“I don’t think anyone should have to pay to access their own money.”
So says Beck Murdoch, a disability support worker who says she has “begrudgingly” paid a 1.5% fee to be paid early for work funded by the National Disability Insurance Scheme rather than face uncertainty or weeks of delays.
Murdoch is speaking about Express Pay, a third-party payment service owned and operated by the gig economy platform Mable, which helps connect disabled clients and support workers.
Workers who use Mable are independent contractors and therefore not entitled to the same rights as employees. Workers are engaged and paid by their clients rather than Mable, with Mable collecting the fees from clients and distributing them to workers.
When it comes to being paid on time “there’s no magic number” and no certainty as a contractor, Murdoch says.
“Sometimes I’ll get paid weekly, then nothing for three weeks, then three weeks’ pay in one go, then nothing for six weeks – it’s so sporadic.”
Mable says in 90% of cases contractors using the platform are paid within two weeks, results it achieves by paying them on the same day it receives funds from clients in almost all cases.
But delays can be caused by many things: by clients or plan managers not approving timesheets, by clients spending more than they are entitled to after a cut to their disability support package, or by clients exceeding the NDIS price cap for a particular type of service.
“If I had to rely on my [independent contractor] income as my sole source of income, I pretty much couldn’t,” Murdoch says.
Mable offers a solution for those who want more certainty of payment: by opting to use Express Pay, contractors are charged a fee of 1.5% by a third-party finance provider and given their earnings within three days.
Murdoch argues if any other business told workers they “had to pay 1.5% to access their pay this week, people would be kicking up a bit of a stink about that”.
“I’ve earned that money, I’ve worked hard for it – yet I’m having to pay a fee to access it in a timely manner.”
Ynai Porter, a self-employed psychosocial recovery coach, used Mable to connect with clients but never used Express Pay. She labels the payment option “nasty” because it is likely “people with the least money” will choose to incur the fee.
Per Capita, a progressive thinktank, has likened the Express Pay system to a “bridging loan” of “unknown duration” because the contractor may not know “how long it takes for Mable to receive the equivalent income back from the client”.
The Mable chief executive, Peter Scutt, says ExpressPay “doesn’t operate as a bridging loan, it operates as a factoring of an invoice – the responsibility for that invoice transfers”.
Given Mable only takes a platform fee of 14.3%, a further 1.5% “is reasonable”, he says, and “still considerably lower” than other platforms.
“It is not intended to be an additional source of revenue,” he says.
Mable is shifting away from the model, developing “additional solutions” including a trial of guaranteeing workers’ pay in “less than a fortnight with no additional charge”, he says.
Scutt accepts that “payment delays happen”, on or off-platform, but says Mable mitigates the risk of non-payment or late payment by verifying the client has funding for the service.
Contract platforms ‘exploding’
Lloyd Williams, the national secretary of the Health Services Union, disputes the idea that care workers are small businesses.
“Care workers rely on the platform to get work, it’s employment-style work simply by another name,” he says. Contract platforms including Mable are “absolutely exploding”.
Scutt insists that self-employment is genuine. Unlike the “vertical” gig economy models such as ride share or food delivery, Mable doesn’t “insert itself between the parties and set the terms of how arrangements are made” including who provides the service.
Rather as a “horizontal platform” Mable connects the client and service provider who decide the terms themselves: “What service they provide, to who, when and how much they charge.
“Those service providers have the same level of choice control in their business when they operate off the platform as sole trader as they do via the platform.”
Contracting platforms are not the only technology solution to help support workers find clients and vice versa. Hireup is a similar app-based platform that directly employs its support workers.
Jordan O’Reilly, the chief executive of Hireup, says support workers being employees is “important, because it means we pay to the award”.
“We pay superannuation, pay-as-you-go tax, and workers’ compensation,” he says. “We have responsibilities to get people back to work if they’re injured.
“Not all platforms are made the same.”
Murdoch is employed by Hireup and works as an independent contractor on Mable, and sees “pros and cons of both” models.
Contractors using Mable can set their own rates. Murdoch says she can “charge a higher rate” – which can be up to “twice as much per hour”, but is then responsible for paying her own tax, superannuation, casual loading, holiday, sick and annual leave.
“The pros of being with Hireup are you don’t have to worry about any of that, they take care of the dirty work for you.”
Labor gig economy reforms
O’Reilly wants the Labor government’s reforms to treat gig economy workers more like employees to be applied to the disability services sector.
The workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, is fond of citing the National Disability Insurance Scheme when discussing Labor’s gig economy policy, warning that a “let it rip” approach will undermine minimum standards.
In comments to Guardian Australia, Burke warns “when government pays for the delivery of services, the payment presumes that people’s entitlements are included”.
Scutt says “the sorts of things that would concern the current government are things we’ve already thought about and incorporated”, such as ensuring minimum pay rates and genuine independence.
“[Mable] is not the right solution for every NDIS participant, it’s not the right solution for everyone who wants to work in the sector. But it’s a really important choice that needs to be available.”
This story was amended on 7 July 2022 to add that Express Pay is owned and operated by Mable
