Independence and the Death of Employment is a new book by Ken Phillips, Executive Director of the Independent Contractors Associatio, in which he puts forward a vision for a world without employment, a world free of the constraints and restrictions of the traditional employer-employee relationship.

'This book is mostly about power—the exercise of it by one individual over another in the work environment... But it is also a book about a belief, namely, thatconcentrated power is on the wane because it holds back social, economic and personal performance.In particular, this book is about employment or, rather, the very specific legal, institutional and relationship nature of the employment contract that dominates work. It is the employment contract that sustains the flawed visionand practice of command-and-control business in a power-driven world'.

Ken Phillips argues that independent contracting is both liberating for former employees, and at the same time delivers higher performance to those organisations that leave an outdated institution behind and embrace a world of work free of the employment relationship.

Independence and the Death of Employment can be obtained from the ICA's website

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This piece, 'Why Hire An IT Contractor' on Javalobby by Yakov Fain has provoked a lively discussion on the pros and cons of hiring IT contractors, with IT contractors and employees putting their own perspectives on the matter.

Yakov begins his defence of contractors with these words, 'Isn't it obvious that having an employee in most cases is cheaper for a company than having a contractor? So why even hire these expensive IT contractors?', and goes on to list six major advantages of contractors. Yakov's arguments are sound, but as Eugene Strokin argues, not all contractors are hired for such reputable reasons. 

Eugene writes, 'Many contractors are just workers from India who cannot become employees because they work on an H1 visa, and companies don't want to deal with visa problems. So a man in a middle takes care about this problem and takes money for that, sure he doesn’t want those guys be employees. - kick-backs. Manager need to have few contractor positions, preferably short term positions, to hire contractors from recruiters which give them some money or favors (support local baseball team there son of the manager is playing for example, etc..) And these two reasons cover 80-90 % of all case'.

This in turn provoked several responses. For the full discussion, go here