Question
If you decide to activate a Xel'Naga Tower, is it better to use a single worker, or a single army unit?
Answer
A basic soldier unit is better than a worker, both for ramp scouting, tower holding, or simple patrolling. Early to midgame, you should be building workers as fast as you can, as they are the life-force of your army, and pretty much every strategy can be traced back to them (harass to decrease enemy workers, push to exploit an early expand lest the increase in enemy workers overwhelms you economically, etc). Army units are secondary and much more disposable, not to mention can defend the tower, as well as sneak a kill against unattended or weaker scouts (depends on the matchup). The listed cost of a worker is 50; unless you have maxed your minerals, which happens much after the struggle for towers, merely the time it takes for the worker to get to the tower would've netted you at around 50 more minerals if that worker had been mining instead. Add in the time spent there, and suddenly losing 2 or 3 50-mineral units to get a tower sounds like a trifle compared to losing a worker for the same purpose.
You need all the workers you can get. If your base isn't producing workers for even a second (time spent upgrading human bases excluded of course), or if you're sacrificing any of them before you have 30 on every base and 2-3 bases, you're probably doing something wrong. Even for the Zerg, who use the same queue for both warriors and workers, you're better off with the cheaper and more powerful zergling.
To illustrate, check this chart*, which states that a single worker earns you ~60 minerals per minute. Consider the average time spent on a tower, and remember that you'll have missed on enough money to expand as soon as your worker spends 5 minutes on the tower (travel time included):
*chart source is http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=321242
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