Definition of various words.
Section 39
SEC. 39. Definition of various words.—In this Act, unless the context indicates otherwise, the definition of various words used therein shall be as follows: (a) "Employer" comprises every association of persons, incorporated or not, public or private, and the legal representative of the deceased employer. It comprises the owner or lessee of a factory or establishment or any other person who is virtually the owner or manager of the business carried on in the establishment but who, for the reason that there is an independent contractor in the same, or for any other reason, is not the direct employer of the laborers employed there. (b) "Laborer" is used as a synonym of "employee" and means every person who has entered the employement of, or works under a service or apprenticeship contract for an employer. It does not include a person whose employment is purely casual or is not for the purposes of the occupation or business of the employer, or whose remuneration paid by any employer, exclusive of overtime pay, is in excess of forty-two pesos a week. Any reference to a laborer injured shall, in case he dies, include a reference to the persons dependent on him, as defined in this Act, if the context so requires, or, if the employee is a minor or incapacitated, to his guardian or nearest of kin. (c) "Injure" or "personal injuries" includes death produced by the injury six months. (d) "Industrial employment" in case of private employers includes all employment or work at a trade, occupation or profession exercised by an employer for the purpose of gain, the gross income of which in the year immediately preceding the one during which the accident occurred was not less than forty thousand pesos, except agriculture, charitable institutions, and domestic service. (e) "Public employment" signifies employment in the service of the Insular Government or the government of any province, municipality or other political subdivision of the Islands. It does not include employment as public officer elected by the popular vote nor persons paid more than eight hundred pesos per annum. (f) "Partial disability," diminished capacity for securing employment due to disfigurement produced by an injury can be considered as partial disability. (g) "Wages" includes the commercial value of the board and lodging, subsistence, fuel and other things that can be reckoned in money which the employee receives from the employer as part of his compensation. "Wages" does not include sums paid by the employer to the employee to cover special expenses due him on account of the nature of his employment. (h) A word in the singular shall also apply to the plural, and vice versa, and one in the masculine gender shall also apply to the feminine.