You first need to establish what your workplace status is. You will
have more job protection if you are an employee (someone working under
a contract of employment). Some employers try to offer work on a self-employed
basis but this will mean that you will be denied many of the rights
outlined in this guide.
Most of the law regulating employment contracts is based on common
(judgemade) law, which lays down the obligations of the parties
to the contract. However, under the Employment Rights Act 1996 employers
have two specific legal duties:
n to provide employees
with a written statement of their main terms of employment;
n
to issue payslips which show how pay has been calculated
This section explains how these rights apply.
YOUR CONTRACT
Provided that you are an employee within two months of starting
work you should be given a copy of the main terms of your contract
regardless of how few hours a week you work. This should tell you
who your employer is and the date when your employment started.
It should also state your pay, hours, holidays, job title and place
of work. You should also be given, in writing, a statement on whether
your employment is temporary or permanent and whether any union
negotiated collective agreements cover your work. Your legal right
to this statement comes from section 1, Employment Rights Act 1996.
If you have to work on a Sunday you should get a separate statement
about this (see next section).
If your employer does not give you either of these statements,
you should contact Massive Youth.
If you are under the age of 18 you are considered as a “minor".
What this means is that your employer cannot bind you to your contract
terms where, taken as a whole, they are not beneficial to you. The
reason for this is to protect you from accepting a contract, which
is not in your overall interests.
You have the legal right to benefit from any of the terms in your
contract and your employer's attempts to change or avoid them can
be challenged. Your employer should not make changes to your contract
without agreement. Some employers will allege that they can make
changes provided that they give you notice, but this is not so and
you should contact Massive Youth
if changes which are not to your liking are imposed on you. Any
changes to your existing terms and conditions should be set out
in a new statement and should be given to you within a month of
the change.
Although you hove a legal right to the written statement, even
if you have not been given one, you still have a contract of employment
if you have been hired by an employer to work in return for wages.
Regardless of the hours that you work in a week or your age, once
an employer has made an offer of work, and you have accepted it,
then there is a contract. The terms under which you have agreed
to work are the basis of the contract. Thus if your employer has
said that you will work for seven hours on a Saturday and be paid
£3.90 an hour, that becomes part of the legal contract.
In addition to the contract terms communicated to you in writing
or orally (usually called express terms) there are other "implied
terms". These are presumed to be in every employment contract even
where they are not expressly stated. For example, your employer
has an implied duty to take care of your safety at work. Another
implied term is that of "mutual trust and confidence". This is presumed
to exist in every contract because without trust and confidence
there would be no guarantee for either party to the contract that
the other would keep their side of the bargain.
YOUR PAY SLIP
Once you have begun working, regardless of the number of hours that
you work in a week, your employer must give you, by your first pay
date, an itemised pay statement which shows your gross pay, deductions
and net pay. This right is given under section 8, Employment Rights
Act 1996.
Your gross pay may be made up of a number of separate components
like basic pay, shift pay, overtime and London allowance. These
are sometimes shown separately on the pay slip. The deductions,
which appear alongside these usually include tax and national insurance,
if you are earning enough to pay these.
For tax purposes you can have annual earnings of up to £4,333 (approx
£83 a week) (1999/2000) before you need to pay any tax. For National
Insurance the lower earnings limit (LEL) is £66 a week (1999/2000).
If you earn more than £66 a week then you would have to pay 2% on
all earnings up to £66 and 10% on everything above that amount,
until your earnings reach £5,833 when you then have to pay 23%.
If you are under the age of 16 you do not pay National Insurance,
although you may have to pay tax if your earnings have taken you
above the tax threshold listed above. If you are receiving a student
grant it is not taken into account in calculating your earnings.
You may also have a deduction made for an occupational pension
scheme if your employer has one and provided it admits all employees.
Many schemes, however, exclude temporary workers or those earning
below the LEL of £66 a week.
NATIONAL INSURANCE NUMBERS
Once you have reached your 16th birthday you will be able to hold
a National Insurance number. This will be with you throughout your
working life. Normally you will be sent the number some time before
your 16th birthday but if you have not received it you can apply
to your local Social Security office, producing documentary evidence
of your right to work in the UK, and you will be issued with it.
If you are a student from a European Union state you can use your
EU identity card to obtain a national insurance number. If you are
an overseas student you should be allowed to work provided that
this does not impact on your studies. You need, however, to get
an authorisation form from the Department of Trade and Industry
(DTI). The Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 makes all employers get
proof of entitlement to work before taking anyone on. Many employers
will use the Nl number as their way of checking on whether an individual
has the right to work.
CASH IN HAND
According to a GMB/NUS survey nearly a third of students working
in term time are paid cash in hand. This practice is very widespread
and is nothing less than an employer-led fraud. If your employers
propose that you should work cash-in-hand they are in effect giving
you an illegal contract which means that you would be unable to
enforce many of the legal rights outlined in this guide. You should
contact Massive Youth to
let it know that your employer is proposing this.
You can also report your employer direct by contacting your local
tax office. They have a team, which deals with employer fraud. You
may also want to try and get evidence against your employer, for
example, by taping conversations or by getting your employer to
put in writing the fact that you are being paid cash in hand.
If you have evidence of serious malpractice in your workplace,
for example fraud, and nothing has been done about it, you will
have legal protection if you "blow the whistle" on your employer.
This protection is contained within the Public Interest Disclosure
Act 1998.
PART-TIME WORK
Part time workers have to be treated in the same way as full time
workers so far as all statutory rights are concerned e.g. dismissal,
sick pay and redundancy. It is not the hours that you work which
determine your rights.
However, what you earn can have an impact on some rights like sickness
pay and maternity (see next section). If your employer is trying
to exclude you from any rights just because you are part-time, contact
Massive Youth.
TEMPORARY WORK
For most employment rights the important question is not your status
- whether permanent or temporary - but how long you have been working
and what you are earning. If a company directly employs you then
you will have the status of an "employee" and be able to exercise
your legal rights in exactly the same way as other employees.
If you are working through an agency, however, the situation is
more complex. You will not be an employee of the company, although
you may, in fact, be an employee of the agency itself, depending
on the agency agreement. If you are unsure about your employment
status contact Massive Youth.
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Your contract