The recent case of Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher and others has highlighted an important issue concerning the difference between employees and workers in legal terms.
Mr Belcher and his colleagues were engaged by Autoclenz to clean vehicles for car auctions. Autoclenz supplied all the cleaning equipment and materials, charging valets 5% of their weekly wage. They [...]

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According to the latest full-year figures recently released by the Tribunal Service, the number of claims made in the year 2007/08 reached a record high of 189,303.
The dramatic rise in cases - up 43% on the previous year - is thought to be due in large part to the ongoing recession. Many of the cases [...]

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The case of X v Mid Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau has demonstrated an important point of law regarding the rights of voluntary workers.
The claimant, “X”, was a disabled woman who worked for between four and five hours a week for the Mid Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) on a voluntary basis. When she first began [...]

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A new poll conducted for the Fawcett Society and UNISON has shown that the overwhelming majority of the British public would support the introduction of a legal requirement on employers to carry out pay audits in order to eradicate the gender pay gap.
The results of the poll were released on October 30th to coincide with [...]

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Usdaw, the shop worker’s union, has found that a shocking one in ten of all shop workers has been physically assaulted at work.
In a special survey of its members, the union also found that almost one in three shop workers (29%) has experienced verbal abuse in the last month, and that one in three employees [...]

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The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) recently upheld a complaint by “Miss J” over an insurance company’s refusal to pay her unemployment insurance after she was made redundant.
Miss J was employed by a large high street retailer. When she took out a new credit card, she also took out Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) to cover the [...]

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The Legislative Reform (Limited Partnerships) Order 2009 was made on the 21st of July, and came into force on the 1st of October. The reforms to limited partnerships that it put in place will apply to all limited partnerships whose registration applications are received after that date.
While limited partnerships were not particularly popular when they [...]

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Almost one in every hundred jobs in the UK is still paying less than the National Minimum Wage over a decade after it was first introduced, according to the preliminary findings recently released in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2009.
The survey found that there were 242,000 jobs paying less than the National [...]

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Although they have been in place for over 15 years, the Commercial Agency Regulations still require occasional clarification in the Courts to determine their precise meaning in specific cases.
One of the most crucial aspects of the regulations which has been determined in recent years is the question of when the regulations actually apply.
So what exactly [...]

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The Royal Mail Group (RMG) has won a legal victory against the Communication Workers Union (CWU) in a case that was not related to the current wave of postal worker strikes.
The case centred on a proposed trial franchise arrangement with WH Smith that dated back to June 2006. The CWU had expressed concern that the [...]

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