Despite my reservations about the attempt to create a complete separation between the various issues, I will address below the issues raised in the state's petition one after the other.
Is there room for a uniform and rigid definition of an employee, which is always the basis for recognition of the employee-employer relationship?
- The demand for a rigid and uniform definition is the foundation on which the entire structure of the petition rests. The outlines of the petition are as follows: there is a uniform and unequivocal definition of an employee, and none of the respondents is included in this definition, and therefore "there is no dispute that we are not dealing with an employee" (a constitutive statement in the Petitioner's arguments that relies on the thesis that there are certain tests that are and are only valid). Therefore, the jurisdiction of the Labor Court has not been established, whose jurisdiction as aforesaid is within the jurisdiction of the Article 24 to the law that requires an employee-employer relationship. Take the assertion that only passing certain and defined tests will provide a certain person with the status of an employee - and the statement that "there is no dispute that we are not dealing with an employee" should not be based on what you will rely on. The state's position brings us back to a view that existed and was adopted by the National Labor Court in the first years of its existence, but has long since been abandoned, both in case law and in legal writing. In Parashat Seroussi - President Barak reviews the transition in which the definition of "employee-employer" was characterized by a universal definition of "Terminus Technicus" that characterized the definition of an employer employee at the outset, to the recognition that it is a matter of "A complex concept that includes various tests that must be given different weight" (פרשת Seroussi Paragraph 6). The transition does not mean that all the norms and tests that were known and accepted have disappeared from the world and should be ignored, but rather that alongside them there is and must also be given space for the developments that have taken place, new concepts, and the "new conceptualization" that serves the social goal that the law is intended to achieve (ibid., p. 827). In his article, he concludes Goldberg, the President of the National Labor Court (as he was then called) discussed the issue as follows: "Many expressions, including the expressions 'employee' and 'employer,' have no universal meaning. As a result, our legal system holds that an expression in the law should be interpreted in accordance with the purpose that the law is intended to serve. This rule has been established in a long list of rulings, some of which directly relate to the question of whether a certain person is an 'employee'. The labor courts have also adopted this method of interpretation. ... In various countries, there is one definition of the concept in the Civil Code, but the experience of those countries shows that 'those definitions do not provide an answer to border cases, and therefore they do not relieve the courts of the need to answer the questions as they arise in the daily life of the socio-economic reality.'" (ibid., pp. 23-25).