The Employee Shareholder

Date01 February 2015
DOI10.1177/1023263X1502200105
Published date01 February 2015
Subject MatterArticle
22 MJ 1 (2015) 81
THE EMPLOYEE SHAREHOLDER
e Unbearable Lightness of Being …
an Employee in Britain
P  G-C*
ABSTRACT
e aim of this paper is to discuss and analyse the impact of the new category of the
employee shareholder within th e context of the traditional theory of the contract of serv ice
and contract for services. A c ommentary on the provisions of the Growth and Infrast ructure
Act 2013 which heralded the introduction of the employee shareholder category will be
provided in addition to a focus on the implied duties traditionally applied to personal
employment contracts. One of th e themes of the analysis is to assess whether and how th ese
duties will apply to the future hybrid (and obscure) statutory construct of the ‘employee
shareholder’. To provide a comparative analysis, this contribution will also b rie y examine
whether any potential counterpar t of the new British concept exists in Italian law.
Finally, the paper will discuss possible  aws in the British legisl ation concerning employee
shareholders, by taking an approach that is disarticulated from the traditional theory of
employment law. One such issue concer ns the systematic o er of shares and acceptance of
the loss of employee status, which may rend er the EU law requirements of publication of a
prospectus and communication of a redundancy pl an to the trade unions redundant.
Keywords: Britain; c omparison; employee shareholder; EU legislation; new rules
§1. IN TRODUCTI ON
In modern times, t he contract of service is the contractual framework ‘governing’ the
interaction between master a nd servant, as opposed to the less form al contract for services
existing bet ween a worker and an employing entity. From a historical perspec tive, this
* Associate Profes sor of Business Law, Heriot-Watt University.

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