Employment contract in English law
An employment contract in English law is a specific kind of contract whereby one person performs work under the direction of another. The two main features of a contract is that work is exchanged for a wage, and that one party stands in a relationship of relative dependence, or inequality of bargaining power. On this basis, statute, and to some extent the common law, requires that compulsory rights are enforceable against the employer. There are diverging views about the scope by which English law covers employees, as different tests are used for different kinds of employment rights, legislation draws an apparent distinction between a "worker" and an "employee", and the use of these terms are also different from their use in the European Court of Justice and European Union Directives. Under the Employment Rights Act 1996 section 230, an "employee" is anyone with a contract of service, which takes its meaning from a series of court cases that are also applicable for tax and tort law, where different judges have given different views about the meaning of the word. An "employee" is entitled to all types of rights that a worker has, but in addition the rights to reasonable notice