Photograph: Vuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
If you have a job, are you a worker or an employee? In everyday conversation, it is a distinction without meaning, and the two are usually taken to be synonymous and used interchangeably. In British law, though, workers and employees form discrete categories.
Legally, only an employee, who has a contract of employment, regular hours or shifts, and a guaranteed wage, enjoys full employment rights such as sick pay and maternity and paternity leave. A “worker”, often in casual, irregular or temporary work, possesses some of these rights, being entitled, for instance, to the national minimum wage and protection from discrimination, but is denied others, such as sick leave, protection against unfair dismissal, and statutory redundancy pay. The self-employed have no workers’ rights.
