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THE SYSTEMATIC MISCLASSIFICATION OF WORKERS AS
MANAGERIAL EMPLOYEES UNDER BANGLADESH LABOUR
LAW AND LESSONS FROM SINGAPORE
SAQUIB RAHMAN & RAGIB SHAHRIAR*
ABSTRACT
The Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 establishes a foundational binary: employees classified as
“workers” attract the full suite of statutory protections, while those categorized as “managerial
employees” do not. This definitional divide, though doctrinally defensible, has become a vector
for systematic exploitation. Organizations across Bangladesh, spanning the private sector, state-
linked enterprises, and commercial banks, routinely assign inflated designations to otherwise
ordinary employees, thereby avoiding liability under the Act and depriving employees of
fundamental entitlements including overtime pay, termination benefits, and access to labour
courts. The judiciary has consistently emphasized that substance must prevail over title, holding
that the nature and scope of actual functions determine an employee’s legal status. However, in
the absence of a structured statutory framework, judicial responses remain reactive and case-
specific, offering limited systemic protection. This article examines the legal framework, patterns
of misclassification, and judicial responses in Bangladesh, and compares them with the approach
adopted under Singapore’s Employment Act. It proposes doctrinal reforms and clearer ex ante
guidance to reduce abuse and enhance legal certainty.
Keywords: Labour Law, Workers, Managerial Employees, Bangladesh, Singapore,
Misclassification.
I. INTRODUCTION
The relationship between law and labour in Bangladesh is not merely a technical or
administrative matter; it is a question of power. Bangladesh’s workforce, numbering over seventy
million, is concentrated in sectors ranging from ready-made garments and textiles to banking,
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telecommunications, and private educational institutions.
1
The formal labour market is regulated
principally by the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, which consolidated earlier fragmented labour
legislation into a single legal code and reflects Bangladesh’s engagement with ILO-based labour
standards.
2
The Act, and its subsequent refinement through the Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015,
represents the most ambitious attempt yet to codify the rights of workers and impose binding
obligations on employing organizations.
3
Yet the protective architecture of the Act contains a structural fault. The statutory definition of
‘worker’ in section 2(65) of the Act encompasses a broad range of employees, including those who
are skilled, unskilled, manual, clerical, and technical, but explicitly excludes those employed
‘mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity.’
4
This exclusion, reasonable in principle, has
in practice become a tool of evasion. Organizations operating within Bangladesh’s deeply
asymmetric labour market,
5
where unemployment pressure depresses bargaining power and
awareness of statutory rights is low, have discovered that by assigning managerial-sounding
designations to employees, they can shield themselves from the Act’s entire regime of protections.
6
Employees so designated find themselves unable to access labour courts, unable to claim overtime,
unable to invoke termination protections, and unable to enforce the maternity, health, and safety
provisions that Parliament intended to be universal among covered workers.
7
This phenomenon, the deliberate or opportunistic misclassification of workers as managerial
employees, is the central subject of this article. It is not a marginal practice. As the volume of
reported cases before Bangladesh’s Labour Courts and appellate bodies demonstrates,
* Saquib Rahman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Law at North South University, and Ragib Shahriar is a
Fourth-year LL.B. student in the same department.
1
Kohinur Aktar, Touhidul Islam, Md Minhaz Uddin, and Omar Faruk, ‘Decent Work and inclusive economic growth:
Bangladesh perspective’ (2020) 11(16) Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development 11; International Labour
Organization, Bangladesh Employment and Environmental Sustainability Factsheet (November 2022) 2.
2
Hassan Faruk Al Imran, ‘Definition of Workers and Application of the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006: An Appraisal’
(2020) 9(1) E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies 34; Muhammod Shaheen Chowdhury,
‘Compliance with Core International Labor Standards in National Jurisdiction: Evidence from Bangladesh’ (2017)
68(1) Labor Law Journal 78, 80.
3
Al Imran, above note 2, 34–37; Fatemaa Waariithah Ahsan and Priya Ahsan Chowdhury, ‘Modern Day Slavery in
the Tea Gardens of Bangladesh: Abolished in Law, Persisting in Fact’ (2021) 2(1) Journal of International Law and
Comity 5.
4
Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, s 2(65).
5
Duncan Campbell and Ishraq Ahmed, ‘The labour market in developing countries’, in Perspectives on labour
economics for development (ILO, 2013).
6
Al Imran, above note 2, 45–46.
7
Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, ss 26, 46, 51–78, 108, 213.
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misclassification has become a recurring feature of employment disputes across industries. The
Supreme Court of Bangladesh has, over several decades, developed a body of doctrine rooted in
the principle of ‘substance over title’: that the actual nature of an employee’s functions, not their
designation, must determine their legal status. This doctrine is sound, but its ad hoc application
through individual cases has not produced the systematic clarity that the labour market requires.
The central argument of this article is as follows. The definitional ambiguity in Bangladesh’s
Labour Act, though partially ameliorated by judicial doctrine and Rule 2(1) (Nio) of the Labour
Rules 2015, remains insufficiently structured to deter misclassification or to provide consistent
guidance to adjudicators.
8
What is required is a multi-factor statutory framework one that
incorporates functional criteria, decision-making authority thresholds, educational and
credentialing standards, and, as an anchoring mechanism, a salary threshold to replace the present
open-ended judicial inquiry with a predictable, legislatively defined test. In developing this
framework, the experience of Singapore, whose Employment Act employs a salary-based
threshold combined with functional tests for the exclusion of managerial and executive employees
from Part IV protections, offers instructive and practically proven comparative guidance.
9
The article proceeds as follows. Part II traces the historical evolution of labour legislation in
Bangladesh from its colonial origins through the landmark consolidation of 2006, examining the
political and economic forces that shaped the current statutory framework. Part III analyses how
the Act operates, in particular, the relationship between the Act and employers’ internal service
rules, and the categories of organizations and employees that fall outside the Act’s reach. Part IV
examines the phenomenon of misclassification, drawing on the statutory provisions and the policy
incentives that drive the practice. Part V provides a structured doctrinal analysis of the judicial
response, grouping the decided cases by the legal principles they establish and subjecting the
resulting doctrinal body to critical scrutiny. Part VI conducts a comparative analysis of Singapore’s
8
Md Mehdi Hassan and Another v Government of Bangladesh and Others (2012) 1 LCLR (HCD) 380, 488, also
reported in (2014) 19 BLC (HCD) 472; Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015, r 2(1)(Nio); Karnaphuli Paper Mills Workers
Union v Karnaphuli Paper Mills Ltd and Others (2002) 22 BLD (AD) 33; Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation v Ali
Hossain and Others (2014) 34 BLD (AD) 135; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Study
on the Role of Supervisors in RMG Sector of Bangladesh: Insights, Challenges and Strategies for Effective Women
Leadership in Garment Factories (GIZ, 2024) 12, 17.
9
Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, Employment Act: Who It Covers <[https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-
practices/employment-act/who-is-covered]> accessed 9 July 2026; Hasan Shofiqul v China Civil (Singapore) Pte Ltd
[2018] SGHC 128, [70]–[73] <[https://www.elitigation.sg/gd/s/2018_SGHC_128]> accessed 9 July 2026.
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framework, culminating in an explicit comparison of the two jurisdictions’ approaches. Part VII
proposes concrete legislative, regulatory, and judicial reforms.
II. BRIEF HISTORY OF LABOUR LAW IN BANGLADESH
A. Colonial Foundations
The trajectory of labour law in Bangladesh is inseparable from the trajectory of the
subcontinent’s colonial history.
10
The first piece of labour legislation in what is now Bangladesh
then the eastern district of British India arrived in the form of the Factories Act 1881,
11
which
sought to regulate the hours and conditions of factory employment in response to the industrial
expansion of the late Victorian era.
12
The 1881 Act was followed by a sequence of statutes that
collectively constituted the labour law landscape inherited at independence: the Workmen’s
Compensation Act 1923,
13
the Trade Unions Act 1926,
14
the Trade Disputes Act 1929,
15
the
Payment of Wages Act 1936,
16
the Employment of Children Act 1938,
17
and the Maternity Benefit
Act 1939.
