Either of you care to provide replays demonstrating why these workers are stronger than CE?
Scaling and upgrades alone makes it quite obvious.
Utility and abilites further prove the point.
CEs are the cheapest, because they provide the least in terms of both.
They don't have actual combat scaling like sappers, sturmpios and RETs.
They don't have stock or doctrinal upgrades or vet increasing their durability significantly, like sappers, strumpios, pios and RETs.
They don't have direct combat support, like sturmpios nades, sappers AT nades, RETs suppression volley or pio sights.
They even can't place fortifications other then wire, unlike all of the above.
CEs are good where they are at their price and performance point.
And the sole fact that you need to have this pointed out to you means you're beyond recovery.