To date, a shortage of qualified representatives of blue-collar specialties has formed; people engaged in manual labor with "golden hands" are highly valued today. A young man who is only deciding whether to be a worker or to get a higher education and become an employee needs to have an idea of the differences between one category and another.
Despite the fact that over the past several decades the prestige of working professions has significantly decreased and thousands of young people throughout the country receive degrees in law and economics every year, the situation is gradually improving. The fact is that if no one starts to work with their hands, and everyone is managers, then the production of anything will be simply impossible. In addition, a highly skilled worker can earn much more than his “white collar” peer, while avoiding so-called professional burnout.
The main differences between a worker and an employee
First of all, employees differ from workers in that the fulfillment of their job duties does not imply physical labor. In most cases, the execution of the task assigned to the employee does not necessarily have to be carried out in accordance with some established algorithm of actions. This provides an opportunity for representatives of this social group to be creative in their daily work. An employee can be employed in industry (engineers, estimates, energy), and in the state apparatus (all kinds of officials), and in education (professors, graduate students), and in trade (managers, merchandisers). The remuneration of employees in most cases is a flat salary + bonuses for specific projects.
The working class, on the other hand, traditionally includes all those who earn their living through physical labor. Its representatives are miners, and welders, and electrolysis workers, and drivers, and people employed in conveyor production. The wages of a worker are most often piece-rate bonuses. In order to start your career in one of the working specialties, you do not need to get a higher education - it is enough to graduate from a vocational school (now such educational institutions are often called "lyceum") or a technical school, and in some cases a complete secondary education is enough.
Features of the work of a worker and employee
The vast majority of employees work 40 hours a week, for example, from 8 am to 5 pm on a five-day work week. A worker can have the same schedule, or maybe a shift, in which one shift lasts 6, 8, 12 or 24 hours and can begin in the morning, afternoon or evening.
An employee's place of work is most often an office in which he creates an intellectual product using computer technology and without being subjected to heavy loads. The workplace of a representative of the working class is a workshop, a mine, a cabin of special equipment; there, with the use of mechanical tools of labor, a person creates a really quantifiable product.
Sometimes almost any employee is forced to be exposed to strong emotional stress during working hours. In contrast, a worker at the end of a shift can afford to forget about everything related to his professional activity, but only until the start of the next shift.
