Bogus self-employed worker tells of 'frustration' over lack of voice at upcoming RTÉ hearing

RTÉ has been struggling with the issue of bogus self-employment — where self-employed contractors are denied the benefits and entitlements of full-time employees despite doing the same job — for the past six years, following a review performed by consultants Eversheds which found that more than 150 contractors at the broadcaster displayed “attributes akin to employment”.

A bogus self-employed worker within RTÉ has spoken of “absolute frustration” at not being allowed to give evidence to the Oireachtas Media Committee regarding their experiences at the broadcaster.

The Media Committee has instead invited representatives from the three unions operating in RTÉ to a public hearing on April 24.

That invitation was issued after the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers (OPLA), the in-house legal team for the Oireachtas, advised that the Media Committee would be an inappropriate forum for those allegedly bogus self-employed to tell their stories as it has no powers to mediate on workplace ‘grievances’.

The three unions — Siptu, the NUJ, and Connect — will instead be invited to send two representatives to the public hearing, and to provide submissions on RTÉ’s future strategy, and the issue of bogus self-employment.

While the individual employees will not be invited to the session, they are instead to send written submissions regarding their experiences, which will be anonymised and redacted of any ‘sensitive information’.

However, the employees in question are unimpressed at not being given a chance to tell their story, and say they have little faith in the unions to do so for them.

“We are totally pissed off, it’s just absolute frustration,” the worker, confirmed by the Department of Social Protection as having been incorrectly labelled as self-employed by RTÉ for nearly 10 years, said.

“I think it’s really bad we’re not being allowed in, the unions don’t properly represent us. We’re semi-state employees, we want to have a voice,” they said.

As things stand, the committee will be taking second-hand information from people, the unions, who don’t really care, whereas it’s a really big deal for us.

There has been speculation that the unions could circumvent the committee denying the bogus self-employed the chance to speak by using one of their two spaces at the April 24 meeting to accommodate members who had experienced the problem first hand.

RTÉ has been struggling with the issue of bogus self-employment — where self-employed contractors are denied the benefits and entitlements of full-time employees despite doing the same job — for the past six years, following a review performed by consultants Eversheds which found that more than 150 contractors at the broadcaster displayed “attributes akin to employment”.

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The broadcaster has subsequently been subject to a review of the working conditions of nearly 700 employees by the Department of Social Protection’s employment status office Scope for the past three years.

However, no compensation has been offered to date to any of the at least 89 workers who have been informed they should have been full-time employees of the station for the duration of their tenure there.

RTÉ has provisionally budgeted its PRSI liability to the Department of Social Protection for unpaid social insurance contributions at €15m.