18
Each of these enactments addressed a discrete dimension of the employment
relationship, but they did not form a coherent or integrated system.
19
They were, in the main,
reactive measures legislative responses to specific abuses or specific categories of vulnerable
workers, shaped by the priorities of colonial administration rather than a sustained philosophy of
labour rights.
20
The definitional question at the heart of this article who is a ‘worker’ for the purposes of labour
law was present even in these early enactments, though it arose in a more straightforward industrial
context. The colonial statutes were primarily concerned with factory workers engaged in manual
10
Maisha Tabassum Anima, ‘Legacy of Colonialism: Colonized laws which holds back for Reformation and Liberal
Criminological Perspective in Bangladesh’ (1st Decolonization and Justice Conference at University of Regina, 2022).
11
Factories Act 1881 (Act XV of 1881).
12
Avkash Daulatrao Jadhav, ‘The Role of British Legislations and the Working Class Movement in Bombay: A
Historical Study of the Factory Acts of 1881 and 1891 in India’ (2019) 1 International Social Sciences Review 1.
13
Workmen’s Compensation Act 1923 (Act VIII of 1923).
14
Trade Unions Act 1926 (Act XVI of 1926).
15
Trade Disputes Act 1929 (Act VII of 1929).
16
Payment of Wages Act 1936 (Act IV of 1936).
17
Employment of Children Act 1938 (Act XXVI of 1938).
18
Maternity Benefit Act, 1939 (Bengal Act No. 4 of 1939).
19
Adwitiya Mishra and Aasheerwad Dwivedi, ‘Labour laws in India: history, evolution and critical analysis’ (2024)
65(5) Labor History 678.
20
Kerry Rittich, ‘Historicising labour in development: Labour market formalisation through the lens of British colonial
administration’ (2019) 29 Labor History 1.
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production.
21
The distinction between manual labourers and managerial staff was relatively
intuitive: the factory floor and the manager’s office were physically and socially distinct. As the
economy diversified and clerical, technical, and supervisory roles proliferated, the simplicity of
this binary began to break down.
22
B. The East Pakistan Period and Early Post-Independence Framework
Following the partition of 1947 and the creation of Pakistan, the legislature of East Pakistan
inherited and continued to apply the colonial statutes. The most significant development of this
period for present purposes was the Employment of Labour (Standing Orders) Act of 1965,
23
a
statute that required industrial establishments to define the conditions of employment for their
workers and that drew an explicit distinction between ‘workers’ and managerial employees.
24
It
was under this Act that the early cases establishing the substance-over-title doctrine were decided,
including the foundational judgment of General Manager, Jamuna Oil Company Ltd v Golap
Rahman.
25
The 1965 Act also gave rise to the Industrial Relations Ordinance 1969,
26
which
regulated collective bargaining and trade union activities and similarly excluded managerial
employees from its protective ambit.
27
The independence of Bangladesh in 1971 brought with it both a new state and an inherited
corpus of labour legislation. The new government was not immediately positioned to undertake
comprehensive labour law reform: the priority of the 1970s was reconstruction and economic
stabilization.
28
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Bangladesh continued to operate the pre-
independence framework with periodic amendments and gazetteer notifications. This period
generated a significant volume of case law under the 1965 Act, as courts were repeatedly
confronted with the question of whether individual employees fell within or outside the definition
21
Valerian DeSousa, ‘Modernizing the colonial labor subject in India’ (2010) 12(2) CLCWeb: Comparative Literature
and Culture 1.
22
Arup Kumar Sen, ‘Mode of labour control in colonial India’ (2002) Economic and Political Weekly 3956.
23
Employment of Labour (Standing Orders) Act 1965 (Act VIII of 1965).
24
Ibid, ss 1, 2(v), 3.
25
General Manager, Jamuna Oil Company Ltd v Golap Rahman & Another (1982) 34 DLR (AD) 166
26
Industrial Relations Ordinance 1969 (Ord. XXIII of 1969).
27
Ibid, ss 2(xxviii), 3–4.
28
Yasmin Saikia, Women, war, and the making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971 (Duke University Press, 2011).
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of ‘worker’ a question that the legislation left, with uncomfortable openness, to judicial
determination.
C. The Road to Consolidation: The 2006 Labour Act
The inadequacy of the fragmented colonial-era statute book became increasingly apparent as
Bangladesh’s economy industrialized through the 1980s and 1990s.
29
The explosive growth of the
ready-made garments sector from the mid-1980s onward created a vast new workforce,
predominantly female, employed in conditions that existing legislation was ill-equipped to regulate
effectively.
30
International trading partners and buyers, motivated in part by reputational concerns
and in part by genuine human rights considerations, began to exert pressure on Bangladesh to
reform its labour standards.
31
The ILO, through its technical assistance programmes, similarly
encouraged consolidation and modernization.
32
These pressures, combined with growing domestic awareness of labour rights inadequacies,
produced the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006.
33
The Act is a landmark statute. It consolidated twenty-
five previously separate enactments, including the 1965 Act and the 1969 Ordinance, into a single
comprehensive code. It addressed conditions of service and employment, maternity benefits,
occupational health and safety, working hours, leave entitlements, and critically for this article the
definition of ‘worker’ and the scope of labour court jurisdiction. The Act also aligned Bangladesh’s
labour framework with ILO core conventions, including the principles of freedom of association,
prohibition of forced labour, and equal remuneration.
34
Yet even in the 2006 consolidation, the definitional question was not conclusively resolved.
The Act’s definition of ‘worker’ in section 2(65) retained the managerial exclusion in essentially
29
Sultan Hafeez Rahman, ‘Trade and industrialization in Bangladesh: An assessment’, in Trade policy and
industrialization in turbulent times (Routledge, 2002) 277.
30
Kazi Mahmudur Rahman and Ehsanul Huda Chowdhury, ‘Growth trajectory and developmental impact of ready-
made garments industry in Bangladesh’, in Bangladesh’s economic and social Progress: From a basket case to a
development model (Springer, 2020) 267.
31
Naila Kabeer, ‘The evolving politics of labor standards in Bangladesh: Taking stock and looking forward’, in Labor,
global supply chains, and the garment industry in South Asia (Routledge, 2019) 231.
32
Md Hasnath Kabir Fahim, ‘A pragmatic analysis of labor standards in Compliance with ILO and Islam: Bangladesh
Perspective’ (2020) 11 Beijing L Rev 544.
33
Samina Afrin, ‘Labour condition in the apparel industry of Bangladesh: Is Bangladesh labour law 2006 enough?’
(2014) 4(11) Development Country Studies.
34
Robayet Ferdous Syed, ‘Labor standards, labor policy, and compliance mechanism: a case study in Bangladesh’
(2024) 65(2) Labor History 256.
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the same terms as the predecessor legislation. The legislature did not define ‘managerial’ or
‘administrative’ with any precision, and did not establish objective criteria for the distinction. The
result was that the doctrinal problem that had generated decades of litigation under the 1965 Act
was carried forward, substantially unchanged, into the new statutory framework. The Bangladesh
Labour Rules 2015, enacted under the Act’s rule-making power, provided some modest
elaboration particularly through Rule 2(1) (Nio), which is examined in detail in Part V but fell
short of providing a comprehensive or operationally clear framework.
III. UNDERSTANDING HOW THE LABOUR LAW WORKS
A. The Scope of the Act and Excluded Organizations
The Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 does not apply universally to all employment relationships
in Bangladesh.
35
Section 2 of the Act identifies categories of organizations that fall outside its
regulatory reach. The most significant exclusions concern government offices and entities under
government control (with narrowly defined exceptions), non-profit hospitals and clinics, and
educational, research, and training institutions. The rationale for these exclusions’ rests partly on
the existence of alternative regulatory regimes government servants are governed by separate
service codes, for example and partly on a legislative judgement that the conditions and purposes
of these organizations are sufficiently distinct from commercial employment to warrant separate
treatment.
These exclusions, however, generate significant anomalies in practice. Consider the case of a
teacher employed at a private elementary school. She is not governed by the Labour Act; she is
instead subject to the school’s internal service regulations.
