Gig economy cases are changing the way courts consider employment status, as Tim Welch reports
- A single statutory test requiring an individual to show that they are not working as part of their own business, or professional undertaking , would add a welcome degree of clarity to the law.
There are three categories of people engaged in work in the UK: the ‘employed’, the ‘worker’, and the ‘self-employed’. Being ‘employed’ means you have more employment rights than a ‘worker’ and being ‘self-employed’ gives you virtually none. The gig economy is ‘a labour market characterised by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs’. A common theme of recent gig economy cases is a contract which states unequivocally that the claimant is ‘self-employed’, and terms and conditions which purport to set out absolute freedom. But the courts are finding that such contracts are fictions, not reflecting the reality of the true working relationship.
Who is a worker?
Section 230(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 996 defines ‘worker’ as: ‘any other contract…whereby
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