What is a worker? A worker either is an employee (i.e has an employment contract) or has a contract to personally carry out work or services not as part of their own business.
Dailies could be considered eligible workers if they are aged 22 to state pension age and earn over £192 a week or £833 a month (2019/20). Therefore duties around notifications to workers regarding the pension scheme or postponement must apply and they must be informed in writing of how they are affected.
They must also be assessed individually each time they are paid. A company should consider using postponement for dailies.
If they are not paid in the week when the postponement ends then they will not meet the criteria to be enrolled and will be postponed again. If they are paid in that week and they meet the enrolment criteria then they will be enrolled in the scheme.
Cast and Crowd could also fall into the category of worker and need to be postponed or enrolled. The Equity Pension Scheme is a qualifying scheme and can be joined even if the cast member is not a member of Equity itself. To avoid being auto-enrolled into a company’s scheme and potentially ending up with many small pensions a cast member may choose to enrol in the Equity Pension Scheme. Equally a cast member may wish to enrol in the company’s scheme. They should therefore be communicated with in exactly the same way if they are an eligible worker as all other eligible staff members.
