Working for free

[Lbnc2021]

I’ve tried to look online for an answer to this but can’t seem to find one.

A gym has changed its terms for personal trainers overnight. Before trainers paid rent via the gym taking a percentage of their session fees. Now they want £250 a month rent and for the personal trainers to work 8 hours a week for no pay.

The £250 rent is fine. However are they legally allowed to tell self employed trainers they have to work in the gym (cleaning and admin duties etc) for no payment?

It depends on the existing contract and any provision for termination or variation.

Certainly if the existing agreement is terminated in accordance with the contract, the gym can propose new terms and the trainers are at liberty to accept, decline or negotiate.

Termination or variation overnight is unlikely to be within the current contract.

The gym is a new one so there was no written contracts before, just verbal agreements. However it turns out that everyone’s agreements were totally different.

My issue isn’t with any new proposals per se, it’s whether or not it is actually legal to make people do free work and still take a rent off them.

I know that puregym had a policy where trainers done 15 hours free in exchange for gym rent and this was changed so puregym pay the trainers for the 15 hours but then take it back off them in rent. However this gym wants rent and free work.

But they wouldn’t be “making them”? If they are self employed and in business on their own account, they can choose to accept the terms on offer or not.

Fair enough but doesn’t that then make the personal trainers employees of the gym and give them rights?

Those terms by themselves don’t make them employees. There are lots of factors taken into account to determine someone’s employment status. But if the gym is saying that in exchange for £250 plus 8 hours work you get to use the gym to operate your personal trainer business, that could easily be a commercial agreement rather than employment. In the trainers’ position I would be asking to see a copy of the proposed contract and then deciding whether the terms are acceptable. I imagine if the trainer wanted to pay someone else to fulfil the admin/cleaning duties they could do that.

If it was essential that the duties are completed by that particular person and under the control of the gym, then it is possible that an employer-employee relationship might be in place in respect of those duties, which would then attract minimum wage obligations, holiday pay etc. But it’s impossible to tell without seeing the terms.

Surely as a PT paying rent and things like cleaning after/between clients and necessary admin are part and parcel of their business. They don't work for free, they recover these costs from their paying clients.

I think people are missing the point here.

The personal trainers are self employed. They deal with their own admin and tidying up after themselves.

The gym want these self employed trainers to spend 8 hours of their own time doing work for the gym and not pay them for it and still take a rent off them and still have them down as self employed. They don’t want to employ receptionists or cleaners and want the trainers to do it all for nothing and still charge them.

Not missing the point at all thanks. I’ve given my view on requiring self employed people to do this as part of the commercial agreement (totally fine and up to them whether they accept) and on the fact that there is a possibility that a relationship of employment might arise, which would bring obligations on the employer in terms of pay and other rights.

Not sure what else you want. Self employed people have virtually no protection, so the restrictions would only arise if an employment relationship developed, which is a matter of looking at all the relevant factors.

They can require that the personal trainers carry out certain duties such as cleaning etc. The PTs as SE people can refuse and the gym can decide whether to allow them to work on the premises or give them work.
You can check on the HMRC website to check employment status, although this is only a guide.

This is a standard system in collectives, for example I know a couple of shops that stock work by multiple artists and craftspeople. It's normal to have to pay either rent or commission, plus one or two days' work in the shop per month. That's the contract.

If it doesn't suit you though, you should look for another gym running a different model. If you think it's unsustainable in terms of what you'd be taking in, you should point that out to them.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I’ve spoken to an old university friend who works in employment law. It is indeed breaching employment law/minimum wage legislation.

How can it breach minimum wage if they are self employed and paying themselves from their own revenue?

@Lbnc2021

Thanks everyone for your replies. I’ve spoken to an old university friend who works in employment law. It is indeed breaching employment law/minimum wage legislation.

I’m assuming you gave your friend a lot more information if they were able to make an assessment about employment status with such confidence as to state it is completely different from what you’ve said!

@Lbnc2021

Thanks everyone for your replies. I’ve spoken to an old university friend who works in employment law. It is indeed breaching employment law/minimum wage legislation.

Well you just have told them something different or given a lot more info than what you have put here. Self employed people aren’t subject to minimum wage legislation

@Lbnc2021

Thanks everyone for your replies. I’ve spoken to an old university friend who works in employment law. It is indeed breaching employment law/minimum wage legislation.

They are not employees. They have been told that the rent is a combination of £xx.xx and taking turns in helping to run the place. As self-employed people they are entirely free to accept this as a contract or to walk away.

So your university friend is not correct about breaches of employment law or minimum wage legislation. Neither apply in this case.

The only thing that would make a difference is if the personal trainers and other staff are all full-time and don't work anywhere else. In which case the gym is attempting to pull a fast one.

@Lbnc2021

Thanks everyone for your replies. I’ve spoken to an old university friend who works in employment law. It is indeed breaching employment law/minimum wage legislation.

How can it be if they're self-employed?

@Lbnc2021

Thanks everyone for your replies. I’ve spoken to an old university friend who works in employment law. It is indeed breaching employment law/minimum wage legislation.

If the personal trainers are self-employed it is absolutely not a breach of employment law or minimum wage legislation. It can only be a breach if they are employed by the gym.

I presume your friend has concluded that the personal trainers are actually workers rather than being self-employed. That depends very much on the facts, including the terms of the contract. However, what you have described on this thread sounds very much like self-employment.

I can't believe people still disagree with @flowery. She's legendary and I've never known her to be wrong.

Well to be fair OP might not know Flowerys expertise as they don’t shout about it.
However, it does seem that OP is just hearing what suits them.

@Lbnc2021

Thanks everyone for your replies. I’ve spoken to an old university friend who works in employment law. It is indeed breaching employment law/minimum wage legislation.

You must have said something very different to your friend then. Because on here you have said that they are self employed, being the case, they are not entitled to national minimum wage and nor does employment law apply.

Your explanation is very unclear, but at the end of the day, two parties can come to a contractual agreement they want.

As Flowery says, it could be part of the commercial contract - so think of it as either £250/month rent plus 8 Hrs/Wk at £x or they charge an increased rent to cover those deemed hours of work.

I hope you gave your friend more information than you’ve given here, and were more polite to her than you’ve been to Flowery.

Because of my work, I can give you a pretty definitive answer on this, based on what you’ve posted, but sounds like you’re happier spending money with your friend.

Just as an example, my window-cleaner is self-employed. He’s been washing my windows for years. When he comes to my house, we’ve agreed that he takes a moment when he’s finished to clear the suds that fall on to flagstones under the windows. This is because I have a dog who likes to lick bubbles and make herself sick.

The window cleaner isn’t employed by me to clear the suds, but he does so as part of the agreement we have as to the services he provides me. He’s fully entitled to decide that no, he doesn’t want to do that and therefore I can decide to engage him to just do the windows and not the suds, or I can tell him I don’t want his services at all.

I think you should look up the IR35 rules as well. They changed in April.

www.yourpersonaltraininguk.co.uk/news/ir35-are-you-ready

This also has info that relate to your circumstances