Owner Drivers/Self-employed – Your Rights

Being self-employed is both an employment and a tax status. It covers a wide range of people, often those referred to as Service Partners, Owner Driver, OD Franchise working within the Postal industry will be self-employed.

These are some of the main indicators to determine whether or not you’re self-employed:

    • You run the business and are responsible for its success or failure.
    • You’re able to send someone else to do the work for you.
    • You set the price for the work and can decide how and when the work is done.
    • You use your own money to buy business assets and cover running costs.
    • You’re responsible for fixing unsatisfactory work in your own time.
    • You can work for more than one client at once.

You can check your employment status for tax on the Gov.uk website.

You will be responsible for paying your own tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs), so you will need to register as self-employed and fill in a Self-assessment tax return.

Everyone in the UK has the right to be a member of trade union regardless of what type of employment status you fall under e.g. directly employed, self-employed. As a self-employed worker you still have the right to be accompanied by a union representative if you face a disciplinary or have a grievance (many service partner agreements make the self-employed worker subject to their internal disciplinary procedures).

Self-employed people normally don’t have the legal right to in-work employee benefits.

You will still have protection for health and safety if you’re working on business premises and, under some circumstances you have protection against discrimination.

Health & Safety

For further information visit: hse.gov.uk/self-employed

Equalities

CWU Equalities – Self-employment and Protection from Discrimination