ABSTRACT
Under the legislation, ‘employment’ means ‘employment under a contract of service or of apprenticeship or a contract personally to execute any work or labour’.1 The definition is wider than most employment protection legislation, such as the law of unfair dismissal, which only covers employees – those who work under a contract of employment. Most self-employed workers are thus entitled to bring a complaint if they are rejected for work on one of the protected grounds, such as the self-employed sales assistant in Quinnen v Hovells.2 Waite J said that ‘those who engage, however cursorily, the talents, skills or labour of the self-employed’ must ensure there is no discrimination in their appointment, terms or dismissal. The position of purely commercial contracts, where a sole trader or practitioner, or partner of a firm, is contracted to provide services, is less certain. It would seem that tribunals should look for the ‘dominant purpose’ of the contract to see if it is personal or not. These matters were discussed by the House of Lords in Loughran.
