Who’s a worker, what’s work?

Andrew Little was in enough trouble over his failure to pay David Cohen for his services and he was silly enough to make it worse:

. . . But referring to Mr Cohen as “a worker” has made Mr Little grumpy.

“Your commentary talked about a worker,” says Mr Little. “He was a contractor.” . .

This is the man whose first big speech of the year was supposed to appeal to a wider range of workers including small business owners.

There’s no business smaller, in terms of personnel, than that of a single contractor and if a contractor isn’t a worker the logical conclusion is that what he does isn’t work.

So who is a worker and what’s work?

The dictionary says it’s: activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result.

In the context of employment it is also done to earn payment regardless of whether you are an employee or a contractor.

Little’s quibbling over whether a contractor is a worker should serve as a warning to anyone who was mollified by the rhetoric of his speech about reaching out to a broader range of workers.

Whatever he said a couple of weeks ago has been contradicted by his grumpy quibble.