The applicant, a management consultant was said by his employer to ‘ordinarily work outside Great Britain’ and thus to be outside the protection of UK employment legislation.
Held: The legislation had in ‘deceptively simple-looking words’ thrown up some problems which he did not think Parliament had foreseen. The Act threw emphasis on the contract of employment at its inception: ‘It means that the question whether or not this important statutory right exists is settled at, and can be ascertained by reference to, the time of the making of the contract.’ Megaw LJ: ‘In a case such as the present it appears to us that the correct approach is to look at the terms of the contract, express and implied (with reference, it may be, to what has happened under the contract, for the limited purpose which we have expressed above) in order to ascertain where, looking at the whole period contemplated by the contract, the employee’s base is to be. It is, in the absence of special factors leading to a contrary conclusion, the country where his base is to be which is likely to be the place where he is to be treated as ordinarily working under his contract of employment. Where his base, under the contract, is to be will depend on the examination of all relevant contractual terms. These will be likely to include any such terms as expressly define his headquarters, or which indicate where the travels involved in his employment begin and end; where his private residence – his home – is, or is expected to be; where, and perhaps in what currency, he is to be paid; whether he is to be subject to pay National Insurance Contributions in Great Britain. These are merely examples of factors which, among many others that may be found to exist in individual cases, may be relevant in deciding where the employee’s base is for the purpose of his work, looking to the whole normal, anticipated, duration of the employment.’
Judges:
Megaw LJ
Citations:
[1978] ICR 376, [1978] QB 665
Statutes:
Employment Protection Act 1975 119(5)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Serco Ltd v Lawson; Botham v Ministry of Defence; Crofts and others v Veta Limited HL 26-Jan-2006
Mr Lawson was employed by Serco as a security supervisor at the British RAF base on Ascension Island, which is a dependency of the British Overseas Territory of St Helena. Mr Botham was employed as a youth worker at various Ministry of Defence . .
Cited – Ravat v Halliburton Manufacturing and Services Ltd SC 8-Feb-2012
The respondent was employed by the appellant. He was resident in GB, and was based here, but much work was overseas. At the time of his dismissal he was working in Libya. The company denied that UK law applied. He alleged unfair dismissal.
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment
Updated: 14 May 2022; Ref: scu.238148