CAUSES OF WORKER GRIEVANCES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE APPAREL INDUSTRY IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

In an era where the paradigm shifts from labour intensive industry to knowledge-based technology, researcher searches the resemblance and divergence of causes of worker grievances in identical working situations at four comparable organizations in the apparel industry in Sri Lanka. Lack of, accessible pragmatic results to demonstrate the resemblance and divergence of causes of worker grievances in identical, but different organizations were the issue concerned in the study. For this, the sample was drawn upon four organizations in two groups of apparel companies. The data were collected through 169 operational level workers by administering closed ended questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 23 questions / statements with five scales. Sampling method of the survey was random sampling. The mean comparison of each cause of worker grievance with 95% confidential level was the major scrutiny used here. According to the mean comparison, the job itself, and leave, discipline practices, relationship with supervisor, safety, violation of agreement, violation of past practices, neighbours matters, and lack of awareness about doing job in Company 1 & 2 of Group A, and discipline practices, relationship with supervisor, violation of past practices, violation of agreement, family matters, and lack of awareness about doing job in Company 3 & 4 of Group B are causes of divergences in worker grievances. Other causes of worker grievances in Groups A and B are the resemblance within the Group. When compared with the two Groups A & B, the causes of worker grievances are the resemblance except the cause of worker grievance of lack of awareness of doing the job. It is concluded that when the situations are identical, there may be visible similar causes of worker grievances to some extent.

Keywords: Causes of grievance, Divergence, Resemblance, Worker grievance

For full Paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk