ITINERANT WORKER

An employee required to travel from place to place due to the nature of his or her work.

"We are working more on the move and more of us are doing so. Now nomadic workers are quite difficult to pin down in one sense, but according to a study by BIS Strategic Decisions in the States, there are now something like 30 million mobile workers, and according to Steelcase, there are 11 million workers who are based partially or wholly at home but as part of this continuum of work, where people are working at home, in offices, and at a number of points in between which may be fixed or may be random.
It is a similar pattern but on a smaller scale in Britain. According to a new independent study from the University of Leicester, there are now 1.8 million people who define themselves as mobile workers […]. There are also 1.2 million teleworkers, people who are working with a computer and telephone, partially from home, and that number excludes the 800,000 homeworkers who are not working with a computer or a telephone, but doing manual work and piece work, sewing, machining and so on."
(Myerson, J., Transcript of the RCA Nomadic Working Seminar, Helen Hamlyn Centre, 1999, visited 2009-08-13)

Nomadicor itinerant workers are those whose primary work activity entails considerable necessary travel and for whom their place of work is wherever they happen to be. Salespeople, field technicians, insurance adjustors, analysts and service engineers are examples of nomadic workers.
(adapted from European Telework Online, Telework and Telecommuting: Common Terms and Definitions, visited 2009-08-13)

Unlike an ordinary worker who makes the daily journey to his regular place of work, the itinerant worker often cannot be certain of the location of his work sites. He does not work according to any regular pattern; there is no long-term plan by which he can predict what will be required of him in the future; and there is no certainty as to the range of work sites he may be called on to work in over a given period. While sedentary employees are restricted to a single static workplace, nomadic workers conduct their work in many different places such as cars, trains, hotel rooms, airport lounges, etc.

The following characteristics are indicators of work itinerancy:

• Travel is a fundamental part of the employee's work.
• A "web" of work places exists in the employee's regular employment, that is, the employee has no fixed place of work.
• The employee must regularly work at more than one work site before returning to his or her usual place of residence.