Part I General and Interpretation

1 Citation, commencement and interpretation
1 These Regulations may be cited as the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000 and shall come into operation on 1st July 2000.
2 In these Regulations—
“the 1996 Order” means the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996;
“contract of employment” means a contract of service or of apprenticeship, whether express or implied, and (if it is express) whether oral or in writing;
“employee” means an individual who has entered into or works under (or, where the employment has ceased, worked under) a contract of employment;
“employer”, in relation to any employee or worker, means the person for whom the employee or worker is (or, except where a provision of these Regulations otherwise requires, where the employment has ceased was) employed;
“employment” means—
(a) in relation to an employee, employment under a contract of employment; and
(b) in relation to a worker, employment under his contract,
and “employed” shall be construed accordingly;
“pro rata principle” means that where a comparable full-time worker receives or is entitled to receive pay or any other benefit, a part-time worker is to receive or be entitled to receive not less than the proportion of that pay or other benefit that the number of his weekly hours bears to the number of weekly hours of the comparable full-time worker;
“worker” means an individual who has entered into or works under (or, where the employment has ceased, worked under)—
(a) a contract of employment; or
(b) any other contract, whether express or implied and (if it is express) whether oral or in writing, whereby the individual undertakes to do or perform personally any work or services for another party to the contract whose status is not by virtue of the contract that of a client or customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by the individual.
S.I.1996/1919 (N.I. 16)
3 In the definition of the pro rata principle and in regulations 3 and 4 “weekly hours” means the number of hours a worker is required to work under his contract in a week in which he has no absences from work and does not work any overtime or, where the number of such hours varies according to a cycle, the average number of such hours.