#TIL: What are the worker classifications in India?
By Sreelakshmi R.
What does it mean to be an “employee” in India? Surprisingly, the definition is rather all-encompassing.
The latest Code on Social Security 2020 states that an employee is anyone, other than an apprentice or a member of the armed forces, employed by an establishment for wages, directly or indirectly, implicitly or explicitly, of any skill level. Therefore, the hullabaloo surrounding worker classification in other economies such as the US or the UK does not have quite the same traction in India, be it related to taxation or employment rights, or workplace monitoring. If anything, how we perceive “employee” is the explanation assigned to “worker” in the UK. That does not mean that this definition is without consequence.
In India, we recognise a few different types of work which span both the Census and legal categories of recognition. While the Census collects data pertaining to largely two types of workers- main and marginal, prevailing codes and laws classify workers in many ways.
- The broadest classification of workers is as organised or unorganised/ informal workers. This usually indicates a difference in access to statutory worker protections and guarantees, whereby the former category is assured such benefits and the latter are not. These include a written contract, access to healthcare and retirement benefits, etc.
- Based on validity of contract, workers are considered regular or casual workers, or daily wage workers, or fixed-term workers, or contract-based. Contract workers are typically hired by an intermediary by the principal employer.
- Self-employed workers are found in every sphere, regardless of sector or place of work. This is the most wide-ranging classification of workers, engulfing every type of enterprise owner.
- Consultants are bound to the terms of the contract they strike with their clients, and typically engage in part-time roles requiring a higher skill level such as designer, personal accountant etc. They are not considered employees.
- The Code on Social Security (CoSS) 2020 describes many types of workers largely within the unorganised sector, such as home-based workers, who are paid and engaged by an employer in their own home environment, typically for petty production such as beedi-rolling. Another such category called out by CoSS 2020 is of domestic workers, i.e., those who work in homes of others.
- CoSS 2020 also introduced new categories of workers, in gig and platform work; accordingly, those workers outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship are gig workers, and gig workers who seek work via a digital platform (typically, app-based) are called platform workers.
This is still not an exhaustive list; we routinely come across municipal workers, MNREGA workers, care workers like Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) and Auxiliary Nurse & Midwife in the community level etc. They usually fall under the larger ambit of wage-workers pointing to the vulnerability of their status, despite their perceived utility. Worker classification often acts as a determinant of workers’ entitlements and rarely corresponds with the (in)dispensable nature of the work. This taxonomy debate is, if nothing, a giant reckoning with the need to improve all workers’ conditions equitably.
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