Lost Contract, any rights?

[Service Engineer]

Hi

I wonder if anyone is able to advise.

I have worked on a sub contract basis for a company for the last 17 years. Approximately 40% of my total work was for this company. They passed me work when they needed to typically amounting to 25 calls per month. There is no written contract between us although I have payment rates in writing. The company concerned is a large multi national concern.

This company has recently decided to take all the work in house and I have not received any work from them for several months, they tell me that this is due to budget constraints and that I may receive work in the future but I know that the decision is final and that I will not receive any more work from them. I know of several other sub contractors who are in the same situation as me.

Can anyone advise if I have any rights? I have heard that I may be treated as an employee in this type of situation but would appreciate any guidance you can give.

My situation could be further complicated as for the last 10 years I have been a Ltd company, I am the only employee of that company.

Any help you can provide would be really appreciated.

[Eloise01]

Re: Lost Contract, any rights?

No, sorry. Based on what you have said here it was a clear sub-contracting relationship in which they were not obliged to provide you with work (or to be more precise, your company with work), and you were not obliged to take that work. I cannot see any justification in claiming that you were really an employee.

[CleverClogs]

Re: Lost Contract, any rights?

for the last 10 years I have been a Ltd company

Does that mean you now face being liquidated?

[Service Engineer]

Re: Lost Contract, any rights?

Does that mean you now face being liquidated?

Fortunately my company has no debts so that is not a problem.

Thanks for the replies so far.

[alham]

Re: Lost Contract, any rights?

I concur, unfortunately I think you have no claim. Sorry.

[FlamingParrot]

Re: Lost Contract, any rights?

Hi

I wonder if anyone is able to advise.

I have worked on a sub contract basis for a company for the last 17 years. Approximately 40% of my total work was for this company. They passed me work when they needed to typically amounting to 25 calls per month. There is no written contract between us although I have payment rates in writing. The company concerned is a large multi national concern.

This company has recently decided to take all the work in house and I have not received any work from them for several months, they tell me that this is due to budget constraints and that I may receive work in the future but I know that the decision is final and that I will not receive any more work from them. I know of several other sub contractors who are in the same situation as me.

Can anyone advise if I have any rights? I have heard that I may be treated as an employee in this type of situation but would appreciate any guidance you can give.

That could be the case for things such as IR35 which actually don't work in your favour, but not for the purpose of acquiring employee rights. The main reason for businesses to subcontract like that is precisely to have the freedom and flexibility to cope with a variable workload. If you acquired employee rights as a result of such working relationship, businesses would be inclined not to use the same subcontractor over and over again, no matter how good that person may be.

When businesses heard that temporary employees would acquire similar rights as permanent employes after working for the same company for a year, they all started applying the '52 week rule' whereby they got rid of such 'temps' before they'd been there for 52 weeks and got new people in. You can see how rules like that wouldn't always help people.

My situation could be further complicated as for the last 10 years I have been a Ltd company, I am the only employee of that company.

Any help you can provide would be really appreciated.

Offering services a limited company means there's no more obligation to provide you with work than there is for them to buy their stationery from a certain supplier, unless there was an explicit contract between your company and theirs saying otherwise. I work full time and invoice as a limited company, get paid hols, etc. but that's just nice gesture on their part, not an obligation.

[Eloise01]

Re: Lost Contract, any rights?

That could be the case for things such as IR35 which actually don't work in your favour, but not for the purpose of acquiring employee rights. The main reason for businesses to subcontract like that is precisely to have the freedom and flexibility to cope with a variable workload. If you acquired employee rights as a result of such working relationship, businesses would be inclined not to use the same subcontractor over and over again, no matter how good that person may be.

Actually that isn't entirely true. OK, I am being polite... it isn't true at all. HMRC and employment law have entirely different tests and although some of the criteria overlap, that is not really pertinent - it is entirely possible to be self-employed for tax purposes and employed in employment law terms! The later fact that this is a contractual relationship between two companies excludes that as a possible factor, but what you did not know was that I had also, in giving my advice, already gone through several other areas of law in my mind to see if they applied - TUPE being the most obvious. I didn't introduce that fact because it was setting hares running that clearly also didn't apply - but in different circumstances might well have done! Many "contractors" are not, in terms of employment law, contractors at all, and actually do acquire employee rights whether they know it or not. Others accrue the rights of workers, which are not as extensive as those enjoyed by employees, but are still significant. And then it is also entirely possible for the employee of a Limited Company, as this person possibly /probably is in law, to acquire rights as an employee of the company which they own!

Truthfully, based on the information in the post I didn't think any of this applied, and there was no need to go into any further detail because there was one ovverriding fact that was relevant in employment law - they had not received any work for several months. In other words, even if it had been the case that a possible employment relationship existed, or that TUPE applied, they were a considerable number of months out of time to lodge a claim anyway.