In his December brief Ian Smith rounds off the year & leaves a few treats underneath the Christmas tree
- Private hire vehicles & ‘worker’ status.
- Employee rights while receiving long-term sickness insurance.
- Carrying forward untaken statutory holidays: the obligations of the employer.
As you, gentle reader, read this on Christmas Day afternoon, in your study hiding from the family and other seasonal irritants, you will see that the cases below illustrate several different types of issue in employment law at the moment. The first (on the worker status of drivers of private hire vehicles) is an example of a highly topical area where the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) is still feeling its way on ‘gig economy’ problems as we await further guidance from the higher courts. The second (on an employee’s rights not to be dismissed if that would frustrate his or her continued receipt of long-term sickness insurance payments) is by contrast a very old problem, previously called ‘the PHI cases’, which can still rear up and bite the unwary
