There is very little which irritates freelancers in our industry more than not being paid on time. And it’s particularly aggravating when big companies do it, given that they usually have ample funds and should know better.

Step forward then Vice, which has recently featured heavily on social media as a company which failed to pay freelancers on time who worked on their production “The Cowboy Kings of Crypto” (for Viceland). Worse still the failure to pay came after repeated promises that said the money would appear on given dates, which then did not actually turn up in freelancers’ accounts. After all the fuss, Vice now promises that everyone will be paid tomorrow but this only happened after the Production Manager got so (rightly) fed up with the delays that he walked off the show.

When asked why the promised payments had not turned up as agreed, Dan Bowen (Vice President of Production) blamed a “clerical issue” for the last failure to pay, but these were all overdue by then anyway. When asked if he would confirm that all freelancers could claim late payment fees, he did not respond.

It is, of course, not up to the company to choose whether to pay late fees and interest or not, it’s a statutory requirement. So if any freelancer wants to claim, they need only invoice and the company must cough up. All details on the gov.uk site.

Hopefully after all the bad publicity, Vice will see the wisdom of paying workers on time for their work in the future. Time (and freelancers) will no doubt tell…