Tribunal denies homeworkers employment rights protection

The National Group on Homeworking and the TUC today (Friday) called on the Government to close the current legal loophole that means that millions of homeworkers are still losing out on the most basic of employment rights.

To illustrate why ministers should publish the results of the DTI’s employment status review as soon as possible and grant homeworkers the same legal rights as employees, the two organisations today released the details of a tribunal case involving a number of homeworkers.

The case involves a group of nine women from Gosport who - despite having worked for up to 14 years for the same company - have been fighting to be paid the national minimum wage for the past five years, and for the right to redundancy pay and protection from unfair dismissal.

The women had been working at home trimming rubber for Industrial Rubber Mouldings, which supplies the finished products to a number of organisations and companies including the Department of Transport, Dyson, Pirelli, Triumph and Raleigh.

When the women asked to be paid the minimum wage for the work they were undertaking, Industrial Rubber Mouldings told them that unless they signed new contracts stating that they were no longer employees but self-employed individuals, they would not receive any more work.

Unhappy with the situation and believing they had been forced to sign under extreme duress, the women, decided to take their case to an employment tribunal. This found that the homeworkers were all self-employed and the women subsequently lost their jobs. Now an employment appeals tribunal has found that although the women no longer have work, they have no rights to redundancy pay or protection from unfair dismissal.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: It is totally unacceptable that employers can deprive individuals of their rights simply by inserting dubious clauses into existing contracts, especially when workers are strong armed into signing away their rights. Unscrupulous employers are increasingly taking advantage of vulnerable groups like homeworkers, agency workers and freelancers. Only when these individuals are given the same rights as employees will bad bosses no longer be able to exploit on such a widespread scale.

Beverley Dew, one of the women who took Industrial Rubber Mouldings to tribunal, said: The law is unfair and unjust. I have been working for this company since 1989 but all this time counts for nothing. The company has penalised me for asking to be paid the national minimum wage. It seems crazy that all my rights depend on a contract that I was forced to sign. I was told the work would dry up if I didn’t agree to sign, but because I did sign, I now have no rights under the law.