Guide
Worker vs employee: which employment status are you?
Updated
Three statuses, three very different bundles of rights. The label on your contract is evidence, not the answer: tribunals look at how the relationship actually works.
The three statuses
- Employee
- Works under a contract of employment: the employer controls what, when and how, work is personal, and there is mutual obligation to offer and accept work. Full rights, including (after 2 years) unfair dismissal and redundancy pay (gov.uk).
- Worker
- Undertakes to do work personally for someone who is not their client or customer: zero-hours, casual, agency and much platform work. Core rights: minimum wage, 5.6 weeks' holiday, rest breaks, payslips, discrimination and whistleblowing protection. No unfair dismissal, notice or redundancy rights.
- Self-employed
- In business on their own account: multiple clients, sets own price and method, can send a substitute, carries commercial risk. Employment law largely does not apply.
What tribunals actually look at
- Control: who decides the hours, the method, the place, and whether you can refuse work.
- Personal service: a genuine, unfettered right to send a substitute points away from employee or worker status.
- Mutuality of obligation: must they offer work, and must you accept it?
- Integration and risk: whose equipment, whose uniform, who bears the loss if a job overruns, who has other clients.
- The reality over the paperwork: in Uber v Aslam (2021) the Supreme Court held drivers were workers despite contracts saying otherwise; in Autoclenz v Belcher (2011) the written terms were disregarded because they did not reflect the true agreement.
Why it is worth challenging
Status claims are backward-looking: a 'self-employed contractor' found to be a worker can recover underpaid holiday pay and minimum wage arrears; one found to be an employee gains notice, redundancy and unfair dismissal rights. Check your position against gov.uk's employment status guidance, and note that tax status with HMRC and employment status before a tribunal are assessed separately, you can be self-employed for tax and a worker in employment law.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 programme also includes consultation on moving toward a simpler two-status framework (employee and self-employed). Nothing has changed yet: the three-status law above is current. This page is general information, not legal advice.