Universally, workers’ protection is centred on the standard employment relationship (full-time,
indeterminate employment) based on the distinction between ‘employee’ and ‘independent
contractor’; nonetheless globalization coupled with advances in technology and other related
processes such as casualization, externalization and informalization, has resulted in the proliferation
of different forms of work that deviate from the conventional employment relationship. There is
also an increase, worldwide, in the number of persons who perform work outside the employment
sphere because they are labelled independent contractors though in fact they are on the same level
of economic dependence and vulnerability with those who perform work as ‘employees’. It is to
this category of workers that literature refers collectively as ‘atypical employees’ or ‘non-standard
employees’. Despite the fact that there have been moves internationally and nationally to integrate
these classes of worker, it remains clear that they constitute a labour force which is less well paid
and less secure. Most of the atypical employees are included in the definition of ‘employee’ in both
jurisdictions though home workers are explicitly excluded under the Ethiopian labour law.
However, the collective bargaining system does not function to address the problems of atypical
employees in both countries as it does for standard employees.