Agency Worker not 'Employee'

[Thanks to Emma Price of Temple Garden Chambers for preparing this case summary]

The Court of Appeal has handed down its Judgment in the case of Tilson v Alstom Transport, which is authority for the proposition that a significant degree of integration of an agency worker into an organisation is not inconsistent with an agency relationship in which there is no contract between worker and end user.

The Court of Appeal also held that:

• the need to apply to a line manager before taking annual leave is not sufficient to justify the implication of a contract;
  
• there is no need to imply a contract between the agency worker and end user where there has been a breach of a clause of the contract between the agency and a third party providing services to the end user that relates to the agency worker;
  
• where the parties would have acted in exactly the same way if there had been no contract, that is fatal to the implication of a contract, The Aramis [1989] 1 Lloyd's Re 213 applied and, on the facts, the agency worker had declined to enter into a contractual working relationship with the end user.