ABSTRACT
An employment relationship is established when an employer and an employee enter into a contract of service. The defi nitions of ‘employee’ and ‘employer’ and the contractual tenets that defi ne the scope of their relationship must be examined as separate issues. In the Commonwealth Caribbean, the use of legislation to provide appropriate explanations of who is an employee is pervasive. However, much reliance on case law has been necessary to establish whether the individual relationship is one of ‘contract of service’ or ‘contract for services’; the latter being characteristic of a relationship between an employer and an independent contractor, while the former is indicative of the classic employer/employee relationship. We will fi rst examine the statutory provisions in this regard before turning our attention to the common law context, considering how the intersection of the two arenas impacts a determination of employment status.
