Charles Pigott reviews the courts’ continuing battle to define employment status
In employment status cases there has long been a conflict between a legal culture that gives primacy to written documentation and the fluid nature of the modern working environment, where what happens on the ground is arguably as significant as the formal written agreement.
Last year in Autoclenz Limited v Belcher and others [2011] UKSC 41, [2011] IRLR 820, the Supreme Court gave the clearest indication yet that the courts must focus on the true relationship between the parties, of which the written agreement is only part. That case was about the status of ostensibly self-employed car valeters. They sought a declaration that they were workers and therefore entitled, among other things, to holiday pay.
For most purposes, a worker is defined as someone working either:
(a) under a contract of employment; or
(b) under “any other contract, whether express or implied and (if it is express) whether oral or in writing, whereby the individual undertakes to
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