The Employment Tribunal considered whether postmasters were workers in Baker and others v Post Office Ltd.
The case started in June 2018, when 120 postmasters brought Employment Tribunal claims arguing that they were workers and therefore entitled to holiday pay. In February 2022, as a preliminary issue, the Employment Tribunal considered whether the postmasters were workers. It selected ten sample postmasters.
Each postmaster operated a post office branch under a contract with the Post Office. That contract was either with them personally, or with a company of which they were the director.
The Tribunal found that there were “several features of the operation suggesting that postmasters were in a position of dependence, and that the post office branch network which relied on them was integrated into the Post Office business as a whole”, including:
- that the Post Office dictated the terms of the contract with the postmasters, varied them with little consultation and without the postmasters’ agreement being required;
- the changes postmasters were able to agree were minor and needed justification; and
- there were “detailed prescriptive rules on how and where a post office product can be sold”.
The Tribunal turned to consider whether the postmasters were required to provide personal service. They were not. The postmasters argued that this did not reflect reality, but the Tribunal disagreed. It found that:
- it was contemplated by both postmasters and the Post Office that assistants would be appointed, and they frequently were. The Post Office had a limited right to veto assistants. This meant that it was “difficult to say that substitution was not a reality”. The fact that some postmasters chose to perform most of the services themselves, did not mean that they had agreed to provide personal service;
- the postmasters’ requirement to make sure the services were performed was not the same as a requirement to perform the services personally;
- a requirement to open a certain number of days and for an overall number of hours per week did not equate to a requirement to do or perform work or services personally, because the postmasters were not required to work these hours themselves; and
- postmasters were not required to undergo training, and “[t]he only effective discipline was to terminate the contract”.
Since there was no requirement for the postmasters to do or perform work or services personally, the Tribunal held that they were not workers.
Although only an Employment Tribunal judgment, which means it does not bind future Tribunals, this case further emphasises the importance of personal service, as one of the many different factors that are considered, in determining worker status.