36
If those regulations provide for three
months of maternity leave while the Labour Act mandates four months for covered workers, she
receives a materially inferior entitlement and has no statutory recourse. The government’s gazette
notification of six months’ maternity leave for female public servants represents a further departure
in this case more generous illustrating how the absence of a unified framework produces a
35
Chowdhury, above note 2, 78–80.
36
Saquib Rahman, Outside the Scope of Labour Law, 1 April 2019 <[https://www.thedailystar.net/law-our-rights/law-
analysis/news/outside-the-scope-labour-law-1723651]> accessed 9 July 2026; Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, ss
1(4)(g), 3.
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patchwork of protections that correlates with neither the vulnerability of workers nor the public
interest in their welfare.
B. The Relationship Between the Act and Internal Service Rules
For organizations that do fall within the Act’s scope, the relationship between the Act and the
organization’s internal service rules is governed by a principle of minimum standards. Section 3(1)
of the Act provides that an organization may formulate its own service rules governing the
appointment and conditions of service of its employees, but such rules cannot be less favourable
to employees than the provisions of the Act itself. The Act is thus a floor, not a ceiling:
organizations are free to provide more generous terms and multinational corporations operating in
Bangladesh frequently do so but they cannot contract below the statutory minimum.
The practical consequence of this principle is considerable. In Bangladesh’s labour market,
which has historically been characterized by an employer-side structural advantage arising from
high unemployment and limited worker bargaining power, the temptation for organizations to treat
the Act’s minima as the de facto maximum is strong.
37
Local enterprises, in particular, tend to draft
service regulations that closely track the statutory minima without meaningful enhancement. The
more significant problem, however, is not organizations that fall below the minimum but
organizations that seek to remove employees from the Act’s coverage entirely through
misclassification as managerial employees thereby rendering the floor irrelevant to those
employees’ situations.
C. Contractual and Non-Standard Employment
The Act’s definition of ‘permanent worker’ is anchored in full-time employment: individuals
engaged on a continuing basis without a fixed termination date.
38
But an increasing proportion of
Bangladesh’s workforce, including employees of private universities and non-governmental
organizations, are employed on renewable fixed-term contracts that must be re-executed
37
Masoud Ahmad, ‘Labor and Wages in Bangladesh: Trends, Challenges, and Policy Implications’ (2023) 12(3)
International Research Journal of Social Sciences 66.
38
David Biggs and Stephen Swailes, ‘Relations, commitment and satisfaction in agency workers and permanent
workers’ (2006) 28(2) Employee Relations 130.
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periodically.
39
Such employees fall into a regulatory grey area: they may be covered by the Act in
respect of some provisions but enjoy diminished security of tenure compared to permanent
workers. This structural vulnerability is compounded by the internal governance arrangements
typical of such institutions, in which appeals against disciplinary decisions are addressed to the
same hierarchy that imposed the original decision a system that provides the form of procedural
fairness without its substance.
IV. THE PRACTICE OF PASSING OFF IN BANGLADESH
A. The Statutory Architecture of the Worker/Manager Divide
The foundational distinction in Bangladesh labour law is established by sections 2(65) and
2(49) of the Labour Act 2006. Section 2(65) defines ‘worker’ to include any person employed in
any establishment or industry for hire or reward, whether the terms of employment be express or
implied, to do any skilled, unskilled, manual, technical, trade promotional, or clerical work. The
definition is intentionally broad: it is designed to capture the full range of productive labour in the
modern economy, extending beyond the factory floor to encompass clerical and technical
workers.
40
Critically, however, the definition concludes with an express exclusion: persons
employed primarily in a managerial or administrative capacity are not ‘workers’ within the
meaning of the Act.
Section 2(49) defines ‘employer’ in correspondingly broad terms. The combined effect of the
definitional provisions is to create a binary framework: the Act regulates the employment
relationship between employers and workers; where the employee is a managerial or
administrative employee, the Act does not apply (or applies only partially), and the employment
relationship is governed by contract and the organization’s internal rules.
The term ‘mainly’ or ‘primarily,’ in some translations is the operative word in the exclusion
clause. The legislature’s use of this qualifier is significant: it contemplates that an employee may
perform some managerial functions without thereby losing their status as a worker. Only where
managerial or administrative work constitutes the dominant character of the employment is the
39
Kazi Raihan Uddin and Muhaiminul Islam, ‘Job Insecurity and Affective Commitment Dilemma in Private Higher
Educational Institutions in Bangladesh: How Organizational Support Matters During COVID-19’ (2021) 42(2) Dhaka
University Journal of Business Studies
40
Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, s 2(65); Al Imran, above note 2, 34–37.
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exclusion triggered. In practice, however, this qualifier has not prevented the misclassification
problem, because organizations have learned that assigning a managerial designation, without
more, has often been treated as presumptive evidence of managerial employment evidence that the
employee must then affirmatively rebut.
B. Motivations for Misclassification
The incentive structure driving misclassification is straightforward, and it operates across
multiple dimensions. First, and most immediately, managerial employees are not entitled to the
working hour limitations and overtime pay provisions of the Act. In industries where long working
hours are the norm construction, banking, retail, and information technology, among others the
financial saving from excluding a significant portion of the workforce from overtime entitlements
can be substantial.
41
A single misclassified employee who works forty hours of overtime per month
represents a recurring saving of potentially several times the legal overtime rate, multiplied across
dozens or hundreds of similarly situated employees.
Second, managerial employees are not entitled to the termination protections that the Act
confers on workers. The Act’s provisions governing termination, retrenchment, and notice which
require employers to follow prescribed procedures and pay specified benefits do not apply to
employees excluded from the definition of worker. By classifying an employee as managerial, an
organization renders itself free to terminate that employee on whatever contractual terms it has
imposed, without reference to the Act’s procedural safeguards. In an environment where the
Labour Court system provides an accessible forum for worker complaints, the ability to sidestep
that forum through misclassification is operationally valuable to employers.
Third, and structurally most important, misclassification denies the employee access to the
Labour Court as a forum for their disputes. The Labour Court is a specialized tribunal with
summary jurisdiction over disputes arising under the Act. It provides a faster and, in principle,
more accessible avenue for redress than the civil courts. Where an employee is classified as
managerial, their only recourse lies in the civil courts through a contractual claim a route that is
41
Md Mohiuddin, ‘Labor Management Relations Following the Labor Laws of Ready Made Garments in Bangladesh:
The Present Perspective’ (2014) 16(3) IOSR Journal of Business and Management 32.
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slower, more expensive, typically more procedurally complex, and more likely to be skewed by
the terms of an employment contract drafted by the employer.
42
Bangladesh’s labour market context amplifies these incentives. The country’s unemployment
rate particularly among the educated urban workforce that is most likely to be the target of
misclassification means that employees in formal sector jobs have limited practical alternatives.
The power to terminate employment, or the implicit threat of termination, functions as a significant
deterrent against employees asserting their rights.
43
Human resources departments in many
organizations do not proactively inform employees of their statutory entitlements, and awareness
of the legal significance of the worker/manager distinction is low.
44
V. PROTECTION FROM BANGLADESHI RULES AND THE COURT
The Bangladeshi judiciary has developed, over several decades, a body of doctrine addressing
the misclassification of workers as managerial employees. The volume and consistency of this
case law is striking: the courts have been confronted with the problem repeatedly, across a wide
range of industries and employment relationships, and have responded with a remarkably stable
doctrinal framework. Analysis of the decided cases reveals four principal legal principles, each of
which merits individual examination before a critical synthesis is attempted.
A. The Substance-Over-Title Principle
The most fundamental doctrine established by the Bangladeshi courts is the principle that the
actual nature of an employee’s functions, rather than their designated title, determines their legal
status. This principle was articulated with clarity in General Manager, Jamuna Oil Company Ltd
v Golap Rahman & Another, where the Supreme Court of Bangladesh (Appellate Division) upheld
a finding that Golap Rahman, despite his designation as ‘Chief Driver,’ was a worker within the
meaning of the Employment of Labour (Standing Orders) Act 1965. The court rejected the
employer’s contention that the ‘Chief’ designation signified a transition to managerial status,
42
Ummey Tahura, ‘Role of Clients, Lawyers, Judges, and Institutions in Hiking Litigation Costs in Bangladesh: An
Empirical Study’ (2022) 9(1) Asian Journal of Law and Society 59–62.
