Employee vs wage earner

21:10 Mar 15, 2019 

The difference between wage-earners and salaried staff was always primarily about status and class. However, as it might be intended to differentiate here between casual or temporary and permanent staff, the only sensible thing to do, in my view, is to ask the client.

21:04 Mar 15, 2019 

There certainly is a valid (even if historical) difference between salaried and wage-earning staff and that may well be what is meant. However, both are "employees", so I think it would be wrong to assume that is the intended meaning.

20:48 Mar 15, 2019 

As you say, it's all a bit academic...
However, back in the "olden days", I have indeed dealt with firms that made an explicit difference between weekly-paid (usually blue-collar) workers and monthly-paid (white-collar) ones.

20:39 Mar 15, 2019 

These are not a normally terms used by companies to distinguish between two categories of staff. So, I think that you need to assume that it's most likely a problem caused by the document being written by someone whose native language is not English and may or may not be Greek. In that situation, hair-splitting about what it might mean seems like a bit of a waste of time.

13:59 Mar 15, 2019 

In the opposition presented here, I would expect 'employee' to mean a salaried member of staff, almost certainly on a long-term contract and probably receiving monthly wages paid directly into their bank account, whereas a 'wage-earner' would be somebody possibly paid by a weekly pay packet, often still in cash, and potentially on a short or fixed-term contract or even a weekly / temporary basis.

13:14 Mar 15, 2019 

I think it sounds like wage-earner would be a casual worker, or temporary/contract worker of some sort.

13:01 Mar 15, 2019 

A "wage-earner" might be a part-time worker or someone brought in from time to time, rather than a full-time employee -? Or someone paid an hourly rate, perhaps, rather than on a salary. I'll be interested to see what other people say!

13:01 Mar 15, 2019 

Employee probably means salaried. Is it translated from Greek, or written by a Greek person?
I'm not clear why both terms are in the singular, but it's probably bad English.