Key employment cases for 2021

What key employment cases should be on the HR radar in 2021? We highlight the most important upcoming cases and discuss their impact on HR, including those relating to: worker status, holiday pay, national minimum wage for sleep-in care workers, trade unions and collective bargaining, and equal pay.

We also look at the impact of Brexit on EU case law and the state of play of employment tribunals.

The 2021 cases that we discuss will decide the following questions:

• Are Uber drivers self-employed or are they workers, meaning that they are entitled to basic employment rights?
• Are sleep-in care workers entitled to the national minimum wage while they are asleep?
• Are employers permitted to make direct pay offers to employees "over the heads of the union" when collective bargaining breaks down?
• Should employers include voluntary overtime in the calculation of employees' holiday pay?
• How far should claims for the unlawful exclusion of overtime from holiday pay calculations be limited?
• How should employers calculate holiday pay for term-time workers?
• Are supermarket workers, who are mostly female, able to compare their pay with the pay of depot workers, who are predominantly male?