43
Shoaib Ahmed, ‘Wage Theft, Secrecy, and Derealization of ‘Ideal Workers’ in the Bangladesh Garment Industry’
(2024) 45(6) Organization Studies 881–85.
44
Mohammad Shahidul Islam and Md. Abdur Rakib, ‘Labour Laws in the Garment Sector of Bangladesh: A Workers’
View’ (2019) 34(3) Yuridika 467.
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holding that the actual responsibilities performed by Rahman which remained driving and vehicle
operation were the appropriate basis for classification.
45
The principle was reaffirmed with equal force in Senior Manager, Dosta Textile Mills Ltd v
Sudhansu Bikash Nath, where the court found that an employee designated as ‘Store-in-Charge’
had been improperly classified as a managerial employee following his dismissal on allegations of
misappropriation. The court observed that the timing of the reclassification which occurred after
the misconduct allegation, seemingly to insulate the employer from the Act’s termination
procedures was itself indicative of bad faith. The court held that the actual duties and functions of
the Store-in-Charge were those of a worker, not a manager, and ruled that the employee retained
the right to pursue statutory remedies.
46
Similarly, in M.R. Chowdhury v 1st Labour Court, Dhaka and Ors, the Supreme Court focused
explicitly on the nature of the work performed by an employee designated as ‘Chief Inspector.’
The court found that the employee’s actual responsibilities collecting demands from
establishments and providing security personnel were clerical and operational in character, not
managerial. The court reiterated that the designation of ‘managerial employee’ requires substantial
proof of genuine managerial functions and authority.
47
This decision is particularly significant
because it addresses the inflation of supervisory titles ‘Inspector,’ ‘Chief Inspector,’ and similar
designations that has become a common vehicle for misclassification.
48
The doctrinal unity of these decisions is clear: the Act’s definition of ‘worker’ is a functional
definition, not a titular one. An organization cannot alter the legal character of an employment
relationship by the simple expedient of a designation on a business card or an organizational chart.
The court will look behind the title to the substance of what the employee actually does.
49
This
principle is doctrinally sound and consistent with the purposive approach to statutory interpretation
that Bangladesh’s courts have consistently applied in labour matters.
45
General Manager, above note 25.
46
Senior Manager, Dosta Textile Mills Ltd v Sudhansu Bikash Nath (1988) 40 DLR (AD) 45.
47
M R Chowdhury v 1st Labour Court, Dhaka and Others (1997) 2 BLC (HCD) 366.
48
Matthew W. Finkin, ‘The Supervisory Status of Professional Employees’ (1977) 45(4) Fordham Law Review 805.
49
Senior Manager, above note 46; M R Chowdhury, above note 47.
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B. The Primary Function Test
The substance-over-title principle, while foundational, does not fully resolve the question of
how to classify employees who perform a mixture of managerial and non-managerial functions.
For such employees, the courts have developed what may be termed the primary function test: an
employee is excluded from the worker definition only if their primary or dominant employment
function is managerial or administrative. Incidental, occasional, or subordinate managerial duties
are insufficient to trigger the exclusion.
50
This test was explicitly articulated in Indo Pakistan Corporation Ltd v First Labour Court of
East Pakistan, where the court considered an employee who occasionally took on managerial
duties. The court held unequivocally that isolated instances of performing managerial functions
did not change the employee’s status as a worker. The statutory qualifier ‘mainly’ was interpreted
as requiring that managerial work constitute the dominant and primary mode of the employee’s
employment not a secondary or exceptional element of an otherwise non-managerial role.
The primary function test received further development in Karnaphuli Paper Mills Workers
Union v Karnaphuli Paper Mills Ltd and Others. The court was asked to determine the status of
an employee holding a supervisory title within the paper mills. The employer argued that
supervisory employees were categorically excluded from the worker definition. The court rejected
this categorical approach, holding that a supervisory title does not in itself exclude an individual
from worker classification unless it is demonstrated that the individual exercises managerial or
administrative functions as their primary responsibility.
51
The court drew a distinction between
supervisory work the direction and oversight of other employees’ immediate work output and
managerial work the exercise of discretionary authority over organizational decisions. The former,
the court found, was not the same as the latter.
This distinction, though doctrinally important, has not always been consistently applied. The
Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation v Ali Hossain and Ors case presents a more conservative
approach: the court, citing the earlier Pakistani precedent of Workers of Bata Shoe Co, held that
an Electrical Foreman’s role which involved supervising and controlling the work of other
employees was sufficiently supervisory in character to take him outside the worker definition,
50
Indo Pakistan Corporation Ltd v First Labour Court of East Pakistan (1969) 21 DLR 285.
51
Karnaphuli Paper Mills Workers Union, above note 8.
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notwithstanding that he occasionally performed manual tasks himself. The court quoted
approvingly the principle that occasional manual work by a supervisor does not make their role
‘manual within the meaning of the definition.’ This decision sits in some tension with the primary
function test as applied in Karnaphuli: it suggests that a supervisory role can suffice for the
managerial exclusion, whereas Karnaphuli requires something more.
52
The inconsistency points
to a doctrinal gap that the existing case law has not resolved.
C. The Requirement of Positive Evidence of Managerial Functions
A third principle that emerges from the decided cases is that the managerial character of an
employment relationship cannot be presumed from a title or from the fact of employment in a
particular sector: it must be positively established by evidence of the actual functions performed.
This principle places the evidentiary burden firmly on the party seeking to invoke the managerial
exclusion ordinarily the employer to demonstrate with concrete evidence that the employee’s
primary functions were genuinely managerial.
53
In Managing Director, Rupali Bank Limited v Md. Nazrul Islam Patwary, the employer sought
to characterize a security guard as a managerial employee in order to exclude him from the
protections of the 1965 Act. The Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s finding in the employee’s
favour, holding that the definition of ‘worker’ is inclusive of roles that extend beyond production-
oriented positions and encompasses the security guard’s role, and that the employer had failed to
adduce concrete evidence of managerial functions. The court emphasized that organizations cannot
evade their legal responsibilities by invoking managerial designations without substantiation.
54
The requirement of positive evidence was similarly applied in Managing Director, Contiforms
Forms Limited and Peasant Trading Cold Storage (Pvt) Limited v Member, Labour Appellate
Tribunal Dhaka and Others. The court made clear that an employee’s designation cannot be used
to infer managerial or administrative duties: only concrete evidence of the actual responsibilities
performed can support the managerial classification. This ruling is procedurally as well as
substantively significant: it affects the allocation of the burden of proof in misclassification
52
Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation, above note 8; Karnaphuli Paper Mills Workers Union, above note 8.
53
International Labour Organization, R198 — Employment Relationship Recommendation, 2006 (No 198), paras 9–
11 <[https://webapps.ilo.org/static/english/inwork/cb-policy-
guide/employmentrelationshiprecommendationno198.pdf]> accessed 9 July 2026.
54
Managing Director, Rupali Bank Limited v Md Nazrul Islam Patwary (1996) 48 DLR (AD) 62.
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disputes, placing the obligation of positive demonstration on the employer rather than requiring
the employee to disprove a presumption of managerial status.
55
The requirement of positive evidence has important implications for the structure of
misclassification litigation. Where an employer introduces nothing more than the employment
contract (which, in misclassification scenarios, will typically describe the employee as a manager)
and the organizational chart, this evidence alone will be insufficient to satisfy the court. The
employer must go further and demonstrate, through detailed evidence of how the employee’s
working time was actually spent and what decisions the employee was actually authorized to make,
that the managerial character of the employment was genuine rather than nominal.
D. The Jurisdictional Dimension of Misclassification
The fourth and perhaps most practically significant principle concerns the jurisdictional
consequences of misclassification. Because the Labour Court’s jurisdiction is limited to disputes
under the Act, and because the Act’s protections extend only to ‘workers,’ the misclassification of
an employee as managerial has the effect of excluding them from the Labour Court entirely.
56
This
was the central issue in Managing Director, Rupali Bank v Tafazal Hossain,
57
where the court
examined the implications of classifying an Assistant Cashier as a managerial employee. The court
found that such classification significantly limited Hossain’s rights under the Administrative
Tribunals Act 1980,
58
which conferred exclusive jurisdiction over certain employment disputes,
and observed the ongoing tension between employee rights and organizational interests in this
sphere.
