Here to, I lived through the early 80's, 90's & 2000's downturns and one thing I remember was when my employer was spruiking the benefit of being self-employed, be your own boss, leverage your business, buy a new car, flexible working hours etc etc. I thought hang-on all you want me to do is accept the responsibility and risk of accepting the cyclic nature of my industry, find my own work and compete on the open market for work?
Not this bunny just let me collect my fortnights pay and YOU take the responsibility for running a business and industry and I'll happily work my allotted 40hour week, get penalty rates on w/e's, get super put into my account and go home and sleep without a worry. I was never in a union but was very good at what I did hence no fear of unemployment.
Anyway what I note about 30 years later is the massive number of self employed vans, utes, trucks driving around obviously working weekends, maybe even 7 days a week, to get enough work to cover expenses. This was never the case at that time as just about everyone was off on weekends enjoying themselves with family, friends etc.
Tradies generally don't have university degrees to work out the nuances of economic viability of being self-employed hence I believe that this was in its inception a big employment creation con-job on a massive scale. Initially there were some genuine benefits when there were not so many on the gravy train but now I bet they compete in a dog eat dog environment just to survive, and what happens when we do get a real cyclical downturn such as we may experience now?
