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Secret agents

22 April 2010 / Charles Pigott
Issue: 7414 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Charles Pigott predicts more uncertainty for agency workers

In order to be protected by the employment-related discrimination legislation, it is normally necessary to be in a contractual relationship with the proposed respondent. The conventional view has been that the contract worker provisions that are present in all the major anti-discrimination legislation create an exception from this rule for agency workers. Contract work is defined (for example in s 7(1) Race Relations Act 1976 (RRA 1976)) as: “any work for a person (the principal) which is available for doing by individuals (contract workers) who are not employed by the principal himself but by another person, who supplies them under a contract made with the principal.”

Where agency workers are involved, the principal will be the person to whom their labour is supplied and the employment agency will be the “other person” who supplies them. The contract worker provisions then go on to provide for a principal to be liable for acts of discrimination against contract workers, in much the same way as if it had entered into

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NEWS
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
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