Employee (Meaning and Explanation)

We explain what an employee is, its characteristics and differences with a worker. In addition, public and private employees.

What is an employee?

An employee is the party involved in an employment contract who performs work in exchange for salary. In this it differs from the other party involved in the contract: the employer, who is the one who provides both the work and the financial remuneration. That is, an employee is someone who regularly performs a paid task (that is, he has a job).

The employees constitute the workforce of different companies and organizations that exist. Therefore, they are in charge of driving forward their productive, administrative and other processes.

So all types of workers are considered employees: workers, office workers, messengers, editors, coordinators, supervisors, as long as they are part of an organization for which they work and from which they receive, in exchange, an established payment.

Relationships between employees and employers are usually established by a mutually agreed upon contract (verbal or written), and are also supervised by law. In this way, no employee should work in conditions that are unworthy, unfairly remunerated or that are to their personal detriment.

State entities are in charge of ensuring that this is the case, but unions and trade associations also have the strength to negotiate the terms of employment with their respective employers.

Characteristics of an employee

The general characteristics of an employee are the following:

Perform punctual and regular work for another person or organization in exchange for financial remuneration. This relationship can be formal or informal, depending on whether it is governed by a signed contract or not.
You can dedicate yourself to productive, administrative or logistical tasks with a greater or lesser degree of autonomy and specialization. The higher the latter, the higher the salary compensation received.
You can be fired from your position which means that the employer terminates the employment relationship. In turn, the employee can resign from the job, ending the employment relationship himself.
Can be used both in private organizations (for-profit companies) as public or NGO (non-profit).
can be public employees or private employees depending on whether your employer is the State, or a private organization.

Difference between employee and worker

worker employee — Self-employed workers are not employees since they do not have a permanent employer.

All employees are, in one way or another, workers: They perform a job and are financially compensated in exchange for their time and effort. However, Not all workers are necessarily employees: some of them perform piecework, that is, autonomously or freelance.

These workers do not have an employer, but are hired for temporary jobs by the highest bidder, or they carry out some economic activity entirely on their own, that is, they are their own bosses. In this case, we cannot call them employees, but rather self-employed workers.

Public employee and private employee

Employees can be classified into:

Public employees: They are those who carry out their work in a public organization (belonging to the State).
Private employees: They are those who work in a private organization (belonging to third parties).

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In general, both cases are governed by the provisions of their contracts and labor laws, without further distinction between them. However, since it is not for profit, The public work structure can in some cases be much more generous than the private one with the employee.

This means that public employees (generally considered civil servants) enjoy certain privileges, but in exchange they are also subject to stricter regulations, greater ethical surveillance (against corruption) and the cuts and modifications that they may make to the structure of the State. the new governments of the country.

Apart from that, there is no major difference between public employees and private employees: the former are government employees, the latter are third-party employees.

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