The jurisdictional dimension means that misclassification disputes frequently arise not as direct
claims for unpaid wages or benefits but as preliminary jurisdictional contests: the employer asserts
that the Labour Court has no jurisdiction because the claimant is a managerial employee; the
claimant disputes the designation; and the court must resolve this preliminary question before it
can reach the substantive complaint. In Pubali Bank Limited v The Chairman, First Labour Court,
the court clarified that job titles alone cannot determine whether an employee is a worker or a
55
Managing Director, Contiforms Forms Limited and Peasant Trading Cold Storage (Pvt) Limited v Member, Labour
Appellate Tribunal Dhaka and Others (1998) 50 DLR 476; ILO, R198, above note 53, paras 9, 11.
56
Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, ss 2(65), 213.
57
Managing Director, Rupali Bank v Tafazal Hossain (1992) 44 DLR(AD) 260
58
Administrative Tribunals Act 1980 (Bangladesh), s 4.
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managerial employee for jurisdictional purposes. The actual nature of the employee’s
responsibilities must be assessed.
59
This ruling, while consistent with the substance-over-title
principle, means that the jurisdictional determination itself requires a substantive inquiry — one
that may require evidence and argument before the court even reaches the question of whether
there has been a wrong.
E. The Judicial Framework in Mehdi Hassan and the 2015 Rules
The most structured articulation of the tests for determining managerial status in Bangladesh
law is found in the judgment of Justices Syed Reefat Ahmed and Sheikh Hassan Arif in Mehdi
Hassan (Md.) and Ors v Government of Bangladesh and Ors. In this 2012 decision, the court
identified a set of evaluative criteria for determining whether an employee qualifies as a managerial
or administrative employee: (i) whether the person has authority to make appointments; (ii)
whether they have authority to take disciplinary action; (iii) whether they have policy-making
responsibilities; and (iv) whether they exercise discretionary power of consequence within the
organization. These four criteria are not presented as a closed or exhaustive list, but they represent
the most systematic judicial attempt to date to provide operational content to the statutory
exclusion.
60
The Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015 subsequently gave regulatory expression to a version of
these criteria. Rule 2(1)(Nio) provides that a person will be working in an administrative or
managerial capacity if they perform the following functions, being authorized in writing by the
employer or management: (i) appointing workers or employees; (ii) determining salary and
allowances; (iii) terminating service or removing from service; (iv) paying off final dues; and (v)
approving or regulating the expenditures of the establishment. The written authorization
requirement is significant: it implies that the managerial functions must be formally delegated, not
merely informally assumed, and that the delegation itself can serve as an evidential benchmark.
61
Rule 2(1)(Nio) represents a meaningful, if incomplete, advance on the purely judicial
framework. By providing a list of specific functions, it gives both organizations and adjudicators
59
Pubali Bank Limited v The Chairman, First Labour Court [2012] 9 ADC 966; ILO, R198, above note 53, para 9.
60
Md Mehdi Hassan and Another v Government of Bangladesh and Others (above note 8).
61
Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015, r 2(1)(Nio); GIZ, Study on the Role of Supervisors in RMG Sector of Bangladesh
(above note 8) 11–12.
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a reference point that goes beyond the vague qualifier ‘mainly managerial.’ However, the Rule’s
adequacy is limited in several respects. It does not address the question of what happens where an
employee formally possesses some of these authorities but exercises them only in a trivial or
nominal way. It does not address the question of educational or skill-based distinctions. And it
does not provide any salary threshold or quantitative anchor that would allow the boundary
between worker and manager to be drawn with the consistency and predictability that commercial
employers and their workforces require.
62
F. Critical Assessment of the Doctrinal Framework
The judicial doctrine that has accumulated over the decades since the 1965 Act is, in broad
terms, protective and purposive. The courts have correctly identified that the managerial exclusion
is susceptible to abuse and have responded by insisting on substantive rather than formal criteria
for its application. The substance-over-title principle is doctrinally sound, the primary function test
is well-calibrated to the statutory language, the evidentiary requirement guards against
presumptive abuse, and the jurisdictional cases appropriately prevent the procedural exclusion of
workers from the Labour Court.
Nevertheless, the existing framework has significant limitations. First, it is reactive rather than
preventive: misclassification must be challenged through litigation before the courts can intervene,
and the costs and delays of litigation may deter many employees from pursuing a remedy at all.
63
Second, the doctrine has developed unevenly: the tension between the Karnaphuli and Bangladesh
Parjatan cases on the question of supervisory employees has not been resolved, leaving a zone of
genuine uncertainty for employees in supervisory roles. Third, the criteria identified in Mehdi
Hassan and Rule 2(1) (Nio), while useful, remain insufficiently structured to produce consistent
results across different adjudicators.
64
Fourth and this point is critical neither the judicial doctrine
nor the regulatory framework addresses the structural labour market conditions that make
misclassification an attractive strategy for employers in the first instance.
65
62
GIZ (above note 8) 11–12; Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, Employment Act: Who It Covers (above note 9).
63
Robayet Ferdous Syed, ‘Compliance with and Enforcement Mechanism of Labor Law: Cost-Benefits Analysis from
Employers’ Perspective in Bangladesh’ (2023) 12(2) Asian Journal of Business Ethics 396.
64
Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015, r 2(1)(j); GIZ (above note 8) 11, 16.
65
Mustafizur Rahman, Debapriya Bhattacharya, and Md Al-Hasan, ‘Dimensions of Informality in Bangladesh Labour
Market and the Consequent Wage Penalty’ (2019) 62(2) Indian Journal of Labour Economics 209–11.
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Beyond the problem of misclassification proper, the case of Amir Hossain Bhuiya (Md) v
Harisul Haq Bhuiya and Others
66
illustrates a further dimension of the definitional challenge:
employees performing roles that are neither managerial nor conventionally productive in that case,
Pesh Imams, Muazzins, and teachers employed by a factory may fall entirely outside the ‘worker’
definition without being managerial employees either. The Act’s definition, structured around the
binary of productive worker and managerial employee, has no adequate category for such
individuals. This gap points to the need for definitional reform that goes beyond the
manager/worker distinction alone.
67
VI. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH SINGAPORE
A. The Comparative Rationale
Singapore is selected as the primary comparator in this analysis for reasons that go beyond
mere convenience. Both Bangladesh and Singapore are former British colonies with common law
legal systems, and both have developed their labour law frameworks from the same colonial
foundations.
68
More significantly, Singapore’s trajectory as a small, trade-dependent economy that
has built a globally competitive labour market through deliberate legal and policy engineering
makes it a particularly instructive model for a jurisdiction like Bangladesh, which is at an earlier
stage of economic development but faces similar structural pressures around the management of a
large formal workforce. Singapore has grappled explicitly with the manager/worker distinction in
its Employment Act, and its approach has evolved in response to documented misclassification
behaviour by employers a pattern strikingly similar to that observed in Bangladesh.
The comparison is not offered as a prescription for wholesale transplantation: Singapore’s
economic conditions, institutional capacity, and labour market characteristics differ substantially
from Bangladesh’s.
69
Per capita income, enforcement infrastructure, and the sophistication of
66
Md Amir Hossain Bhuiya v Harisul Haq Bhuiya and Others (2000) 52 DLR 267.
67
Nicola Kountouris, ‘The Concept of ‘Worker’ in European Labour Law: Fragmentation, Autonomy and Scope’
(2018) 47(2) Industrial Law Journal 192.
68
Muhammad Ekramul Haque, The Legal System of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, October 2008
<[https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/bangladesh.html]> accessed 9 July 2026; Singapore Academy of Law, The
Singapore Legal System <[https://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/About-Singapore-Law/Singapore-Legal-System]>
accessed 9 July 2026.
69
Otto Kahn-Freund, ‘On Uses and Misuses of Comparative Law’ (1974) 37(1) Modern Law Review 1; Alan Watson,
Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law (University of Georgia Press, 2nd ed, 1993).
