Detailed Category Descriptions and Operational Issues3

Class 3: Intermediate occupations: ‘higher grade white collar workers’

This class has some elements of the service relationship, although overall the form of employment relationship is mixed. The problem here for the employer is not asset specificity but monitoring. Positions in this class exist on the borders of bureaucratic structures and share similar conditions to managers and administrators in terms of salaries, incremental scales and autonomy with regard to time. Typical occupations here include most clerical occupations and administrative assistants, occupations which involve working alongside managers and professionals in ancillary roles, e.g. 3439 administrative associate professionals, 3443 government social benefits officials and 4190 office clerks. There is no career structure comparable to that found in Classes 1 and 2 (other than, perhaps, into supervisory or very junior managerial Class 2 positions). Often these positions involve employees in adhering to and carrying though bureaucratically defined rules with little in the way of discretion but some emphasis on efficiency.