Check your employment status
It is important that you find out what your employment status is and understand how it affects your rights.
There are 3 employment statuses:
- employee
- worker
- self-employed
You only have employment rights if you’re an employee or a worker.
An employer might try to call you ‘self-employed’ when you’re actually an employee or worker. Employers sometimes do this to take away their employees’ employment rights.
If you think your employer has done this you can:
- raise a grievance based on what you think your status is
Check if you’re an employee
You’re an employee if:
- your employer is in charge of what work you do and how you should go about it on a day to day basis (even if you’re left alone to actually do the work)
- under your contract you have to do the work yourself - you can’t pass it onto someone else
- your contract guarantees you a specific amount of work - and you have to do it
Check if you’re a worker
You’re a worker if:
- under your contract you have to do the work you’re given yourself - you can’t pass it on to someone else
- your employer isn’t a client or customer of a business that you run
If you’re an agency worker
If you’re working through an agency, you will usually be a worker for the agency. This means you’ll:
- be sent to do work for another business, which is a client of the agency
- only have a contract with the agency - not the business where you’re working
You can read more about:
Read more about how to check a client’s employment status.