Page 468 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2
P. 468
IPS320 Wissanee P. et al.
remaining 26.7 per cent are not captured by the two test boundaries and
hence are not covered by the analysis.
4. Preliminary testing with workers with primary place of work being
the home/own-dwelling
A total of 2,557,603 self-identified self-employed without employees in
non-Agriculture are home-based workers (includes those in unincorporated
and incorporated enterprises):
- of these 2,083,906 or 81% of the total provide their own goods/service;
and
- of these 1,395,321 control the price of the goods/services they produce.
Another 23,733 negotiate the price with the customer.
Therefore, 1,419,054 workers, or 68 per cent of self-employed workers
without employees who are home-based display independency both in
operation (get own supplies or instructions) and in pricing (control or
negotiate price). Importantly, 268,253 or 13 per cent of home-based self-
employed workers without employees could not answer “yes” or “no” to
whether they control pricing of their product. Possibly, the pricing question
could be improved to address this difficulty. Further work is needed to identify
homeworkers – who meet the Dependent Contractor conditions and work
from home.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
In conclusion, regarding identifying likely dependent contractors through
the self-employed path, combining the “price control” criterion with the
criterion of getting supplies “from others” provides a good, if narrowly
defined, indicator of dependent contractor status for unincorporated own-
account self-employed workers, especially those outside of Agriculture. By
itself, the price control criterion also is a fairly good indicator. Important next
steps would be to examine separately the Agriculture and non-Agriculture
workers who do not control price and “get their own supplies.” This is because
group c) is overwhelmingly reporting working in Agriculture. This finding in
the case of Thailand has also been reported in the trials in other countries (ILO
Statistics 2018). We expect that agricultural work mostly entails getting one’s
own supplies and receiving no instructions.
With respect to answers to each of these two criteria that indicate likely
dependent contractor status we suggest additional questions to be asked of
respondents in later surveys. For respondents who answer they do not control
price, additional questions can probe who they sell their production to and/or
how many customers they have. For respondents who also receive supplies or
instructions from others (as well as not controlling prices), particularly for
those engaged in agricultural activities, additional questions querying their
455 | I S I W S C 2 0 1 9