A nurse in a charitable hospital, a clerk at a cooperative society, a coach at a members' club, a lab assistant at a university — if any of them is dismissed, the very first question their lawyer must answer is not whether the dismissal was fair, but whether their employer is an 'industry' at all. If it is, they can approach an Industrial Tribunal, invoke protections against retrenchment, and potentially get reinstated with back wages. If it is not, they are often left to the mercy of ordinary civil courts, service rules, or nothing at all. This unglamorous definitional question has just been placed before nine judges of the Supreme Court, the largest bench to consider it in nearly five decades.