Mr. Martin McMahon:

Absolutely. The only precedent for allowing construction workers under the eRCT system to be default classified as self-employed comes from the courier decision in 1995. These are the precedents it is using. There has been no separate case of construction workers where it came up with test cases.

I know because I represented a dozen construction workers at the social welfare appeals office, SWAO, in 2017. The office wanted to use the cases as test cases but we vehemently refused to allow it to do so. The workers were all found to be employees and that has not been overturned, although the position on who employed them has changed, which we can discuss if the committee wishes. It turns out the ERCT system is misclassifying people. The SWAO agreed that at least seven cases concern employees.

The ERCT system does not work. It misclassifies people, as we can show with evidence.