Kanji 作 make, production, prepare 業 business, vocation, arts 員 employee, member, number Related words 作業員 is a polite, neutral word for a worker on a job site, whereas 土方 is an older, sometimes disparaging term for the same kind of laborer.
作業員 specifically refers to someone doing hands-on or on-site work like construction or factory tasks, whereas ワーカー is a general, often white-collar or service-oriented term.
作業員 refers to a general manual laborer at any worksite, whereas 工員 specifically denotes a factory employee.
作業員 refers to a worker doing a specific manual task (e.g. at a construction site), a narrower use than the general term 労働者 .
作業員 is the ordinary modern word for a manual worker, while 工作員 in its rare literal sense refers to someone building or constructing something, and in its common sense means a covert agent.
Word family construction camp; bunkhouse; workers' living quarters
ground staff; ground crew
sanitation worker; garbage collector; street cleaner
diver; underwater worker
Etymology Compound of 作業 (work, operation) and 員 (member, personnel). The word straightforwardly means 'personnel engaged in operations'.
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