Employee+or+Contractor

=**Employee or Contractor**= (Picture source from:http://www.dhh.louisiana.gov/offices/?ID=100) By Wei Wan

Background:What is an employee? What is a contractor?

 * 1) An employee can be defined as a person who is hired to provide services to a company on a regular basis in exchange for salary and who does not provide these services as part of an independent business.
 * 2) A contractor can be defined as or business which provides goods or services to another entity under terms specified in a contract, unlike an employee, a contractor does not work reguarly for a company.

Where does this area of law come from?
The law relating to employee and contractor come from the Employment Relations Act 2000,This Act comes into force on 2 October 2002, "The object of the Act is to build productive employment relationships through the promotion of mutual trust and confidence in all aspects of the employment environment and of the employment relationship. "(Jememy H, Cordelia T, Sally V 2010)



What are advantages and disadvantages of being an employee?

 * 1) Advantages: stable income,house, group insurance, disability income protection, job security, retirement benefits, tuition reimbursement, sick leave, annual leave, and profit sharing.
 * 2) Disadvantages: less opportunity to earn more money, working hour fixed, and strict compliance company's rules and regulations.

What are advantages and disadvantages of being a contractor?

 * 1) Advantages: can control the working time, the contractor can work for many companies at the same time, take any vocation if they want when there is not any work under process, less pressure, and more flexible
 * 2) Disadvantages: no work means no income, take more risks, lots of issues need to be considered, and less protection/compensation from ACC.

Which one is right for you, employee or contractor?[[image:question.jpg width="84" height="104"]]
According to my research, both employee and contractor have advantages and disadvantages, the contractor may earn more money than the employee, but he/she needs suffering more risks. The employee has a stable work income and job security, therefore he/she will not need to worry about those problems which contractor needs to face and worry about. To be an employess or a contractor, all depends on what type of works that you are doing, for example, if you work as a specialist on construction area, then it will be good for you to choose to be a contractor instead of employee, because you are specialist, so you can work for more projects rather than just stick on one and gain more benefits That means if a person with special skills in one work area, it will be better for them to be a contractor, such as: accountant, lawyer, boxer, doctor, private security,etc.If you work as a normal bank staff, an employee contract will be right for you to sign up, in this case you will have more job security and you can enjoy all the benefits above of being an employee. Consider more before you make the right choose without regret.

Where can you find more information?
click on following links to find out more information about employee and contractor. http://www.ers.dol.govt.nz/ who is an employee and who is not? from the: http://www.ers.dol.govt.nz/relationships/employee.html wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_benefit wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_contractor

Refrerence
Jememy H, Cordelia T, Sally V (2010) Principles of law for New Zealand Business Students (4th edition) Pearson pp577