Part-time employees and workers have the same employment rights as full-time employees (and workers) – you do not have to work a minimum number of hours to qualify for these rights.

Legislation called the ‘prevention of less favourable treatment’ covers part-time employees and workers (including home-workers and agency workers) – and compares them to an ‘equivalent’ full-time worker, i.e. someone doing a similar job on the same type of contract.

• N.B. Job-sharing is a form of part-time work, where a full-time job is divided between two part-time workers.
• Homeworkers, are usually described as people who do practical work from their home and are different from Teleworkers who normally do their normal office work based at their home. Both can be either employees or workers depending on their contract of employment. All workers are entitled to the minimum wage (including Homeworkers).

The legislation covers:

• Pay and benefits, employment terms and conditions (you must receive the same normal hourly rate, and hourly overtime rate, as comparable full-time workers)
• Pensions
• Training and other opportunities (you cannot be excluded from training simply because you work part-time)
• Holidays (you must have the same pro-rata entitlement as full-time workers including to bank holidays), and
• Maternity/adoption/parental leave/paternity leave/sick pay rights (you must have the same pro-rata entitlement as full-time workers)
• Selection for promotion, transfer or redundancy, career breaks
• The only exceptions being if your Employer can objectively justify their different treatment of you.

If you think you have been treated less favourably than a full-time worker then you have the right to receive a written statement of reasons for the treatment – you need to ask your employer for this in writing and your employer must reply within 21 days.  If you are not satisfied with the answer then you can make a complain to an Employment Tribunal. jobs by workcircle

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If you work in the UK Media Industries and have a question about this or any other topic, please e-mail us at workline@freelanceadvisor.co.uk

If you are an Employer and need ongoing professional help with any staff/freelance issues then talk to us at The HR Kiosk (click here) - a Human Resources Consultancy for small businesses – you can retain us for as much time as you need.

Please note that the advice given on this website and by our Advisors is guidance only and cannot be taken as an authoritative interpretation of the law. It can also not be seen as specific advice for individual cases. Please also note that there are differences in legislation in Northern Ireland.