Guardian perdm

Marketing company paid just 80p an hour for 70-hour week, workers claim In case brought by GMB, two former workers allege they received average of £60 for six-day week selling door-to-door Joe Sandler Clarke The Guardian, Thursday 26 December 2013 18.23 GMT

Camille Meunier and Jamie Wright are suing the UK's largest door-to-door marketing company, PerDM. Photograph: GMB

Britain's biggest specialist door-to-door marketing company, whose clients include Vodafone and EDF, is being sued by two former workers who say it abused rules on self-employment to pay them the equivalent of 80p an hour for 70-plus-hour weeks.

Camille Meunier and Jamie Wright, whose case is being brought by the GMB union, say they received an average of £60 for a six-day-a-week job selling loft insulation and subscriptions to LoveFilm, a DVD and video-on-demand company owned by Amazon.

Meunier and Wright, both 21, worked on behalf of two subsidiaries of a Chesterbased company called PerDM during 2012 and 2013. They are seeking more than £22,000 between them for breach of contract, unpaid wages and holiday pay.

The jobs, presented as a swift route to management, were described as selfemployed and payable by commission only. A legal claim sent to PerDM and two subsidiaries by the GMB says the pair never saw their contracts and were obliged

to sell or attend team meetings from 10am until about 10pm Monday to Saturday.

There was no opportunity to vary the hours and a strict dress code was imposed, meaning they were in effect employed. GMB lawyers argue that the hours and duties were set, with the company providing equipment such as iPads to show films.

Under minimum wage laws even if a company describes someone as selfemployed this must be reflected in the way they are treated, for example flexibility over hours and conditions. Employers are not obliged to disclose minimum wage terms, meaning many people are not aware that they should potentially be earning more.

Promised management opportunities never materialised, but within weeks of starting the pair were told to hire new people for sales positions.

Maria Ludkin from the GMB said PerDM's business model amounted to a "pyramid recruitment scam".

She said: "We decided to bring this case on behalf of our members because it reflects our concerns about the ruthless exploitation of workers by stripping away their employment rights, hiding behind a series of agency arrangements."

Wright said the pay was reduced even more by the cost of travelling around London for the job, and the couple soon got into debt. Meunier had to give up her flat and they moved in with Wright's parents in Welling, Kent.

Working such long hours each day, He said he felt "trapped" in the sales position: "You're unable to look for other work. You've been working until 10pm, so you don't have the energy to look for other employment."

Shadow employment relations minister Ian Murray said "bogus self-employment" was increasingly common, and urged the government to act on the issue.

Murray said experiences like those of Meunier and Wright were "sadly becoming more common". "The majority of businesses across the UK recognise that employees should be paid properly with rights in place. Where this doesn't happen, there needs to be proper enforcement."

A spokesman for HM Revenue and Customs said it was "committed to tackling the risks associated with false self-employment".

The lawyer representing Meunier and Wright, Michael Newman from Leigh Day, said he planned take action against PerDM and the two PerDM subsidiaries involved, SilverScreen Communications and Dominion Acquisitions Ltd, until one of them admitted employing his clients.

He said: "Initially my view is that all of the companies involved should be part of the claim, at least until one of them accepts responsibility for employing Jamie and Camille. If they won't accept that, then we will have to join them all as defendants and let the court decide."

LoveFilm said it no longer works with PerDM, which was previously among a number of a third-party firms used for direct marketing.

PerDM, which describes itself as "the UK's foremost field sales organisation", declined to comment, despite repeated requests. SilverScreen Communications and Dominion Acquisitions could not be reached.

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