The Employee Shareholder
Author | Pierre de Gioia-Carabellese |
DOI | 10.1177/1023263X1502200105 |
Published date | 01 February 2015 |
Date | 01 February 2015 |
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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