Employment Relations
Legal Nuggets
- The Labour Act applies to only certain categories of employees to wit: ‘workers’. Unfortunately, the definition of a ‘worker’ is not as encompassing as it suggests. A ‘worker’ has been defined as any person who has entered into or works under a contract with an employer, whether the contract is for manual or clerical work or is expressed or implied or oral or written and whether it is a contract of service or a contract personally to execute any work or labour, but does not include;
- any person employed otherwise than for the purposes of the employer’s business.
- persons exercising administrative, executive, technical or professional functions as public officers or otherwise;
- members of the employer’s family;
- representatives, agents and commercial travellers in so far as their work is carried on outside the permanent work place of the employer’s establishment;
- any person to whom articles or materials are given out to be made up, cleaned, washed, altered, ornamented, finished, repaired or adopted for sale in his own home or on other premises not under the control or management of the person who gave out the articles or the material; or
- any person employed in a vessel or aircraft to which the laws regulating merchant shipping or civil aviation apply.
- Accordingly, under the Labour Act, an employee falls under the definition of a ‘worker’ if he is employed either for manual labour or clerical work. Notably, the Labour Act neither defines manual labour nor clerical work; thus, recourse may be had to the Common Law in this regard.