The employee shareholder: the unbearable lightness of being ... an employee in Britain

The aim of this paper is to discuss and analyse the impact of the new category of the employee shareholder within the context of the traditional theory of the contract of service and contract for services. A commentary on the provisions of the Growth and Infrastructure 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 the themes of the analysis is to assess whether and how these duties will apply to the future hybrid (and obscure) statutory construct of the ‘employee shareholder’. To provide a comparative analysis, this contribution will also briefly examine whether any potential counterpart of the new British concept exists in Italian law.

Finally, the paper will discuss possible flaws in the British legislation concerning employee shareholders, by taking an approach that is disarticulated from the traditional theory of employment law. One such issue concerns the systematic offer of shares and acceptance of the loss of employee status, which may render the EU law requirements of publication of a prospectus and communication of a redundancy plan to the trade unions redundant.