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At my client site, they have recently started to get in some Indian IT staff. They are provided by a firm called Mastech. See www.mastechas.com. Mastech fly them over from India and place them onto clients sites.
The client currently has 4 of these Mastech guys on site and they work alongside us like regular contractors. We don't regard that their skills are on par with the rest of the contractors/permies on site, perhaps 12-18 months experience at the most. Mastech put them on "refresher courses" before deploying them on our site, but still have a long way to go as we seem to be spending more time "hand-holding" them.
They have some interesting tales to tell, as Mastech have sent them to many other clients in several European countries. They love the opportunity to travel and meet new people.
So, why am I emailing this to Shout99 ?
Well, we (the other contractors) were speaking to the IT director on Monday and we were told that the Mastech guys cost a lot less than the contractors and they are thinking about terminating our contracts early and replacing us with more of them, as we contractors are forever "wingeing about IR35 and trying to change our contracts, etc...". With the agency commission on top of our rates, we are approx £250 a week more expensive than a Mastech guy.
They are paying £1450 a week to Mastech for each body.
When talking to a couple of them today, we found out that these guys are getting paid just over £1000 a month gross.
So, that's £1450 a week income and £1000 a month outgoings. Mastech also pay for the small flat that houses these 4 guys, approx £400 pcm.
The guys are very happy with their salaries, as this is fantastic money compared to back home (in India) and they get to travel a lot too.
As each guy has no share-holding in Mastech, they don't have to worry about IR35 at all. As the directors/shareholders of Mastech don't do the work themselves, they too do not worry about IR35. Just sit back and get other people to do the work and you're laughing.
I could very easily employ one of these guys, pay him more than what Mastech do, sit back and earn more than I would if I did the work myself.
Regular contractors who do the work themselves are stung with IR35. How fair is that?
editors note: If rates are cut, as clearly indicated in this article, then the incentive for UK workers to retrain is reduced. At the same time we appear to be training up our foreign competition. I seem to remember that UK shipyards won contracts to help design Japanese and Korean Shipyards, but at least they took the decision to help put themselves out of business, all on their own.
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