This is the first question in almost every termination file, because the answer decides which forum you go to and what you can ask for. Since the four labour codes came into force on 21 November 2025, the word is "worker" rather than "workman", and the definition sits in Section 2 of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020.
The exclusions, which are where the argument happens
The same clause then carves out four categories. Two of them matter to office employees.
- A person employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity. The word doing the work here is "mainly". A stray managerial task does not take you out.
- A person employed in a supervisory capacity drawing wages exceeding eighteen thousand rupees a month, or such other amount as the Central Government may notify. Note the structure: the wage cap applies only to supervisory staff. It does not rescue a manager, and it does not exclude a clerical or technical employee however much that person earns.
- Members of the armed forces, and persons employed in the police service or as officers or employees of a prison, are outside the definition altogether.
Because the threshold is expressed as a figure that the Central Government may replace by notification, check the notification in force rather than quoting the number from a blog post. The figure written into the Code is Rs 18,000; whether a higher amount has been notified is a question of fact on the date your dispute arose.
The Code on Wages, 2019 has its own definition of "worker" with its own supervisory cut off, set at fifteen thousand rupees a month, again subject to notification. The two codes are not interchangeable, and a Rs 16,000 supervisor can be a worker for the Industrial Relations Code and outside the wage Code's worker definition on the same facts. Read whichever Code gives the remedy you actually want. Our overview of what the four labour codes changed for employees sets the two definitions side by side.
The test the courts apply
Designation is not decisive, and Indian industrial adjudication has said so for decades. The enquiry is into the dominant nature of the duties actually performed. The questions that carry weight are practical ones:
- Can you appoint, dismiss or discipline anyone
- Can you sanction leave, approve expenses or sign off appraisals that bind the company
- Do you allocate work and control how subordinates do it, or do you only report on it
- Can you commit the employer contractually, or bind it to a customer
- Do you set policy or budgets, or do you execute someone else's
- How is your time actually spent, hour for hour, in a normal week
An employee who answers no to all of these is very likely a worker whatever the visiting card says. Our note on whether you count as a worker under the Industrial Relations Code works through the reported categories, including team leads, quality analysts, field engineers and branch staff.
Why the answer matters so much
If you are a worker, the Code gives you conditions precedent to retrenchment, a rule about the order of retrenchment within a category, a right of preference in re-employment, protection against listed unfair labour practices, conciliation before a conciliation officer and adjudication by an Industrial Tribunal, which can order reinstatement. If you are not a worker, none of that is available and your case is a contract case in a civil court, where reinstatement is not ordinarily granted because a contract of personal service is not specifically enforced. The remedy narrows to money.
For a shop, office or commercial establishment in Karnataka, the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961 survives the codes, and its Section 39 gives an employee with six months of continuous service a right of appeal against removal or dismissal without reasonable cause. That route does not require you to win the "worker" argument. But it has an exclusion of its own: the Act does not apply to persons occupying positions of management in an establishment. So a genuine manager is outside both doors, and the honest answer for a genuine manager is a negotiated exit.
What to assemble before anyone argues about it
Status is proved by documents, not adjectives. Collect the appointment letter and every revision, the job description as issued, your appraisal forms including the section describing your responsibilities, the organisation chart, any approval matrix or delegation of authority, and a fair sample of your own emails showing what you spent the week doing. If you never had a subordinate, say so and show the chart. If you approved leave only by forwarding a request upward, keep the forward. Our guide on wrongful termination and employee rights in India sets out how the status question is pleaded and what the tribunal looks for.
One caution on timing. Conciliation cannot be held more than two years after the dispute arose, and an application to the Tribunal must follow within ninety days of receiving the conciliation officer's failure report. Settling the status question is not a reason to let those periods run.