Commuting is no fun, unless you are fortunate enough to work from home, but imagine the plight of the international commuter. Now at least they may have the comfort of knowing that they have employment law protection, as this case shows.

Since 1996, when the territorial restriction was removed from unfair dismissal legislation, there has been a series of cases looking at how far unfair dismissal protection applies to workers who spend all or part of the their time working outside the UK. Two situations were set out in Lawson v Serco [2006] ICR 250 where an employee could claim unfair dismissal while working abroad:

1. – employees based in the UK, even though they carry out many of their duties abroad – “peripatetic” employees; and
2. – expatriate employees – who both live and work outside the UK – who may be covered by unfair dismissal law in special cases where there is enough of a connection with the UK, for example living in an extra territorial enclave such as a military base or who are posted abroad to work for a UK based business

Are these categories exhaustive, or is it possible for employees working under different arrangements to have UK employment protection? This question of exactly what Lord Hoffman intended his categories to amount to in 2006 has often been debated, but given it was a House of Lords decision this has never been in an authoritative context – until now. Continue reading →