Employment
In the U.S, the "standard" employment contract is considered to be at-will meaning that the employer or the employee is free to terminate the employment at any time and for any cause or for no cause at all.
Under English common law, an indefinite term of employment was presumed to be for one year. See Toussaint v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mich., 408 Mich. 579, 600, 292 N.W.2d 880, 885 (1980) (for an extended discussion on the genesis of the at-will rule). The at-will rule has its genesis in a rule in Horace Gay Wood’s 1877 treatise on master servant relations. Wood cited four U.S cases as authority for his rule that when a hiring was indefinite the burden of proof was on the servant to prove that an indefinite employment term was for one year. Id. at 601, 292 N.W.2d at 886. In Toussaint the Court noted “…Wood’s rule was quickly cited as authority for another proposition. Some courts saw the rule as requiring the employee to prove an express contract for a definite term in order to maintain an action based on termination of the employment.” Id. at 603, 292 N.W.2d at 887. Thus was born the U.S at-will employment rule, which allowed discharge for no reason. This fundamentally harsh rule was adopted by all states and it was not until Peterman v. Intl. Bhd. of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehouseman, and Helpers of Am., Local 396, 174 Cal. App. 2d 184, 344 P.2d 44 (1959), that the first judicial exception to the at-will rule was created.
The employee may contribute to the evolution of the enterprise, but the employer maintains control over the productive infrastructure, such as intellectual property and business contacts (the former can be particularly important with regards to copyright law, as in "works for hire" -- within the scope of employment and as a function thereof -- can and usually are considered to be authored by the employer, not the employee who actually made them). Many persons sell their labor without having legal standing as employees. These workers are called independent contractors.
Employment is almost universal in capitalist societies, while it was of minor significance in pre-capitalist societies. To the extent that employment or the economic equivalent is not universal, unemployment exists.
Opponents of capitalism such as Marxistss oppose the employment system, but the surrealist movement is one of the few tendencies to actually oppose work.
In general, the word job refers to any discrete activity of economic production. In this sense, a group may divide up a set of tasks among its members, each task being "the job" of the individual it is assigned to.
However, in capitalist societies, the word "job" has become synonymous with "employment". This refers to the long term relationship between a labourer and those who have legal control of the other factors of production. In this sense, labourers talk of "getting a job", or "having a job".
This conceptual metaphor of a "job" as a possession has led to its use in slogans such as "money for jobs, not bombs". Similar conceptions are that of "land" as a possession (real estate) or intellectual rights as a possession (intellectual property). None of the three are recognized in traditional labour economics which emphasizes work, not entitlements or even necessarily royalties, as the basis of rights to receive economic benefits.
Kinds of labour: brain worker, free-work, manual labour, slavery, telework, volunteer, at-will employmentJob