The UK Supreme Court has held that a heating engineer whose contract described him as self-employed held ‘worker’ status for the purposes of certain employment rights.
Between August 2005 and April 2011, the respondent, Mr Smith, carried out work for Pimlico Plumbers Ltd. He commenced proceedings against the appellants in August 2011 claiming that he had been unfairly dismissed, that an unlawful deduction had been made from his wages, that he had not been paid for a period of statutory annual leave and that he had been discriminated against by virtue of a disability. The Employment Tribunal found that Mr Smith was not an ‘employee’ under a contract of employment, and therefore that he was not entitled to complain of unfair dismissal, but that he (i) was a ‘worker’ within the meaning of s.230(3) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, (ii) was a ‘worker’ within the meaning of regulation 2(1) of the Working Time Regulations 1998, and (iii) had been in ‘employment’ for the purposes of s.83(2) of the Equality Act 2010.
Pimlico Plumbers, however, appealed on the basis that Mr Smith was self-employed and not a ‘worker’ – which do not have full employment protection rights, but do enjoy some benefits such as holiday pay.
The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appellants’ appeal. The Tribunal was entitled to conclude that Mr Smith qualified as a ‘worker’ under the relevant provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996, the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the Equality Act 2010. To qualify as a ‘worker’ under the Act, it was necessary for him to have undertaken to personally perform his work or services for Pimlico Plumbers, and that the company be neither his client nor his customer.
The Supreme Court agreed with the Tribunal, in that the dominant feature of Mr Smith’s contract with the company was an obligation of personal performance and that his limited right to substitute another worker did not cancel this out. On the matter of whether the appellants were a client or customer of Mr Smith, the Tribunal’s decision was upheld that Pimlico Plumbers Ltd. couldn’t be regarded as being a client or a customer of Mr Smith’s due to the measure of administrative control they held over their operatives.
Click here for a copy of the judgement and press summary.