A company in a highly competitive creative industry that took on a worker seeking to get her foot in the door and paid her "expenses only" was found in this case to have breached national minimum wage and working time legislation.
In this case, the industrial tribunal in Northern Ireland described a small employer's decision to dismiss a young worker to avoid having to increase her pay from £4.00 to the national minimum wage rate of £4.92, when she reached the age of 18, as "callous".
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has considered the circumstances in which the terms and conditions of employees derive from the "same source" as their comparators for the purposes of the Equal Pay Act 1970.