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judicial and regulatory institutions are not directly comparable. Rather, the comparison is offered
at the level of doctrinal framework examining which legal tools Singapore has deployed to address
the manager/worker boundary problem and assessing their potential applicability, with appropriate
adaptation, in the Bangladeshi context.
B. The Structure of Singapore’s Employment Act
The Employment Act 1968 is Singapore’s primary labour statute, governing the basic terms
and conditions of employment for employees covered by the Act.
70
Like the Bangladesh Labour
Act, it applies to employees engaged under a contract of service with an employer, and it covers
full-time, part-time, contractual, and temporary employees. Like Bangladesh’s Act, Singapore’s
Employment Act does not apply universally: it excludes certain categories of employee, including
domestic workers and seafarers, and it applies differently depending on the nature of the work and
the level of remuneration.
71
The most significant structural feature of Singapore’s Act for the purposes of this analysis is
the differentiated treatment of managerial and executive employees in relation to Part IV of the
Act.
72
Part IV governs rest days, hours of work, overtime, shift allowances, and related conditions
of service.
73
It is, in essence, the portion of the Act that regulates the day-to-day terms of work in
the most protective sense. Managerial and executive employees are not entitled to the protections
of Part IV, and the mechanism by which they are excluded is more precisely calibrated than the
equivalent exclusion in Bangladesh’s framework.
74
C. The Salary Threshold Mechanism
Singapore’s Employment Act, as amended, employs a salary-based threshold as the primary
instrument for demarcating the boundary between employees covered by Part IV and those who
70
Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, above note 9.
71
Simon Deakin, ‘Does the "Personal Employment Contract" Provide a Basis for the Reunification of Employment
Law?’ (2007) 36(1) Industrial Law Journal 68.
72
George Feldman, ‘Workplace Power and Collective Activity: The Supervisory and Managerial Exclusions in Labor
Law’ (1995) 37(2) Arizona Law Review 525.
73
Lauren H. Cohen, Umit G. Gurun, and N. Bugra Ozel, ‘Too Many Managers: The Strategic Use of Titles to Avoid
Overtime Payments’ (2026) 40(1) The Review of Financial Studies 1.
74
Steven E. Abraham, ‘The Supervisory Exclusion Under the NLRA: Has the Supreme Court Gone Too Far?’ (2002)
6(1) WorkingUSA 77–78.
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are not.
75
For an employee who falls within the Act’s definition of ‘workman’ broadly, an
employee whose work primarily involves manual labour. Part IV applies where their monthly basic
salary is less than Singapore Dollars 4,500. For employees who are not workmen but are otherwise
covered by the Act, Part IV applies where their monthly basic salary is less than Singapore Dollars
2,600.
76
Employees earning above these thresholds who are presumed to be in a stronger
bargaining position and more likely to be in genuinely managerial or executive roles are not
entitled to the Part IV protections, including overtime pay.
This salary threshold mechanism has several important attributes. First, it is objective: unlike
the functional criteria in Bangladesh’s framework, which require a fact-specific inquiry into the
nature of an employee’s actual responsibilities, the salary threshold can be applied mechanically
to the terms of the employment contract. This objectivity reduces the scope for litigation about the
threshold itself, even if questions about the appropriate threshold level remain live policy
debates.
77
Second, it is progressive: by setting different thresholds for manual workers and non-
manual workers, the mechanism acknowledges that the appropriate point at which employees can
reasonably be assumed to be outside the need for Part IV protection differs according to the
character of the work. Third, it is transparent: an employee can determine their status under Part
IV by reference to a publicly known salary figure, without requiring legal advice or judicial
resolution.
78
The salary threshold does not operate in isolation. Singapore’s Employment Act and the
guidelines issued by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM Guidelines) also provide a functional
framework for identifying managers and executives: such employees are described as those with
executive and supervisory functions comprising authority over discipline, termination,
recruitment, strategy, performance review, reward, and the general management of the business.
79
The salary threshold and the functional criteria work together: an employee earning above the
75
Simon Deakin, ‘Decoding Employment Status’ (2020) 31(2) King’s Law Journal 180–81.
76
Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, above note 9.
77
Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, ‘The Problem of ‘Misclassification’ or How to Define Who Is an ‘Employee’ under
Protective Legislation in the Information Age’, in Richard Bales and Charlotte Garden (eds), The Cambridge
Handbook of U.S. Labor Law for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2019) 140–42.
78
Miriam Kullmann, ‘‘Platformisation’ of Work: An EU Perspective on Introducing a Legal Presumption’ (2022)
13(1) European Labour Law Journal 66–68.
79
Ewan McGaughey, ‘Uber, the Taylor Review, Mutuality and the Duty Not to Misrepresent Employment Status’
(2019) 48(2) Industrial Law Journal 180–81.
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threshold and performing genuine executive functions is clearly excluded from Part IV; an
employee earning below the threshold cannot be excluded by designation alone.
D. Judicial Elaboration: Hasan Shofiqul v China Civil (Singapore) Pte Ltd
The case of Hasan Shofiqul v China Civil (Singapore) Pte Ltd [2018] SGHC 128 provides the
most detailed judicial elaboration of Singapore’s approach to the manager/worker distinction in
the modern employment law context. The case arose from a claim by Mr Shofiqul, a site supervisor
employed by the Singapore subsidiary of a Chinese construction company, for overtime pay under
Part IV of the Employment Act.
80
The company resisted the claim on the ground that Mr Shofiqul
was employed as a manager or executive, and was therefore excluded from Part IV’s protections.
The case came before the High Court on appeal from the decision of the Assistant Commissioner
for Labour, who had found in Mr Shofiqul’s favour.
The High Court’s judgment is significant on several grounds. First, the court held that Mr.
Shofiqul’s supervisory role was not by itself sufficient to make him a manager or executive for the
purposes of the Act. The mere fact of supervising other employees is not determinative: the
character and scope of the supervision must be assessed.
81
In Mr. Shofiqul’s case, the court found
that his supervision was ‘hands-on’ in nature he directed the immediate work activities of his team,
applied for daily work permits on the team’s behalf, maintained records of work completed, and
conducted informal safety briefings. These were operational and administrative tasks, not exercises
of genuine managerial discretion.
82
Second, and most importantly for comparative purposes, the court emphasized that Mr.
Shofiqul lacked the power to make decisions regarding the hiring, firing, promotion, transfer,
reward, or discipline of the workers under his supervision.
83
Within his role, he could provide
feedback and recommendations to his superiors, but ultimate decision-making authority over these
matters remained with those superiors. This finding echoes the criteria articulated in the
Bangladeshi Mehdi Hassan judgment and in Rule 2(1) (Nio) of the Labour Rules 2015: the
80
Hasan Shofiqul, above note 9, [1]–[5], [9]–[14].
81
Feldman, above note 72, 525–32.
82
Valerio De Stefano, Ilda Durri, Charalampos Stylogiannis, and Mathias Wouters, ‘Does Labour Law Trust Workers?
Questioning Underlying Assumptions Behind Managerial Prerogatives’ (2024) 53(2) Industrial Law Journal 206–09.
83
Hasan Shofiqul, above note 9, [70].
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authority to make consequential decisions about the employment of others is a key distinguishing
feature of genuine managerial status.
Third, the court in China Civil placed significant weight on Mr. Shofiqul’s educational
credentials and formal qualifications as a factor relevant to his status as an executive.
84
The court
noted that Mr. Shofiqul did not hold a diploma and lacked the specialized skills or formal training
that would typically be expected of an executive employee in the construction industry. This
criterion the educational and credentialing dimension of managerial classification has no
equivalent in Bangladesh’s statutory framework or in the criteria identified by Mehdi Hassan, and
represents one of the most significant points of divergence between the two jurisdictions’
approaches.
E. Comparison: Bangladesh and Singapore
A structured comparison of the two frameworks reveals important similarities and significant
differences. Both jurisdictions begin from the same foundational premise: the employment
relationship is regulated by statute, but employees in genuinely managerial roles are entitled to
fewer statutory protections in respect of working conditions, on the assumption that they are in a
stronger bargaining position and have different working arrangements. Both jurisdictions have
recognized that this premise is susceptible to abuse through the assignment of managerial
designations to employees who are not genuinely managerial.
