The Working Time Regulations give workers the right to four weeks' annual holiday. But who exactly is a worker? In the case of Redrow Homes (Yorkshire) Ltd v Wright; Redrow Homes (NW) Ltd v Roberts & Ors (2004, IRLR 720), the Court of Appeal has said that contract bricklayers are included in the definition.

What were the basic facts?

Mr Wright worked for Redrow as a bricklayer for six months on two of its sites in West Yorkshire, along with another bricklayer, Mr Milner. The company provided the men with the bricks, pre-mixed mortar, a fork-lift truck and driver, scaffolding and normally one labourer per site. Mr Wright and Mr Milner provided their own hand tools.

They were given a set of drawings and were subject to a building programme. Apart from an obligation to conform to the building programme and to the daily outside limits of time, they could regulate their hours and work to suit themselves.

Each week, they submitted a claim for payment indicating how the payment should be divided between them. These were made every week into each of their bank accounts. Similar facts applied to Mr Roberts and his fellow applicants, except that the site was in the north west of England.

The applicants accepted the offer of work on the basis of an official document that set out a number of conditions. Condition 6 said the men were required to 'provide sufficient labour to maintain the progress laid down from time to time by the company, and [to] supply such labour with all necessary tools and equipment.'

It further required that 'on each site where the work is in progress the contractor must maintain a competent foreman or chargehand who has complete control of all labour engaged on any work.'

Were they workers?

Under the regulations, a worker means someone who has entered into or works under either:

  • a contract of employment, 
    or 
  • any other contract under which the individual undertakes to do or perform personally any work or services for another party to the contract who is not a client or customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by the individual

The case hinged on whether the bricklayers had undertaken to do the work specified in the contract personally. The men maintained that they worked under a contract whereby each of them undertook to do the work personally for Redrow. Which they all did.

Redrow argued that there was no contractual obligation on any of the men to do the work 'personally'. It pointed to condition 6 which was an express term of the contract which stated quite clearly that the work could be done by other people. The requirements on the contractor stipulated in condition 6 were inconsistent with a personal obligation.

What did the Court of Appeal conclude?

The appeal court decided that both the employment and the appeal tribunals were right to find that the bricklayers were workers within the meaning of the regulations.

It said that there was an obligation on the applicants to do the work personally and that was the intention of the parties when the contracts were made.

Because the contracts were drafted on the basis of 'one size fits all', some clauses clearly did not apply to all workers at all times.

In these contracts, it said that condition 6 (allowing others to do the work) was not intended to be included.

The court pointed to the way that Redrow paid the men, saying that this 'pointed strongly in the direction of contracts with individual bricklayers to do the work personally.'

It said it was clear that there was an obligation on the applicants to do the work personally.

The company contracted with the applicants personally, they were paid individually and the items of work specified were not beyond the capacity of the applicants to do themselves.