Employee relations climate in leather industry in Kolkata.
Bose, Indranil ; Mudgal, R.K.
Introduction
Employer and employee relations constitute one of the most delicate
and complex problems of the modern industrial society with growing
prosperity and rising wages. Workers have gained higher living wages,
more education, sophistication and generally greater career mobility as
growing numbers of population have been compelled to leave the farms and
become wage earners under industrial conditions. The Hawthorne studies
conclusively showed that normal interactions of workers at work always
create a social network called 'informal organization', which
exerts tremendous influence over pattern of workers behavior. The study
highlighted the need for an understanding of the social aspects of work
performance, etc.
Theoretical Perspective
Employee relation practices that meet organizational objectives and
employee needs result in a high quality of work life. Employee relations
activities are shared with supervisors because of the growing complexity
of organization laws and union management relations. There are several
variables that directly affect employee relations through
communications, counseling and disciplinary practices.
Three main schools of thought can be identified on the issue. Those
arguing for 'employee involvement' for example, view it as
'the means to harness the talents and cooperation of the workforce
in the common interests they share with management' (Cascio, 1998).
This has been an approach based on managerial point of view, which aims
at retaining the established authority structure of enterprises using
systematic methods of communication, information and consultation with
subordinates. Those supporting 'industrial democracy' aspect
have argued largely from trade union point of view. Their aim is to
sharing managerial power in enterprises by strengthening trade union
organization and by widening the scope of collective bargaining
(Michael, 1996). The third major approach, that of 'worker
participation', aims at changing the basic authority structure of
business enterprises by legislating for employee representatives on
company boards as practiced in some west European countries. However, it
should not be confused with "producer cooperation', which aims
at worker control of enterprises through worker co-ownership and
self-management (Harper, 1987).
Labor Scenario in Kolkata's Leather Industry
West Bengal's leather industry employs over 200,000 people
(Department of Labor, Government of West Bengal, 2010). Working
conditions in the tanneries and leather manufacturing units in West
Bengal are generally appalling except in the case of very few units like
Bata, Khadims etc. There is scant regard for workers' safety or
health. However, with the shifting of large number of leather industry
organizations to newly built Calcutta Leather Complex (CLC) near
Bantala, which is spread over across 1100 acres of land with all modern
infrastructure and technical amenities about 50000 directly employed
workers and about 150000 indirectly dependent workforce are enjoying
better working conditions than their counterparts working in traditional
concentrations (Kashyap, 1997). Though the traditional leather units of
Kolkata is dominated by low caste and Muslim migrant workers from the
neighboring states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Eastern Uttar Pradesh, the
entry of people from different backgrounds is growingly visible in the
sector (Kashyap, 1997). Moreover about 70% of the workers engaged in the
industry are traditionally employed as casual workers. Most of them join
the industry as workers with very low or no skill and they acquire
required skills simply by observation at the initial stages. Very often
these low skilled new entrants to the sector acquire skill under the
guidance of their relatives or somebody from their places of origin,
also employed as worker in a leather unit in Kolkata. They are the
people, who actually bring these very cheap workers from their villages
to enable them to learn the required skills at the place of their
employment. Initially, these newly inducted workers are either paid very
minimum or no wage and are only provided with the opportunity to learn
new skills for the industry and then these people are either given jobs
at the same place or they themselves search employment in other units.
However, the labor market is flexible and intensively competitive and
mostly paid on the piece rate basis. Abundant supply of labor together
with the absence of unit level strong labor unions has pushed down the
wages to the reservation level. The legal provision of minimum wages is
not even followed in most units and the workers are also not in the
position of demanding higher wage rates as the supply of labor is
abundant. According to the recent government order, the minimum wage
rate for unskilled/low skilled workers in tanneries and leather
manufacturing units in KMDA area should be Rs. 162.33, Rs 178.46 for
semi-skilled workers and for the highly skilled workers it should be Rs.
196.31 (Department of Labor, Government of West Bengal, 2011). However,
in reality very few units comprising tanneries, fabricators and
manufacturers comply with these minimum wage rates. It has also been
observed that in most of the manufacturing units, specially the leather
footwear and accessories manufacturing units, the work is based on
almost putting out system and during peak season the workers work for
16-18 hours per day and during slack season the daily working hour comes
down to 6-7 hours per day only causing loss of employment to many low
skilled or unskilled workers, those have been inducted to the workforce
during peak hours (Ray, 2009). However, the limited number of workers
working under the regular payroll remains with their jobs. In tanneries
and fabricating units the machine operators and highly skilled workers
are offered regular employment and in leather product manufacturing
units the highly skilled workers, specially the solemen and uppermen are
kept as fixed workers. Though the practice of child labor and the women
workers are rampant in many small home based leather product
manufacturing units, still it has been growingly restricted in organized
units due to self regulation by the units themselves under the
surveillance of respective industry bodies like Indian Leather Products
Association etc.
Objectives
The paper intends to achieve the following objectives:
(1) Analyse the employee relations climate existing at various
levels viz. the supervisor and the workers.
(2) Identify the employee attitudes determining the employee
relations climate in the selected sample leather units of Kolkata.
