Enforcing your Employee Rights

When it comes to taking a stand over your rights as a worker or employee, you need to know exactly what those rights. And the first step in that process is to find out what sort of employee you are, as many of the rights depend on that.

What Kind of Worker Are You?

At first glance it's easy to assume that we all know what kind of worker we are, but it's not that simple. For the purposes of work-related legislation, there are three main categories:

• Employee – someone employed by a company, on their books, and with an open-ended or fixed-term employment contract, working full-time or part-time.
• Worker – all other workers except the self-employed, for example, some freelancers, casual workers and agency workers.
• Self-employed – working for yourself for a variety of different companies or people.

Employees get the best protection in terms of their rights, and workers get the core rights. If you are not sure which category you fit into, there is an online questionnaire on the government's direct.gov.uk website that can help you.

Try the Informal Approach

If you believe that you are being denied your rights, it's worth trying to sort it out informally as it could be that the company simply doesn't understand the law or their obligations. This is particularly true in smaller organisations where there may not be a trained human resources professional to help them do this. If this is the case then with luck, talking the issue over may be enough to get it put right.

Then Take Further Action

If it turns out that the organisation is aware of what they are doing, it'll be either because they think they can get away with it, or they believe in a different interpretation of the regulations. In both cases, the way forward will be to take out a Grievance Procedure to follow it through and determine the outcome. If you still believe that your rights are being restricted, you can take it to an Employment Tribunal who will make an impartial but legally binding decision on the matter.

But what of strikes and Taking Industrial Action? With the exception of wildcat strikes (unofficial strikes with no apparent leader), industrial action has to be backed up by a trade union and strikes are only allowed after a secret postal ballot after seven days notice to union members and employers. This has removed much of the immediacy of strike action and made unions more reluctant to strike, as a postal ballot is more expensive than a show of hands at a site. On the other hand, it has removed the tendency for members to be intimidated into voting in a particular way.

Trade Unions

Employees and workers who are members of a trade union are likely to be at an advantage in situations where rights are being eroded, as they can call on the strength of the union to support them. This doesn't necessarily mean industrial action though. Unions are a great source of free advice about employment issues and, if you get into a dispute and they agree that your stance is correct, then they will back you, often to the extent of providing legal advice at a tribunal.