Student journalists

[MattG]

Hello,

I would be glad if someone could explain if it is legal to ask a student to write an article for a magazine and not pay him for it?

I heard that there are many students who would write for free just to build up experience/ portfolio.

From a business perspective it would be better if a student would become self-employed so that he could issue invoices for work done. However, again from legal perspective, would he need to become an employee after 3 months?

How would these both practices look in the long-term.

Your advises are much appreciated.
Thank You.
Matt

 

[B2BDatasolutions]

Yeh It's legal but at the same time I consider it somewhat shady.

 

[oldnumbercruncher]

I would have thought it was okay ( depending on the context of how you 'ask' )

However if they become self-employed, they have to be careful they fulfil the HMRC definition of 'self-employed'. One criteria being that their services are not limited to working for only one customer (or words to that effect ) if that is the case they are considered to be an employee.

hope that helps,

 

[David Griffiths]

I would have thought it was okay ( depending on the context of how you 'ask' )

However if they become self-employed, they have to be careful they fulfil the HMRC definition of 'self-employed'. One criteria being that their services are not limited to working for only one customer (or words to that effect ) if that is the case they are considered to be an employee.

hope that helps,

That is not necessarily the case. It all depends on the contract, express or implied between the two parties and generalisations like that simply are not possible

 

[MattG]

The reason why I'm asking is because me and a friend of mine are considering starting a student magazine for which we have prepared a business plan as part of our university work. The business plan was at some points a "bit" optimistic e.g. assumption that students would write for free (although it's true because many say they would).

Nevertheless, if we go and do it we want to make sure we are not breaking any laws. We would prefer not to pay them at all (if it's ok from legal point of view) or pay them per article e.g. £40. However, we would still want to include that £40 as an expense and therefore we would need an invoice for that work,

Am I right?

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Blimey - people doing stuff for free is a rather optimist business plan. Is that a valid assumption upon which to build a business?

The £40 would be a cost - yes.

 

[MattG]

Blimey - people doing stuff for free is a rather optimist business plan. Is that a valid assumption upon which to build a business?

Totally agree, but since marks were allocated for the content and research and not the truthfulness than the fact that students said they would was good enough

It would be a cost but any student who we would ask an invoice from would need to be registered as self-employed. Given the fact that he/she would write solely for us it would not work in the long-term because of the legislation. It wouldn't be ethically correct neither.

If we would take on someone as an employee, could we still pay him on per article basis e.g. £xx per article and don't worry about minimum wage etc??:|

Thanks for your advices!

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

So this is just and assignment?

See I am a believer in the fact that if you get someone to do your home work for you it is cheating

I'm a bit old fashioned like that and think you need to look things up / read up on the topic yourself.

I am sure someone else will help you though

 

[MattG]

So this is just and assignment?

See I am a believer in the fact that if you get someone to do your home work for you it is cheating

I'm a bit old fashioned like that and think you need to look things up / read up on the topic yourself.

I am sure someone else will help you though

No, no! The assignment is completed, in fact we've got 82% for the business pitch and 74% overall for the module

The markers were so impressed by our idea and we like it a lot that we've decided to give it a good consideration and start the magazine

So right now I'm looking for some real (not cheating) good advice Basically the costs of employing someone will decided whether or not the idea is viable.

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

If we would take on someone as an employee, could we still pay him on per article basis e.g. £xx per article and don't worry about minimum wage etc??:|

NMW would apply

 

[MattG]

Thank you Elaine,

This is what we expected. We would be happy to pay NMW for the number of hours we would require but how can we monitor if they actually spend that number of hrs working on the article if they work from home?? If they would say they've spent longer writing an article would we be liable for the overtime? There's no way to monitor this kind of stuff.

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Thank you Elaine,

This is what we expected. We would be happy to pay NMW for the number of hours we would require but how can we monitor if they actually spend that number of hrs working on the article if they work from home?? If they would say they've spent longer writing an article would we be liable for the overtime? There's no way to monitor this kind of stuff.

that is called being a boss

 

[MattG]

that is called being a boss

haha, I guess so!

Now I'm starting to think that the best way would be to employ writers and pay them salary instead of wages. That way the cost would be fixed and by contractual terms and conditions they would be binded to carry out the job properly

The only thing is that we really don't want to increase fixed overheads and increase risk of failure

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

From experience most writers often operate on a freelance basis.

Depends on the topic though I guess.

 

[MattG]

From experience most writers often operate on a freelance basis.

Yes, you're right, but this doesn't really apply to student writers.

Thank you very much for your help Elaine.

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Yes, you're right, but this doesn't really apply to student writers.

why not? what makes students different?

 

[MattG]

why not? what makes students different?

To begin with, students don't bother with looking for jobs (different mags & newspapers) they spend time studying and partying (I know this is some extreme generalisation but this is how it is in most cases). As for those who actually care about having work experience, they write for university mags & newspapers.

There are few students who do work as freelancers but not many. And, I'm not saying that we won't collaborate with them because we certainly would love to!

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

To begin with, students don't bother with looking for jobs (different mags & newspapers) they spend time studying and partying

errm - I thought (and have seen with the work I have done at Leeds & Liverpool Uni) that students have to find paid work to fund their study.

I am sure you know best though and taht you model woll work despite what happens in the rest of the (real) world!

Good luck

 

[MattG]

I'm sure you're right, well I certainly hope so! That would mean our model will work even better!

Thanks for your help