Employment law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Employment law - Essay Example The focus of this analysis is to evaluate how far the law goes to strike an appropriate balance between legal certainty and â€Å"just decisions† in context of the central legal areas of unfair dismissal, employee status and discrimination law. If we firstly consider employee status, section 230 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA) defines an employee as â€Å"an individual who has entered into or works under (or, where the employment has ceased, worked under) a contract of employment†. The section 230 definition has been criticised for being ambiguous1 and it is necessary to refer to the common law test for defining the status of an employee, which isn’t without its limitations. The starting point for determining whether an individual is an employee is the â€Å"control† test2. This was established in the case if Yewens v Noakes3, where Bramwell LJ asserted that â€Å"A servant is a person subject to the command of his master as to the manner in which he shall do his work4†. However, socio-economic developments in the labour market have changed the shape of employment status, thereby undermining the suitability of the control test as a sole determinant of employment status5. This was further acknowledged by the Court of Appeal in the case of Walker v Crystal Palace FC6, where the control test was given a different slant by focusing on whether the employer had the right to control the background arrangements for the work such as when and where the work was done, payments and holiday entitlements. However, the Walker extension of the control test was further developed into the â€Å"integration† test as propounded by Lord Denning in the case of Stevenson Jordan and Harrison v MacDonald & Evans7 â€Å"†¦under a contract of service, a man is employed as part of the business and his work is done as an integral part of the business; whereas under a contract for services, his work, although done for