Casual workers

Casual workers are people employed as needed or on irregular hours rather than on a fixed regular pattern.

In Canada, the practical shape is familiar across sectors: people pick up shifts when demand rises, when someone is absent, or when the organization wants a flexible pool instead of a fixed schedule. The legal rules behind that arrangement depend on the province or territory, or on the Canada Labour Code if the workplace is federally regulated. There is no single national casual-work rule for every employer.

That makes classification important. Someone described internally as casual may still be an employee with employment-standards protections, not an independent contractor just because the hours vary.

Different elsewhere: in Australia, casual employment is a more specific status with casual loading built into pay. In the UK, the harder legal distinction is often whether the person is an employee, a worker, or self-employed.