Employment status; worker; personal service; substitution. The Supreme Court dismissed Pimlico's appeal, so that a plumber's claims as a limb (b) worker could proceed [50]. He had presented himself as self-employed for income tax and VAT [42]. The tribunal was entitled to hold that the dominant feature of his contracts was an obligation of personal performance [34]. His only right of substitution was of another Pimlico operative [27]. That limitation was significant: the substitute had to be bound to Pimlico by the same heavy obligations [34]. Features of the contract strongly militated against Pimlico being his client or customer: tight control through its uniform, branded van, identity card and control room instructions, with covenants restricting his work after termination [48]. The tribunal was entitled, by a reasonable margin, so to conclude [49]. The holiday-pay sequel is Smith v Pimlico Plumbers Ltd (No 2) [2022] EWCA Civ 70, entered separately.
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Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Limb (b) worker status; dancer; personal service; fee retention. An employment tribunal held a dancer was a limb (b) worker of the bar where she performed: substitution required the bar's approval (dancers arranged cover through a shared WhatsApp group but the bar had to approve it), dancers were recruited by interview and performed personally, and the bar retained fees from client payments, telling against a client-customer relationship. First-instance decision; discussed in Cruz, 'Dancers are Workers' (UK Labour Law Blog, 2020) and Nocella (2026) 55 ILJ 462. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Status; worker; drivers were workers while the app was on, due to control and subordination.
“Critical to understanding the Autoclenz case, as I see it, is that the rights asserted by the claimants were not contractual rights but were created by legislation. Thus, the task for the tribunals and the courts was not, unless the legislation required it, to identify whether, under the terms of their contracts, Autoclenz had agreed that the claimants should be paid at least the national minimum wage or receive paid annual leave. It was to determine whether the claimants fell within the definition of a “worker” in the relevant statutory provisions so as to qualify for these rights irrespective of what had been contractually agreed. In short, the primary question was one of statutory interpretation, not contractual interpretation.”Lord Leggatt, at [69]
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Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Worker Status; substitution clause; trade union recognition; Article 11 ECHR. The appeal proceeded on the basis that the Riders were not workers under s.296 TULRCA 1992: the issue was whether they were in an employment relationship for the trade union rights in Article 11 [8], [10]. That is an autonomous concept, applied through a multifactorial test that looks at how the relationship operates in reality [61]. The Riders' virtually unfettered right to appoint a substitute was, on its face, totally inconsistent with an obligation of personal service, which is essential to an Article 11 employment relationship [69]. The CAC was entitled to find that the contractual provisions genuinely reflected the true relationship [70]. The Riders were therefore outside Article 11 [73]. In any event Article 11 confers no right to compulsory collective bargaining [139]. The appeal was dismissed [74], [142].
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Status (Dutch law); prejudicial ruling: no ranking among the Deliveroo circumstances — entrepreneurship (circumstance ix) carries no different weight than the others and includes conduct outside the relationship being classified ('external' entrepreneurship). The same work for the same platform can be employment for one worker and not another. Collective enforcement under art 3(2) Wet AVV requires individual circumstances not to diverge too widely.
Status (Dutch law); applying HR 21 February 2025, the Court of Appeal set aside the first-instance judgment that Uber drivers worked under employment contracts and dismissed FNV's claims (para 5.40). Embedding, contract formation, remuneration and commercial risk had pointed in general towards employment (para 5.17). For the drivers who joined on Uber's side, entrepreneurship weighed so heavily that, all circumstances taken together, they were not employees (para 5.15): they had invested, bore liability and incapacity risk, worked through several apps and had their own clients (paras 5.14, 5.18). FNV's primary case that all drivers were employees therefore failed (para 5.19). For want of concrete information on individual circumstances the court could not identify any group of drivers working under an employment contract (para 5.35), though drivers working 35 to 60 hours a week in full dependence on Uber might well be employees (para 5.21). An individual driver may still prove to be one (para 5.37).