A little while ago translation service behemoth Pearl Linguistic went bankrupt leaving hundreds of unpaid creditors, a large majority of them freelance interpreters. We linked to an article on this previously on our facebook page but we do have something of a personal perspective on this here at appa me ltd. What happened to Pearl Linguistic is a result of a company losing focus and not willing to speak the truth to unrealistic NHS contractors on the provision and its real worth.
Fair Pay
There has been a long ongoing issue particularly with providers and professional sign language interpreters being recognised and given fair pay and conditions. In interpreting due to travel from job to job within a working day it can be hard to squeeze in more than 2 jobs, on average. The jobs may be far apart and they certainly won’t be evenly spaced through the day. Being able to attend 3 jobs in one day given the logistics of travel, client schedules and human biology is a very rare event. To make a living interpreters and/or their employers need to set minimum hours for a booking; full day, half day and a flat call out fee for a very short or very local appointments. The spoken language interpreters have the same travel issues but can also be used remotely via phone – video relay isn’t set up in many hospital and most certainly not available in all departments.
Interpreting companies set up over a decade ago were quick to realise this and within these constraints set their fees and conditions accordingly when negotiating contracts with clients. There is a lot more to this, and many aspects of the interpreter fee drama are still playing out today. But going back to over a decade ago, as the NHS moved over more and more to using contractors for what were traditionally in house services and some of those former NHS employees set up companies that could bid for those contracts and deliver the work they were previously employed to carry out.
NHS Contracts
In many cases these companies, free from the fetters of stifling and inexpert management, provided excellent quality and cost effective services. Some of these companies grew and grew and started to employ commercial managers and directors to help run the growing companies. In other cases businesses were created from a commercial base to get a slice of that sweet tasty interpreting pie. Competition increased and the NHS started squeezing contract prices. In this increasingly competitive atmosphere some of those original care workers and providers were slowly squeezed out for more commercially friendly priced suppliers, corners were cut and corruption (or rather amoral capitalism) started to increase. And so there was a scramble to cut costs and using percentages of potential need rates were reduced to reflect potential rather than quality and timely service from those equipped to carry it out..
A Race to the Bottom
In short many of these commercially friendly companies started to lose focus on who they were, their limitations the expectations of their clients and the reality of who they were affecting. Pearl Linguistic was brought down by an NHS framework agreement that we at appa me ltd thought about submitting a tender for, and backed away from. It was terrible, the hours were too short and the performance penalties ridiculously over the top. Pearl Linguistic should never have taken it on and furthermore as a previous framework with a long history of successful holding the contractor, were in a place where they could and had a moral duty to inform the NHS how bad their contract was. Perhaps they did but took on the contract anyway, we don’t know.
The result – they took the job, let down hundreds of deaf and hard of hearing patients, left the NHS with no services and made 2000 freelancers out of pocket.