Understanding Worker Categories and Legal Designations: How Do We Classify Evolving Roles?

Worker Categories and Legal Designations

Please provide me with the categories of workers. Is there any act that defines the worker categories according to their work? We have categories based on minimum wage rates, but these only show the minimum rates for different categories.

For instance, consider a worker whose educational qualification is up to the 12th grade and who initially joined as an office boy to assist a computer engineer. Through regular computer use over five years, he has developed the skills to manage the entire office computer system. We are unable to assign him an engineer designation, and creating a new designation is not feasible. Therefore, please provide a list of designations as per the law.

Thank you.

One way to "describe" categories of workers is to base it on "skills" like Unskilled, Semi-Skilled, Skilled, and Highly Skilled. But while this addresses the skill differentials, it does not take into account the "trade" of the workman concerned. "Education" is not necessarily an adequate criterion to categorize workmen since the organization employs them essentially for their skills and then for their formal training (education).

Combining Skill and Trade Differentials

The best way is to make a combination. We build "skill differentials" into the "trade differentials" and specify the requirements of "Education (trade/function), Experience, and Expertise as judged at the time of employment and thereafter! Merely going by the "trade differentials" many times it is noticed that employees resort to restrictive work practices and at such times the "work culture" is not of much help!

Legal Framework for Worker Categories

There is NO law that specifies designations for categories of employees except for the purposes of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, which recognizes various categories as "workman," "Supervisors," and other "non-workman."

Trust this response will help address your problems with a little more confidence!

Regards,
samvedan

November 2, 2012

As said by Samvedan, all trades come under four categories, namely USK - unskilled, SSK - semi-skilled, SK - skilled, and HSK - highly skilled. For better clarity, USK includes helper roles, SK individuals have some experience in the trade, SSK consists of ITI qualified technicians like electricians or experienced masons, and HSK comprises experienced crane operators such as hydra crane and tower crane operators.

Regards,
ASK