ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the issue of employment status. The traditional model of a contractual relationship between an employer and a full-time, permanent, employee is one that does not match the reality of relationships between employers and workers. A diverse workforce, such as that which exists within the Construction sector, requires a variety of contractual relationships, so that some types of relationship do not remain as ‘inferior’ to this traditional model. Both the EU and the UK Government have accepted that to have a flexible workforce requires that different types of working arrangements, such as part-time, fixed-term and temporary work, need to be encouraged. One way of helping this flexibility is to extend employment protection from those who work on the traditional model to those who work on these different patterns.