85
And both have responded with a
doctrinal insistence that the actual functions of the employment its substance must determine its
legal character.
86
The differences, however, are instructive. Singapore’s framework has achieved a degree of
operational precision that Bangladesh’s has not. The salary threshold provides a clear, objective,
and easily applicable criterion that reduces the need for costly, uncertain litigation about
classification in the vast majority of cases.
87
The threshold is accompanied by MOM Guidelines
84
Ibid, [65], [68]–[69].
85
Noah D. Zatz, ‘Beyond Misclassification: Tackling the Independent Contractor Problem Without Redefining
Employment’ (2011) 26(2) ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law 279–81; Cohen, Gurun, and Ozel (above note
73) 1–2.
86
A. C. L. Davies, ‘Getting More Than You Bargained for? Rethinking the Meaning of ‘Work’ in Employment Law’
(2017) 46(4) Industrial Law Journal 477–80.
87
David Cabrelli, ‘The Hierarchy of Differing Behavioural Standards of Review in Labour Law’ (2011) 40(2)
Industrial Law Journal 146–48.
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that give practical content to the functional criteria. Judicial decisions such as China Civil provide
detailed, operationally specific guidance on how the functional test applies in concrete
employment scenarios. The result is a framework that, while not perfect, provides meaningfully
more predictability and fewer incentives for opportunistic misclassification than the Bangladeshi
framework currently does.
88
Bangladesh’s framework, by contrast, relies almost entirely on post-hoc judicial determination
of individual cases.
89
The criteria in Mehdi Hassan and Rule 2(1) (Nio) provide useful guidance
but are not anchored by any quantitative threshold. The evidentiary requirement for positive proof
of managerial functions is protective in principle but depends on litigation being initiated a
significant barrier given the power asymmetry between employers and employees in Bangladesh’s
labour market.
90
The inconsistency between the Karnaphuli and Bangladesh Parjatan decisions on
supervisory employees creates genuine uncertainty for a significant category of workers. And the
failure to address the educational and credentialing dimension identified in China Civil leaves
another potential avenue for abuse unremedied.
One area in which Bangladesh’s case law offers a potentially superior approach is in the
treatment of misclassification motivated by bad faith. The Dosta Textile Mills case, in which the
court drew attention to the timing of the reclassification, demonstrates a judicial willingness to
consider the context and motivation of classification decisions that goes beyond the purely
functional inquiry. Singapore’s framework, being more mechanistic, may be less well-equipped to
address strategically motivated misclassification that satisfies the formal criteria but is not
genuinely managerial in character. This is a dimension that any reformed Bangladeshi framework
should seek to preserve.
VII. RECOMMENDATIONS
The analysis in the preceding sections reveals a coherent set of reforms that would substantially
address the misclassification problem in Bangladesh while preserving the legitimate organisational
interest in distinguishing genuinely managerial employees from the broader worker category.
88
Guy Davidov and Pnina Alon-Shenker, ‘The ABC Test’ (2018) 40(2) Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal
235–76.
89
GIZ (above note 8) 11–12, 43–45.
90
Daniel Berliner, Anne Greenleaf, Milli Lake, and Jennifer Noveck, ‘Building Capacity, Building Rights? State
Capacity and Labor Rights in Developing Countries’ (2015) 72 World Development 127–30.
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These recommendations operate at three levels: legislative amendment, regulatory elaboration, and
judicial reform.
91
They are presented in order of structural priority.
A. A Statutory Multi-Factor Framework
The most fundamental reform required is the enactment of a statutory multi-factor framework
for determining whether an employee is ‘mainly employed in a managerial or administrative
capacity’ within the meaning of section 2(65) of the Labour Act 2006. The current open-ended
formulation has, despite the judicial doctrine developed under it, proven inadequate as a deterrent
to misclassification. A statutory framework would serve three functions: it would provide ex ante
guidance to organizations, reducing the incidence of misclassification through clarity; it would
provide a structured standard for adjudicators, reducing the inconsistency that currently
characterizes the case law; and it would shift the balance of power toward employees by making
the criteria for the exclusion explicit and therefore contestable.
92
The proposed framework should incorporate the following cumulative elements. First, the
authority criterion: the employee must hold written authorization, formally delegated by the
employer, to perform at least three of the five functions specified in Rule 2(1) (Nio) of the Labour
Rules 2015 — namely, appointing workers or employees, determining salary and allowances,
terminating service, paying final dues, and approving or regulating expenditures. The written
authorization requirement already exists in Rule 2(1) (Nio); elevating it to statutory status would
strengthen its force.
93
Second, the decision-making criterion: the employee must exercise these
authorized powers with genuine independent decision-making authority, not merely a
recommendatory or advisory role. The Mehdi Hassan criteria authority to appoint, discipline, make
policy, and exercise discretion are the appropriate reference point here. Third, the primary function
criterion: the authorized functions must constitute the primary or dominant mode of the employee’s
employment, not an incidental or nominal addition to otherwise non-managerial work. This
codifies the primary function test that the courts have developed through the Karnaphuli and
related decisions.
91
Matthew Amengual, ‘Complementary Labor Regulation: The Uncoordinated Combination of State and Private
Regulators in the Dominican Republic’ (2010) 38(3) World Development 405–09.
92
ILO, R198, above note 53, paras 10–13, 15–17; Davidov and Alon-Shenker (above note 88) 235–76.
93
Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015, r 2(1)(Nio); GIZ (above note 8) 11–12.
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These three criteria should be expressed as conjunctive requirements: all three must be satisfied
for the managerial exclusion to apply.
94
The conjunctive structure prevents abuse through partial
satisfaction: an employer cannot achieve the exclusion by delegating nominal authority in writing
without genuine decision-making power, or by ensuring that the employee performs some
managerial functions as a secondary element of an otherwise non-managerial role.
B. The Introduction of a Salary Threshold
The framework should be anchored, following Singapore’s example, by a salary threshold.
95
This paper recommends that an employee earning below a specified monthly basic salary threshold
should be presumptively classified as a worker, not subject to the managerial exclusion, regardless
of their designation or the functions formally attributed to them. The threshold would serve as a
bright-line rule at the lower end of the income distribution, where misclassification is most harmful
(because employees are most financially vulnerable) and most common.
The appropriate threshold for Bangladesh cannot be mechanically imported from Singapore,
whose labour market and wage levels are radically different.
96
The threshold should be determined
through consultation between the Ministry of Labour and Employment, employers’ organizations,
and trade unions, with reference to median formal sector wages. As a starting point, a threshold
anchored to a multiple of the national minimum wage for relevant sectors perhaps three to four
times the minimum daily wage, expressed as a monthly figure would be consistent with the policy
objective of protecting lower-income formal sector workers while excluding genuinely high-
remuneration managerial employees from the calculation. The threshold should be subject to
periodic revision through a transparent regulatory process, indexed to wage growth.
The threshold would operate as a presumption, not as an absolute rule.
97
An employer wishing
to treat an employee earning above the threshold as a worker for purposes of extending statutory
benefits could do so. More importantly, an employee earning above the threshold could still contest
their managerial classification by demonstrating that they do not satisfy the multi-factor criteria
preventing the threshold from becoming a tool for exclusion of well-paid but genuinely non-
94
Davidov and Alon-Shenker (above note 88) 235–76; ILO, R198, above note 53, paras 11–13.
95
Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, above note 9.
96
Thomas Farole, Yoonyoung Cho, Laurent Bossavie, and Reyes Aterido, Bangladesh Jobs Diagnostic (World Bank,
2017) 1–2; Kahn-Freund (above note 69) 1–27.
97
Davidov and Alon-Shenker (above note 88) 235–76.
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managerial employees.
98
Conversely, for employees earning below the threshold, the managerial
exclusion would simply not be available, regardless of the designation.
C. Codification of the Substance-Over-Title Rule
The substance-over-title principle, while well-established in Bangladeshi case law, should be
codified in the Labour Act itself.
99
An express statutory provision should be inserted stating that
the designation or title assigned to an employee is not determinative of their status as a worker or
managerial employee, and that the court or adjudicator must look to the actual functions performed
and the authority actually exercised in making this determination. Codification of this principle
would serve two purposes: it would give the principle the force of statute, making it unambiguous
that designation-based arguments are inadmissible as a primary basis for classification; and it
would ensure that the principle is known to and applied by adjudicators at all levels, including
Labour Court judges who may not have access to the full body of appellate case law.
