HOER Rule No.7: Criteria for determining classification of railway servants

7.    Criteria for determining classification of railway servants-

(1)   Continuous – All employments of Railway servants except those excluded from the purview of the Hours of Employment Regulations are assumed to be `Continuous’. Thereafter, on the basis of factual job analysis, the employment may be classified either as ‘intensive’ or ‘essentially intermittent’, as the case may be.

(2)   Intensive – The two important factors in declaring an employment as `Intensive’ under clause (d) of Section – 130 of the Act are;

(i)    Strenuous nature of the work tending to cause mental or physical strain; and

(ii)    Continuous application to such work with little or no periods of relaxation.

Explanation-I: The term’ continued concentration’ in clause (d) of the Section – 130 is intended to convey that the attention demanded of the Railway servant concern for a particular nature of job should be exclusive not to allow any other thought or idea to enter the mind and must be of such nature as to cause strain (physical or mental or both) upon the Railway servant concerned as a result of continuous application to such work over certain period without reasonable periods of respite. Thus, having regard to the entire period of duty and nature of work, the prescribed authority shall before declaring any employment as ‘Intensive’, satisfy itself that the above factors are present in the job concerned. In other words, the prescribed authority shall consider whether the job is of such a character that it demands continued concentration without any reasonable periods of relaxation.

Explanation-II: Factor (ii) should be considered to have been satisfied where the periods of rest, inaction or relaxation do not aggregate 6 hours or more in a cycle of 24 hours or one hour or more in a shift of 8 hours.

(3)   Essentially Intermittent – The work of an employee is to be regarded as essentially intermittent if his daily duty hours which should be assumed to be twelve hours per day include;

(a)   One period of inaction of not less than one hour, or two such periods of no-less than half an hour each, and

(b)   Various periods of inaction including the period of inaction specified in clause (a) aggregating 50 per cent or more, during which he is not generally called upon to display either physical activities or sustained attention.

Note: In assessing the work-load of the ‘Essentially Intermittent’ classification in accordance with sub-section (b) of Section-130, periods of inaction of less than 5 minutes shall be ignored.

[Authority: RBE No.131/2005, No.E(LL)2001/HER/9, 09.08.2005]