Rant Employment or not employment?

[Tom]

There's no dictionary definition that says work requires direct financial compensation. And certainly no definition of work that says all wages have to be explictly tied to the number of hours worked.

In this country, the laws are quite clear - for instance, there's legally no such thing as unpaid work experience. You either work, or volunteer. And if your contract is so vague as to not specify how many hours you're expected to work for, and how much you're paid, then more fool you tbh. I often take jobs based on a 10-hour day, but my clients are under no illusions - exceed those ten hours and they'll be paying me overtime. If they won't pay it, I go home.

 

[DaGaffer]

In this country, the laws are quite clear - for instance, there's legally no such thing as unpaid work experience. You either work, or volunteer. And if your contract is so vague as to not specify how many hours you're expected to work for, and how much you're paid, then more fool you tbh. I often take jobs based on a 10-hour day, but my clients are under no illusions - exceed those ten hours and they'll be paying me overtime. If they won't pay it, I go home.

You're effectively a contractor. Not everyone is, and not everyone is in a position to mandate exactly how many hours they will have to work. Since lots of people are willing to enter into that kind of working relationship with their employer, I don't really understand why you're dismissing all of them as fools? I already explained the compensations for doing a level of unpaid work. Sure, if you're getting paid buttons, or you're self-employed, then its perfectly valid to work on a paid-hourly or daily basis, but that doesn't mean that's the best economic choice for everyone. I could earn more money per hour consulting than I earn per hour in my current job, but in total I wouldn't earn much more per year (if anything), net of all the stuff that would come out of my pocket rather than my employer's.