“…no guarantee that Match Officials on the List will be offered any appointments to matches and Match Officials are not obliged to accept 20 any appointments to matches offered to them.”
“The Football Association, Premier League and Football League will set the fees and expenses for matches in their individual Competitions. Match Officials will be advised on the amount and claiming 40 procedures separately.”
“9. Where the contract…is to be gleaned from a mixture of written documents and working practices, an appellate court should not readily interfere with the determination of the first instance court. Absent 30 some misdirection from the tribunal, it can only do so if no reasonable tribunal, properly directing itself, could have reached the decision it did.”
“Regard must be had to the nature of the obligations mutually entered into to determine whether a contract formed by the 10 exchange of those obligations is one of employment, or should be categorised differently.”
“On reflection, it is clear that the last sentence of paragraph 14 [of Stephenson] is too sweeping. Control is not the only issue. Even where the work-wage relationship is established and there is substantial 15 control, there may be other features of the relationship which will entitle a tribunal to conclude that there is no contract of employment in place even during an individual engagement. O'Kelly and Ready Mixed provide examples.”
“sometimes it means that there are no obligations of any kind, and sometimes it means there were no obligations of the kind necessary to 35 establish a contract of employment.”
“The servant must be obliged to provide his own work and skill. 35 Freedom to do a job either by one’s own hands or by another’s is inconsistent with a contract of service, though a limited or occasional power of delegation may not be.”
“For the obligation required of an employer we were referred to old cases where the courts had held that justices had jurisdiction to convict and punish workmen for breaches of contracts to serve masters under the statute 4 Geo. 4, c. 34. For that purpose the court had to decide that 10 there was mutuality of obligation, an obligation on the master to provide work as well as wages, complementing an obligation on the servant to perform the work: Reg. v. Welch (1853) 2 E. & B. 357; Bailey Case (1854) 3 E. & B. 607 and Whittle v. Frankland (1862) 2 B. & S. 49. But later cases have shown that the normal rule is that a 15 contract of employment does not oblige the master to provide the servant with work in addition to wages: Collier v. Sunday Referee Publishing Co. Ltd. [1940] 2 K.B. 647, 650, per Asquith J. An obligation to provide work was not implied by this court in a salesman's contract: Turner v. Sawdon & Co. [1901] 2 K.B. 653; it was 20 in a pieceworker's contract: Devonald v. Rosser & Sons [1906] 2 K.B. 728.”
“It is true that a contract of employment does not necessarily, or perhaps normally, oblige the master to provide the servant with work. Provided I pay my cook her wages regularly she cannot complain if I choose to take any or all of my meals out.”
“I would, for my part, accept that the mutual obligations required to found a global contract of employment need not necessarily and in 10 every case consist of obligations to provide and perform work. To take one obvious example, an obligation by the one party to accept and do work if offered and an obligation on the other party to pay a retainer during such periods as work was not offered would in my opinion, be likely to suffice. In my judgment, however, as I have already indicated, 15 the authorities require us to hold that some mutuality of obligation is required to found a global contract of employment.”
“Although we accept that there is room for the obligation resting upon 30 an employer to vary, as between the provision of work, payment for work, retention upon the books, or the conferring of some benefit which is non-pecuniary, we cannot see that such elastic as there may be in the idea of mutuality of employment obligations can be stretched so far that it avoids the necessity for the would be employee to be obliged 35 to provide his work, personally.”
“The cases indicate, and (as I recall) Mr Devonshire accepted, that the mutuality requirement for a contract of employment to exist would be satisfied by a contract which provided for payment (in the nature of a retainer) for hours not actually worked. It is only where there is both 35 no obligation to provide work and no obligation to pay the worker for time in which work is not provided that the want of mutuality precludes the existence of a continuing contract of employment. See especially the Clark and Stevedoring & Haulage cases…”
“whether the ambit of the substitution clause, purposively construed in the context of the contract as a whole, is 25 so wide as to permit, without breach of contract, the contractor to decide never personally to turn up for work at all.”
“…if the reality of the situation is that no one seriously expects that a worker will seek to provide a substitute, or refuse the work offered, the fact that the contract expressly provides for these unrealistic possibilities will not alter the true nature of the relationship. But if 30 these clauses genuinely reflect what might realistically be expected to occur, the fact that the rights conferred have not in fact been exercised will not render the right meaningless.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, there is no obligation on you to provide the Services to Addison Lee or to any Customer at any time or for any minimum number of hours per day/week/month. Similarly, there is no obligation on Addison Lee to provide you 10 with a minimum amount of, or any, work at all.”
“…it is difficult to suppose that either side engaged in these arrangements in the belief that the other undertook no obligation at all. 30 No honest driver would put the Respondent to the expense of considering his application to join, checking his credentials, training him and putting him on its system unless he was undertaking to do some work for the Respondent; and the Respondent, as an honest and reputable company, would not encourage drivers to commit very 35 substantial time and money to its training and to the hire of a vehicle if it was not undertaking to put them on its system and give them a fair opportunity of obtaining bookings. These obligations are not spelt out on either side within the Driver Agreement; but it is difficult to believe that they did not exist. We consider that the ET, applying the "realistic 40 and worldly wise" approach mandated by Autoclenz, was entitled to reach the conclusion it did.”
“it is in my judgment absurd to suppose that a leader could, because of Condition 10, first 25 agree to conduct a series of meetings and then, without notice to Weight Watchers, simply fail to attend to take any of them, without a breach of contract.”
“This means some contractual right of control, in the sense of the employer having the right to step in, even if that right is not exercised in practice and even if the individual is engaged to exercise his or her own judgment about how to do the work: see White and another v 40 Troutbeck SA (EAT) at [40] to [42].”
"… a false criterion is involved in the view that if, because the work to be done involves the exercise of a particular art or special skill or individual judgment or action, the other party could not in fact control 15 or interfere in its performance, that shows that it is not a contract of service but an independent contract…"