'Workman' Under the Code: Worker, Employee and Employer

In one line

A worker is anybody employed in an industry to do manual, skilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work for hire or reward, except the armed forces, the police and prison staff, people employed mainly to manage or administer, and supervisors paid more than eighteen thousand rupees a month.

In exam wording: section 2(zr) of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 defines "worker" as any person, except an apprentice as defined under the Apprentices Act 1961, employed in any industry to do any manual, unskilled, skilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work for hire or reward, whether the terms of employment be express or implied, and includes working journalists and sales promotion employees as defined in their respective Acts, and, for the purposes of any proceeding under the Code in relation to an industrial dispute, any such person who has been dismissed, discharged or retrenched or otherwise terminated in connection with, or as a consequence of, that dispute, or whose dismissal, discharge or retrenchment has led to that dispute; but does not include a person subject to the Air Force Act 1950, the Army Act 1950 or the Navy Act 1957, a person employed in the police service or as an officer or other employee of a prison, a person employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity, or a person employed in a supervisory capacity drawing wages exceeding eighteen thousand rupees per month or such amount as the Central Government may notify.

Why the law has this at all

The last two chapters decided where the Code applies and what it applies to. This one decides who it protects.

The protections of this Code are not for everybody who works. Retrenchment compensation, the lay-off provisions, the right to have a dispute adjudicated, the standing orders: all of them run in favour of a "worker". A person outside that definition is left to his contract of employment and to the ordinary courts.

The line has to be drawn somewhere, and the Code draws it at managerial power. The reason is the reason the whole subject exists. The Code corrects an inequality of bargaining power. A person who himself manages the business, or who supervises others on a salary well above the shop floor, does not suffer that inequality in the same way; he negotiates his own terms and can enforce them by an ordinary suit. So the protections stop where the managerial function begins.

And two questions have to be answered before the line can be drawn at all. First, is this person employed by anybody, or is he an independent contractor working for himself? That is the older and harder question, and the answer is the control test in Dharangadhara. Second, if he is employed, what kind of work does he do, and how much is he paid to do it? That is what the exclusions in section 2(zr) address.