Does the ‘Personal Employment Contract’ Provide a Basis for the Reunification of Employment Law?

This article considers Mark Freedland’s idea, at the core of The Personal Employment Contract, that a unified body of employment law for ‘employees’ and ‘workers’ is both feasible and desirable. It discusses the origins of the division between employees and the self-employed, and considers whether the rediscovery of the worker concept in the 1990s has provided the hoped-for solution to problems concerning the coverage of employment legislation. More generally, it seeks to take up Freedland’s challenge to reconceptualise the employment relationship as a ‘personal employment contract’ covering both employees and the dependent self-employed.