Bates van Winkelhof v Clyde & Co LLP
A member of a limited liability partnership can be a worker, and so entitled to whistleblowing protection, because subordination is not a necessary ingredient of worker status.
Facts
Ms Bates van Winkelhof was an equity member of Clyde & Co LLP, a firm of solicitors. She reported to the firm that the managing partner of a Tanzanian law firm with which Clyde & Co was working had admitted paying bribes. She was then expelled from the LLP. She claimed that she had been subjected to detriment for making protected disclosures, and the question was whether she was a worker within the Employment Rights Act 1996, so as to be protected.
Legal principle
The Supreme Court held that she was a worker. Lady Hale said that she worked under a contract with the LLP to perform services personally for it, and that the LLP was not a client or customer of a business carried on by her. Section 4(4) of the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000, which provides that a member of an LLP is not regarded as employed by it unless he would be regarded as employed if the LLP were a partnership, did not prevent her from being a worker. Lady Hale said that subordination may be an aid to distinguishing workers from other self employed people, but it is not a freestanding and universal characteristic of being a worker.
Related cases on employment status
- Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher [2011] UKSC 41, [2011] ICR 1157
- Barclays Bank plc v Various Claimants [2020] UKSC 13, [2020] AC 973
- Carmichael v National Power plc [1999] 1 WLR 2042
- Express and Echo Publications Ltd v Tanton [1999] ICR 693
- Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain v Central Arbitration Committee [2023] UKSC 43
- James v Greenwich London Borough Council [2008] EWCA Civ 35, [2008] ICR 545
- James v Redcats (Brands) Ltd [2007] ICR 1006
- Market Investigations Ltd v Minister of Social Security [1969] 2 QB 173
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