Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Today in the Lefebvre HR and Employment Law podcast, we're discussing the judgment in the case of Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Groom, in which the Court of Appeal was asked to consider whether volunteers had worker status and were entitled to be paid remuneration. In this case, G was a volunteer Coast Guard Rescue Officer, VCRO, for around 35 years, until his position was terminated following a disciplinary meeting. G claimed that he had worker status, and that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency had breached his right to be accompanied at the disciplinary meeting. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency defended G's claim, arguing he was a volunteer without worker status. There were various documents of relevance to determining G's status, including a volunteer handbook, which said the volunteer relationship was not one of employment, a code of conduct, which required a VCRO to regularly attend training and maintain a reasonable level of incident attendance, a remuneration document, which allowed a VCRO to claim payments for carrying out certain activities related to their VCRO position, and evidence of payments received by G, including payslips and P60s. The Employment Tribunal initially held that G was not a worker, but G successfully appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, which substituted a decision that he was a worker when he attended activities that entitled him to be paid under the remuneration document. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency appealed. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and upheld the Employment Appeal Tribunal decision. The Court distinguished this from true volunteer cases, where volunteers are unpaid and only reimbursed for actual expenses. The remuneration document entitled a VCRO to payments which were said to cover minor costs and to compensate them for any disruption to their personal life and employment, and for unsocial hours call-outs. Payment in compensation for interference with a person's use of their leisure time is the essence of remuneration. The fact an individual is not obliged to attend for work on any particular occasion is not a bar to worker status, and there can be sufficient mutuality of obligation even if the obligation only subsists during the period that the individual carries out paid work. While G was free to accept or reject work, this did not detract from the fact he was plainly a worker when he was undertaking activities which entitled him to payments under the remuneration policy. While many VCROs did not make claims under the remuneration document, they remained entitled to be paid if they chose to claim. Look out for further episodes in this series to stay up to date on all things HR and employment law related.