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A contract of employment is usually defined to mean the same as a "contract of service".

A contract of service has historically been distinguished from a "contract for services", the expression altered to imply the dividing line between a person who is "employed" and someone who is "self employed". The purpose of the dividing line is to attribute rights to some kinds of people who work from others. This could be the right to a minimum wage, holiday pay, sick leave, fair dismissal, a written statement of the contract, the right to organise in a union, and so on. The assumption is that genuinely self employed people should be able to look after their own affairs, and therefore work they do for others should not carry with it an obligation to look after these rights.

In Roman law the equivalent dichotomy was that between locatio conductio operarum and locatio conductio operis (lit. hire of services and of service).

The terminology is complicated by the use of many other sorts of contracts involving one person doing work for another. Instead of being considered an "employee", the individual could be considered a "worker" (which could mean less employment legislation protection) or as having an "employment relationship" (which could mean protection somewhere in between) or a "professional" or a "dependent entrepreneur", and so on. Different countries will take more or less sophisticated, or complicated approaches to the question.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License

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