Briefing: Single Employment Status

An IER briefing on the Single Employment Status, authored by Lord John Hendy KC.

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted many of the failings of UK workplace law. Working people found that their workplace rights did not secure their jobs, their incomes or their health. The realities of the so-called ‘labour market’ have reiterated that truth since.

One particular injustice, which came as a revelation to some, is that several million amongst our workforce have only very few of the rights that Parliament has legislated that employees must have, such as rights to the minimum wage and to unfair dismissal protection. This is because “armies of employers’ lawyers” (as the Court of Appeal put it) have constructed contracts that seek to categorise these workers as something other than employees. Disputes over the proper categorisation of workers subject to such contracts have provided meat and drink to lawyers and judges for decades.

This briefing covers, amongst other issues, the legal status of workers, self-employment and bogus self-employment, personal service companies, umbrella companies, limb (b) workers and employees. It includes a Revised Status of Workers Bill, which would extend employment rights to hundreds of thousands who do not currently enjoy them. As Lord Hendy says, “it would protect those who already have such entitlement from the danger of being degraded or downgraded to, or undercut by, workers with fewer rights.”

Listen to more of our expert comment on various elements of the Employment Rights Bill, and ‘Working Life’, our new podcast series discussing the Employment Rights Act, via the IER Podcast.