Ravat v Halliburton Manufacturing and Services Ltd [2012] UKSC 1 is a UK labour law case, concerning the test for when workers are covered by employment rights when they work abroad.
... As Louise Merrett, The Extra-Territorial Reach of Employment Legislation (2010) 39 Industrial Law Journal 355, has pointed out, increasing labour mobility together with the proliferation of multinational companies and groups of companies has made the international aspects of employment law important in an ever-growing number of cases... 28.
The reason why an exception can be made in those cases is that the connection between Great Britain and the employment relationship is sufficiently strong to enable it to be presumed that, although they were working abroad, Parliament must have intended that section 94(1) should apply to them.
This was because, as he said in para 36, the circumstances would have to be unusual for an employee who works and is based abroad to come within the scope of British labour legislation.
It will always be a question of fact and degree as to whether the connection is sufficiently strong to overcome the general rule that the place of employment is decisive.
The vehicles which a multinational corporation uses to conduct its business across international boundaries depend on a variety of factors which may deflect attention from the reality of the situation in which the employee finds himself.
As Mr Christie said in the employment tribunal, it is notorious that the employees of one company within the group may waft to another without alteration to their essential function in pursuit of the common corporate purpose: para 53.
That was why it sent the respondent to Libya, even though the actual work itself was in the furtherance of the business of another Halliburton subsidiary or associate company: see the employment tribunal's judgment, para 53.
It chose to treat him as a commuter for this purpose, with a rotational working pattern familiar to workers elsewhere in the oil industry which enables them to spend an equivalent amount of time at home in Great Britain as that spent offshore or overseas.
As Mr Cavanagh put it, the parties cannot alter the statutory reach of section 94(1) by an estoppel based on what they agreed to.
The assurances that were given in the respondent's case were made in response to his understandable concern that his position under British employment law might be compromised by his assignment to Libya.
This was borne out in practice, as matters relating to the termination of his employment were handled by the appellant's human resources department in Aberdeen.
It would have been better if he had asked himself whether the connection was sufficiently strong to enable it to be said that Parliament would have regarded it as appropriate for the tribunal to deal with the claim: see para 29, above.