Who is the Employer? – 1

Montgomery v Johnson Underwood Ltd (CA TLR 16 March)

The essential ingredients of employment are a contract of service implying an obligation to serve, comprising some degree of control by the master and an irreducible minimum of obligation on each side. The applicant had worked for a local company with whom she had been placed by an employment agency for two and a half years. In her claim for unfair dismissal on her employment being terminated, the employment tribunal had to consider the whole picture to see whether a contract of employment emerged, but it was important that mutual obligation and control to a sufficient extent were first identified. An offer of work by an agency, even at another’s workplace, accepted by the individual for remuneration paid by the agency, could satisfy the requirement of mutual obligation. Whether in any given situation sufficient control to constitute one party an employer existed, was a matter for the tribunal. In the present case, there was a clear finding by the tribunal leading to the conclusion that any control was at most indirect of how, when and where the applicant performed her work and that was the end of the matter in respect of her claim that she was employed by the agency.