Detailed Category Descriptions and Operational Issues2

Class 2: Lower grade professional, administrative and managerial occupations: higher grade technician and supervisory occupations: ‘the lower salariat’

In the case of lower professionals, skills are more readily transferable and less organizationally specific. Hence they do not have the full service relationship but a modified form of it. Most health, welfare and educational professionals (e.g. 2320-40 teachers, 2446 social workers, 2230 nurses, 2229 medical ancillaries) are thus allocated to Class 2, as are 3143 aircraft pilots and 2451 journalists for other examples.

For administrators and managers (and also higher grade supervisors) asset specificity is likely to be high in the sense that people in such occupations use a lot of organisation specific knowledge. Here the modified service relationship derives from the fact that work is more routinely monitored. Of course, people working in these occupations will often have career ladders that, if successful, would take them to more senior positions in Class 1. OUGs 1221-26, production and operations managers, seem to be good examples. All managers in small (10 employees) organisations are also in Class 2.

Higher grade technicians are more similar to lower grade managers etc. That is, it is the degree of asset specificity rather than difficulty of monitoring which is paramount and leads to a modified service relationship. Examples would be 3111-7 computing technicians, physical and engineering science technicians and civil engineering technicians.