Personal Trainers sacrificed by the gig economy

I see Labour have rowed back on some of their promises to help gig economy workers. That should be disappointing to the vast majority of Personal Trainers, but hardly unexpected. Unbeknown to the general public, PTs are being financially exploited hugely by the gym chains. Generally, PTs have to either pay an extortionate rent to use the gym (in central London locations this can exceed £1500 per month) or they have to work for free for an agreed number of hours (typically 15 or so hours per week) to be able to use the gym. The gyms use the PTs as slave labour and get them to clean, take classes and act as general dogsbodies. As a business model, who can blame them? Why employ actual workers when you can have access to a free workforce? Of course, morally this is highly reprehensible. Successive governments however, have endorsed it and very few of our parliamentarians have the will to challenge. Arguably even worse, our journalists are reluctant to report on it (sigh).

I have personal experience in this area when a few years ago I moved in with my now fiancée in central London. I took the work for free option at a gym in a central London location. I didn’t last more than a couple of months as from day one they were breaking every employment law in the book!!! Have a look at the case law for Uber and Pimlico Plumbers – I hit them with said case law and asked politely at first for them to leave me alone and to stop asking me to wear their uniform. After all, I was a self-employed contractor, not an employee of said gym chain. I wore my uniform not theirs. They didn’t take too kindly to this. I asked the then chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, one Frank Field, now sadly deceased, to ask said gym chain some probing questions on their practices. He did – they didn’t appreciate that. I told them I would do it if they didn’t leave me alone – for some reason they never believe the Aspie will do what he says he will do. Go figure.

After only a couple of months I left and threatened my own lawsuit against them for minimum wage and holiday pay for their blatant disregard of the law. They said I wouldn’t win much and how dare I even ask. I agreed but pointed out that when I won the court case (and I would), the couple of grand I would win would be nothing to the potential class action of all the PTs they had ‘employed’ past and present. My rough calculation put them on the hook for £10 million plus. They agreed and after some negotiation offered me a five figure sum to walk away. As it was almost money for nothing, I agreed. Of course, they insisted on a NDA, so I can’t tell you who they were or how much they bribed me with under the legitimacy of the law, for me never to speak their name. In fact, maybe I made the whole prior paragraph up. I couldn't possibly comment either way.

Perhaps even worse than the action of the gyms is the collaboration of our media. In researching possible legal moves I can across articles from 2017 where a PT was indeed threatening to do the same thing to another gym chain. An alleged opinion piece had been granted to a lawyer in a mainstream paper. I rung said firm and tried to get put through to the author of the article to see if he might be interested in pursuing a case but he was too pompous to phone back. My guess would be said law firm paid said newspaper to write the article in the hope of luring PTs into a class action. A lone gunman like me wouldn’t have been very lucrative for them hence not even a return call or email. Pompous lawyers clearly underestimated the solidarity of Personal Trainers. Sadly, I keep underestimating the spine rigidity of the media elite and their ability to report on injustices….