Employees: Those That Make a Business Run

Definition of an Employee
An employee is any person hired by an employer – typically, a worker hired to perform a specific "job". Typical examples include accountants, solicitors, lawyers, photographers, among many other worker classifications. 

Employee Classes
There are differing classes of employee. Some are permanent and provide a guaranteed salary; other employers hire workers on short-term contracts or rely on consultants.

Contributions of the Employee: Labor and Expertise
The employee contributes labor and expertise to an enterprise. Employees perform the discrete activity of economic production. Of the three factors of production, employees usually provide the labor.

Employee Benefits and Unions
Some companies feel that a happier work force is a better one and thus offer extra benefits to improve morale and performance. However, other employers try to increase profits by providing low wages and few benefits. To resist this, employees can organize into labor unions (American English), or trade unions (British English), who represent most of the available work force and must therefore be listened to by the management. This is the source of considerable bad feeling between the two sides, and sometimes even violence.

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