What is an Employee?

Many of the most important pieces of employment legislation do not apply to companies or organizations that have fewer than X number of employees. But what is an employee? There is no simple answer as the definition varies with each piece of legislation.

One of the most difficult things that legislation has had to encounter is the variety of terms and conditions upon which a person may work. Now, besides the part time and full time distinctions, there are independent contractors, on call workers, leased employees, temporary employees, and a wide variety of other types of employees that may or may not be technically “employees” in the legislative sense.

The question “is a worker an employee?” comes with more variables than one could possibly imagine just by looking at that simple 5 word sentence. One of the first questions is whether one should take the dictionary definition that is so simple and clear cut at its face value or start to get into the legal definitions of each type of employee.

In most cases, whether a person is an employee or not is left to the courts. The courts will look to all of the circumstances surrounding a person's work to determine whether or not the individual is an employee or not. The biggest question in determining whether someone is an employee is who ultimately has control over the work that is being done by the individual. If control over the work rests with the worker then he or she is less likely to be deemed an employee. If it is left with the employer, then the worker is more likely to be an employee.

This becomes more difficult when the question is whether the employer falls under a federal statute. For example, many of the statutes require that an employer have 12 employees to qualify. Well if there are 13 people on the payroll, does the individual qualify if he or she has 2 independent contractors? It varies.

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For more information on this topic, or if you have any other employment-related legal concerns, contact the Houston employment lawyers of the Ross Law Group at 713-482-6910 today.