Members: Martha McAllister Ian Poad Mrs E Lawson v Rullion Engineering Limited — 2018

The claimant was found to be an agency worker, not an employee of the respondent, working at Scottish Power UK plc through the respondent under the Project Schedule Pack. The tribunal found there was no mutuality of obligation between the claimant and the respondent. The claimant raised a pay query after learning that permanent incident controllers were paid more, and on 8 February 2018 she emailed Andrew Burnett asking why there was a difference in wages for the same role.

The tribunal found that Burnett raised the issue with SPEN and that, on 21 February 2018, he told the incident controllers that the pay rate due to them was correct. It accepted that SPEN, through Stewart Little, asked for the claimant's assignment to end because she had shared private information, misquoted a manager, and disrupted the team. Burnett then met the claimant on 22 February and told her the contract was being terminated; he said this was not because she had queried pay.

Applying regulation 17(3)(v) of the Agency Workers Regulations 2010, the tribunal asked whether the reason or principal reason for termination was that the claimant had alleged a breach of the Regulations. On the evidence before it, and in particular because there was no evidence from SPEN, the tribunal was not satisfied that the termination was for that reason. It found that the respondent had acted on the client's request and did not need to enquire further into the client's reasons. The claim was therefore unsuccessful and no remedy was awarded.