D. Educational and Credentialing Criteria
Drawing on the China Civil judgment’s attention to formal qualifications and specialized
training as criteria relevant to executive status, the reformed framework should incorporate an
educational or credentialing criterion.
100
Specifically, it should be provided that employees who
do not hold a minimum level of formal education relevant to a managerial role in the relevant
industry — for example, a bachelor’s degree for office-based roles or a relevant vocational diploma
for technical supervisory roles cannot be classified as managerial employees solely on the basis of
their designated title or function, unless the organization can demonstrate through positive
evidence that the employee has acquired equivalent knowledge and capability through substantial
relevant experience.
This criterion addresses a specific mode of misclassification that the existing framework does
not capture: the assignment of managerial titles to employees who lack the human capital
98
Joe Atkinson and Hitesh Dhorajiwala, ‘The Future of Employment: Purposive Interpretation and the Role of
Contract after Uber’ (2022) 85(3) Modern Law Review 787–92.
99
ILO, R198, above note 53, para 9; Guy Davidov, ‘Who Is a Worker?’ (2005) 34(1) Industrial Law Journal 57–71.
100
Hasan Shofiqul, above note 9, [65], [68]–[69]; GIZ (above note 8) 11–12.
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characteristics of genuine managers. It is also consistent with Bangladesh’s broader policy interest
in encouraging formal education and skills development in the workforce.
E. Reversal of the Evidentiary Burden
The reformed framework should expressly reverse the evidentiary burden in misclassification
disputes.
101
The amended Labour Act should provide that, in any dispute about whether an
employee falls within the definition of ‘worker,’ the burden of establishing that the employee is
excluded from the worker definition lies on the employer, and must be discharged by positive
evidence of the actual functions performed and the authority actually exercised. This codifies the
principle already implicit in cases such as Rupali Bank v Patwary and Contiforms Forms Limited,
but makes it explicit and statutory.
Reversal of the burden is particularly important given the information asymmetry between
employers and employees. The employer is best placed to produce evidence of the nature of the
employment: it controls the employment contract, the organizational chart, the delegation of
authority documents, and the records of decisions made by the employee.
102
Requiring the
employer to produce this evidence is both procedurally fair and practically efficient.
F. Strengthening the Access to Alternative Remedies
The reforms proposed above address the primary problem of misclassification, but they should
be supplemented by measures to strengthen the remedies available to employees who cannot
access the Labour Court. As the analysis in Part III indicates, employees of excluded organizations
educational institutions, non-profit hospitals, and government entities cannot rely on the Labour
Act at all, and must depend on their employment contracts and internal service rules.
103
For such
employees, the civil court route offers a formal remedy but one that is slow, costly, and typically
disadvantageous given the employer-drafted contract terms.
104
The limitation of writ jurisdiction is particularly constraining: the High Court Division’s writ
jurisdiction is generally unavailable for disputes involving purely private parties, and the rule that
101
ILO, R198, above note 53, paras 11–13; Davidov and Alon-Shenker (above note 88) 235–76.
102
Hasan Shofiqul, above note 9, [151]–[157].
103
Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, s 1(4)(a), (d), (g), (h).
104
Syed (above note 63) 396–97.
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disputed questions of fact cannot be resolved in writ proceedings means that classification
questions which are quintessentially factual are not amenable to this remedy even where a public
element is present. Reform should consider the possibility of extending the jurisdiction of a
reformed Labour Court or of a new specialist employment tribunal to cover misclassification
disputes arising from excluded organizations, at least where the organization has a significant
commercial element.
G. Proactive Compliance and Enforcement
Doctrinal and judicial reforms, however well-designed, will not by themselves resolve the
misclassification problem.
105
The problem is rooted in structural conditions employer market
power, low employee awareness of rights, and inadequate enforcement that require administrative
responses as well as legal ones.
106
The Ministry of Labour and Employment should establish a
programme of proactive compliance auditing in sectors where classification disputes and labour-
law violations are structurally difficult to detect.
107
Employers found to have systematically
misclassified employees should be subject to proportionate financial penalties, with the proceeds
directed to the benefit of the affected employees.
In addition, the Act should be amended to require every employer to provide each employee,
at the time of engagement, with a written statement of whether the employee is classified as a
worker or a managerial employee under the Act, together with the reasons for the classification.
108
Where the employer classifies the employee as managerial, the statement must identify the specific
functions and authority upon which the classification rests. This requirement, simple in its
operation, would create a paper trail that would both deter casual misclassification and facilitate
subsequent litigation where misclassification is nonetheless alleged.
109
105
Robayet Ferdous Syed, ‘Intertwine Preventive (Ex-Ante) and Deterrent (Ex-Post) Mechanisms for Compliance
with and Enforcement of Labor Laws: A Comprehensive Approach for Bangladesh’ (2024) 11 Humanities and Social
Sciences Communications 1013.
106
Fahreen Alamgir and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, ‘Contested Compliance Regimes’ (2019) 32 Journal of Business
Ethics 272–76; Ahmed (above note 43) 881–85.
107
ILO, R198, above note 53, paras 15–17; Syed (above note 105) 1013.
108
Syed (above note 63) 404–06; ILO, R198, above note 53, paras 11–13.
109
Hasan Shofiqul, above note 9, [151]–[157]; Syed (above note 63) 404–06.
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VIII. CONCLUSION
The definitional boundary between ‘worker’ and ‘managerial employee’ in Bangladesh labour
law is not merely a technical question of statutory interpretation.
110
It is the front line of a conflict
between the protective purposes of the Labour Act and the organizational interest in maximizing
operational flexibility and minimizing the costs of employment. The history of this conflict, as the
case law examined in this article demonstrates, is one of repeated judicial correction of employer
abuses a pattern of misclassification, litigation, and judicial vindication that has been replicated
across industries and decades without generating the systemic change that would reduce the need
for individual redress.
The judiciary of Bangladesh has developed, in response to this problem, a coherent and
principled body of doctrine: substance prevails over title; the primary function of the employment
determines its legal character; the employer must adduce positive evidence of genuine managerial
functions; and the conferral of a designation does not confer the legal status that designation
nominally implies. This doctrine is sound, and it has provided meaningful protection to individual
employees who have had the awareness and resources to bring their claims. But it has not produced
the ex ante clarity, the consistent application, or the preventive effect that the scale of the
misclassification problem requires.
111
Singapore’s experience, and in particular the salary-threshold mechanism anchored in Part IV
of its Employment Act and given doctrinal elaboration by the China Civil judgment, offers a
judicially tested model for a more structured approach.
112
The model is not directly transplantable
the threshold level must be calibrated to Bangladesh’s economic conditions, and the institutional
capacity for enforcement differs significantly between the two jurisdictions but the architecture is
replicable: a combination of an objective quantitative threshold, explicit functional criteria
expressed in statute, a reversed evidentiary burden, and clear guidance on the relevance of
educational credentials can together produce a framework that is both more protective of workers
and more predictable for employers.
110
Davidov (above note 99) 57–71.
111
GIZ (above note 8) 11–12, 43–45; Syed (above note 105) 1013.
112
Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, above note 9; Hasan Shofiqul, above note 9, [68]–[73].
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The reforms proposed in Part VII of this article provide a concrete implementation pathway
for such a framework. They are designed to be mutually reinforcing: the salary threshold reduces
the scope of the definitional dispute for lower-income employees; the multi-factor statutory criteria
provide an operationally clear standard for employees above the threshold; the reversed burden
and the written classification requirement strengthen enforcement; and the attention to educational
credentials addresses a specific mode of abuse that neither the existing statute nor the case law
adequately confronts. Together, these reforms would represent a substantial advance in the legal
protection of Bangladesh’s formal sector workforce and a recognition that the Labour Act’s
promise of protection is only as good as the precision with which it defines those it protects.
113
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113
ILO, R198, above note 53, paras 9–13, 15–17; Davidov (above note 99) 57–71; Davidov and Alon-Shenker (above
note 88) 235–76.