1. Pupil barrister. Ms Rebecca Edmonds, a pupil barrister won a High Court case under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, on 24th September 1999 but this ruling was later overturned by the Court of Appeal (Edmonds v Lawson CA on 10th March 2000 reported at [2000] ICR 567. For a report of the original High Court ruling see [2000] IRLR 18.

Both the High Court and Court of Appeal ruled that Ms Edmonds had a contract with her pupil master or the members of his chambers. The High Court held that the contract was a "contract of apprenticeship". The Court of Appeal held that this was wrong.

The relevance of the "apprenticehsip" point is that apprentices who are over 26 years old (Ms Edmonds was 31) are entitled to the National Minimum Wage. There is an exemption from minimum wage entitlement in the case of an apprentice who has not attained the age of 26 (National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999, SI 1999/584, reg 12).

2. Sub-postmasters and sub-postmistress. After considerable uncertainty and several false starts (see for example the case noted in the Times of 25th September 1999 of Mrs Elisabeth Bain, a sub-postmistress at Tore, near Inverness who persuaded an employment tribunal that she counted as a worker within the meaning of National Minimum Wage Act 1998 s.1 and was therefore entitled to receive the National Minimum Wage) it now seems to be established that a sub-postmaster and/or a sub-postmistress is not a worker for the purposes of the minimum wage legislation but rather are self-employed independent contractors (see Commissioners of Inland Revenue & Ors v Post Office Ltd EAT 2003 IRLR 199, EAT).

In another case the EAT upheld a tribunal decision that subpostmasters are NOT employees for the purposes of the Race Relations Act 1976 (Chohan v Post Office Ltd EAT/284/02 on 29th August 2002).

3. Switching discretionary amounts to entitlements to comply with NMW rules. It was argued unsuccessfully by an employee in a case in January 2001 that his employer should not be allowed to comply with the National Minimum Wages rules simply by transferring discretionary payments to basic wage. The Scottish EAT rejected this argument Laird v A.K. Stoddart Ltd 2001 IRLR 591, EAT. However the position is neither certain nor clear as the English EAT came to the opposite conclusion a couple of months later in a similar case (Bellfield v Aviation & Airport Services Ltd, EAT on 14th March 2001).

One thing which is clear is that if the employee concerned did not consent to the discretionary payments or allowances being incorporated into basic pay then he/she would normally be able to claim that he/she had suffered an unlawful deduction from wages (see and notes at Deductions from wages etc/meaning of ''wages'' ).

For general notes see Minimum Wage/what workers are covered?