Tesco, Asda, morrisons etc are currently being taken to court for equal pay claims because they paid shop staff a lower rate than they paid warehouseman. The expensive lawyers are asking the court to consider whether (as the law states) the work done by a warehouseman and a shop worker is of equal value, or provides an equal contribution to the company.
I'm intrigued by the idea that, if my ex-employer decides that the new rules effectively retrospectively put the contractors I worked with inside ir35, effectively making them employees, then presumably it was unfair to pay me a different rate than them to do the same job. Especially as I was interchangeable with contracting analysts and on more than one occasion was 'swapped' with a contractor as I wanted to do the work they were doing at that time for my personal development.
Taking account of redundancy rights, sick pay rights, pension etc I reckon that only takes about half the difference in equivalent daily pay. And that's completely disregarding the preferential tax treatment for contractors.