Employment
Employment
is a contract between two
parties, one being the employer and the oth-
er being the employee. An employee may be
defined as: "A person in the service of anoth-
er under any contract of hire, express or im-
plied, oral or written, where the employer
has the power or right to control and direct
the employee in the material details of how
the work is to be performed." Black’s Law
Dictionary page 471 (5th ed. 1979).
In a commercial setting, the employer con-
ceives of a productive activity, generally with
the intention of generating a profit, and the
employee contributes labour to the enter-
prise, usually in return for payment of wages.
Employment also exists in the public, non-
profit and household sectors. To the extent
that employment or the economic equivalent
is not universal, unemployment exists.
Employer
An employer is a person or institution that
hires employees or workers. Employers offer
hourly wages or a salary in exchange for the
worker’s
labor power, depending upon
whether the employee is paid by the hour or
a set rate per pay period. A salaried employ-
ee is typically not paid more for more hours
worked than the minimum, whereas wages
are paid for all hours worked, including
overtime.
Employers include everything from indi-
viduals hiring a babysitter to governments
and businesses which may hire many thou-
sands of employees. In most western societ-
ies, governments are the largest single em-
ployers but most of the work force is em-
ployed in small and medium businesses in the
private sector.
Although employees may contribute to an
enterprise, the employer maintains control
over the productive base of land and capital,
and is the entity named in contracts. The em-
ployer typically maintains ownership of intel-
lectual property created by an employee
within the scope of employment and as a
function thereof. These inventions or cre-
ations become the property of the employer
based on a concept known as "works for
hire".
An employers’ relative level of power over
employees
is depend