again)

Nah, in this business you **** people over by T4ing them, not by calling the workplace cops.

Can somebody tell me why an offer of employment says $hourly rate + 10% holiday?

Oh dear Oh dear. A stranger to the occupational health and safety act too

http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/...e/ohsag_3.html

Even though, as you have "no employees" some of it does not apply, many sections apply, even to the self employed.

And there are entirely seperate H&S certification courses for industrial and office environments, so I guess you could argue that H&S does still apply to computer people after all, complete with fines and prison sentences and all.

Holiday Pay?

Some employeers pay money into a holiday pay account with each pay check, and when you take a vacation they pay out whats in the holiday pay account.

~4% is the norm, so I'd clarify this with them. My experience of this is if you are paid say $20 and hour, they would take the 4% and you would actually see $19.20 less deductions. In this case are they taking $10, or adding 10% that goes into the holiday account... are they paying you 10% more, or taking 10% for the holiday account?

In practice for me this sytem meant that if I had not been paying into the account for a full year yet, that if I took my two weeks holiday then there was not enough money to cover the time off, and I was short of money that week/month.

There are some H&S issues related to specific jobs, just not related to sitting at a desk and typing. I had to take a WHMIS course in connection with a job in nuclear power station, that was interesting and rather put me off living in Pickering. I also had to sit through a five minute lecture about not smoking while working in a carbon fiber plant though it would have been difficult to smoke anyway due to all the fibres in the air and lungs. I also had to watch something about chute safety when computerizing an abbatoir in High Park.

D'Oh, Wrong again. Ergonomics are a huge issue in the office workplace.

Does the phrase "carpal tunnel syndrome" ring any bells?

I've heard of it but don't see why it would be a matter of interest, even if you could prove it to be work related it would be a struggle to show that a client required you to develop the condition. I would think office ergonomics to be the sort of thing only government employees and trade unionists fuss about.

Well, I guess if you are not signed up to pay out workers comp you wouldnt give a shit. Until it happens to you and then you cant type to do your job, and then realise that this whole self employed thing might not have been such a good idea after all.

Wont happen to you?

According to a recent report from Statistics Canada, 10 per cent of Canadian adults – that’s about 2.3 million people aged 20 or older – reported having an RSI at some point in the past year before taking part in the Canadian Community Health Survey (2000-2001). They also said their symptoms were serious enough to limit their normal activities. 80% estimated that it was a result of work related activity.

I certainly wouldn't be interested in the situation of someone who said he or she no longer wanted to work due to a sore wrist caused by typing. Dear oh dear, tell it to your insurance company, see if they care.

I've worked with a fair number of people who have developed WRULD, and have a slight degree of shoulder impingement myself to know how serious this can be. It can be crippling and require surgery. Come on, are you saying all this for a wind up or do you really not care about anyone else?? Health and safety is not trivial.

Where the contract approach does fall down is in the pension area. My contract is to shadow an employee who was hired to meet the ethnic quota during the Rae government era. The employee is paid about $90,000/year and will shortly be able to retire on two-thirds of that. He'll be 55 and so could be drawing the pension for 40 years. I've been paid about twice that during the hours worked and haven't had to pay much tax on it but now it's gone, frittered away on university tuition bills and the like, and I've no pension. If my income was solely derived from consulting I'd be in a much worse position than the employee.