Reflections on the Employee-Like Persons and on Their (Non-)Regulation in Hungary

The world of the workers is changing. In Europe, the national social protection systems have been developed basically to protect the workers in standard employment.[2] But, this protecting system based on the old dogmatic framework of the labour law can’t handle those persons, who are the so called employee-like persons, or globally, the new forms of employment. “People in non-standard employment have always been in a more insecure and precarious situation regarding access to schemes and receipt of insurance-based benefits.”[3] The non-standard employment is a big category, it includes a lot of relationships, such as selfemployment, freelance work and temporary agency work. These are a really high part of the workers in some sectors, such as construction, tourism, media, entertainment, etc.[4] The employee-like persons, which also is a form of nonstandard work, is a category of the new working structures, because these workers are working in similar conditions to the traditional employees, but are only in economic dependence, not in personal dependence. The lack of personal dependence occurs in a lot of creative professions, but also by those relationships, that are based on the modern techniques, for example in the IT-sector. This difference from the traditional employee-status means, that these workers are not protected by the labour law. They aren’t the part of the employee-definition in the traditional labour law, so they can’t use the rights of the labour law, despite the fact, that they are economically dependent from their one, or small number of costumer. In order to summarise, what does this category “employee-like person” mean, we have to list the main factors, that are characterising these people: they are working under a contract, which is not a labour contract, but mainly an engagement contract, special-order contract, or mandate; they have to work personally, they are not