Data Collection & Data Analysis
Two sample leather units have been identified on the basis of two
key parameters, viz. units with minimum number of 200 employees and
representing leather products manufacturing sector of Kolkata. As most
of the leather products manufacturing units in Kolkata belong to small
and medium scale category and have been employing not more than 150
employees (ILPA, 2009), selection of these two units can be considered
as more helpful for the purpose of research. The data collection has
been conducted for about 120 days (Jan-April, 2012), starting from the
early January 2012 by distribution of questionnaire. Total 150
questionnaires were distributed among the workmen of both the units and
84 questionnaires to the supervisory staff. The attempt was to cover
more than 50% of the workmen and supervisors from both the units.
However, due to procedural problems and response patterns only 107
feedbacks of the workmen category and 59 from supervisory category have
been included. The convenience method of sampling procedure has been
adopted to conduct the survey and the sample size can be presumed as
statistically valid as more than 30% responses (both combined and at the
unit as well as employee category level) have been considered for
further analysis after final short listing of work force feedbacks. All
relevant variables of the questionnaire were independently administered
to each respondent. The responses are obtained on a 5-point scale.
However, some informal discussions have taken place between the
researcher and the surveyed workers on certain issues which has not been
included in the structured questionnaire.
The data so collected was tested by reliability analysis. The data
exhibits the reliability as the co-efficient alpha value has been
calculated as 0.7418, which is higher than the valid alpha value of 0.7.
The above description shows that the distribution of surveyed
workers and supervisors from both the units are more or less equal in
terms of their percentage in total sample size of each category. The
details of the surveyed respondents have been categorized based on
demographic parameters like educational qualification, age, marital
status and experience
(Table 2). The typical trends across surveyed sample are as
follows:
i) The supervisory cadre employees are more qualified than the
workmen cadres as 89.83% supervisors have been found to be experienced
post-schooling higher education, whereas 77.5% workmen have studied up
to the school level only.
ii) Experience and educational qualification has been found to be
the important determinants in career progression in the sample units. It
has been found that more workers are engaged in fewer units and those
who enhanced their qualifications, have risen the career ladder by
getting promotion from ordinary workmen to supervisors over the years.
However, those who have not enhanced their qualifications and have
changed their jobs frequently under different circumstances, have not
been able to experience such career progression. This is visible not
only in the demographic patterns, but also in informal discussions with
the surveyed employees of both the categories. The demographic details
show that about 37.2% of the supervisors are above 50 years age and
65.9% are engaged with more or less same units for more than 10 years.
Many of them have started their career as workmen only. Majority of the
workmen surveyed are at the age group of 31-40 years (35.5%), which is
steadily decreasing towards higher age groups.
iii) Experience wise, the peculiar trend shows that the maximum
supervisors (65.9%) have the experience of more than 10 years, whereas
the maximum concentration (73.8%) of workmen are in the category between
5 and 10 years.
iv) Marital status-wise, no significant difference in percentage
shares has been identified between the two groups of the surveyed
employees.
The mean score on the response patterns of different employee
relations initiatives by the employers is presented in Table 3.
It has been observed that out of the 23 variables, workmen are
highly dissatisfied with respect to two viz. new ideas (mean score 1.84)
and executive-supervisory relationship (mean score 2.07), whereas in
respect of four different variables the workmen have been found to be
highly satisfied, viz. job-content (mean score 3.10), participation
& involvement (mean score 3.15), prevention technique (mean score
3.01) and welfare facilities (mean score 3.33).
In order to reduce the number of variables and to make more
meaningful factors which play significant role for favorable relations
climate, factor analysis has been attempted. The analytical procedure
adopted here is the principal component analysis. Out of the 23 items
presented in the questionnaire and their loading on each of the 6
factors the measures contributed to 6 interpretable factors, accounting
for 56 percent of the variance in the employee relations. Table 4 shows
the factor loading and component matrix based on the 6 factors extracted
from 23 items.
It can be further observed from the above analysis that 23 items
are positively distributed through 92 components and 23 components have
been identified from these 92 positive components, which have highest
factorial influence. Table 5 presents the distribution of these positive
components through 23 items.
From the above, it is observed that factors like communication
(X3), executive-supervisor relationship (X4), supervisor-worker
relationship (X5), compensation (X6), supervision (X12), promotion
(X13), employee worth recognition (X17), quality of union activities
(X19), union management relationship (X 20) are highly associated with
the first factor. These variables stress the relationship in the
organization and mode of having good relationship between various
categories of employees, which may be named as a
"Management-Employee Relation". These measures account for
15.34 per cent variance in the employee relation climate in the
industry.
The variables like new ideas (X9), adjustment function (X15),
development of employee potential (X16) and resolving grievance (X21)
are associated with the second factor. This variable depicts the
employee commitment in the development of organization, which is labeled
as 'Employee Commitment and Responsibilities'.
The variables like job-content (X1) and work condition (X2) are
related to the third factor. These variables feature the work nature
which might be identified as 'nature of work'.
It is also observed that the variables like welfare activities
(X7), cooperation (X11), rewards (X14) and future pros pects are related
to the fourth factor. These variables emphasize aspects like employee
support and encouragement, which may be termed as "employee
motivation climate'.
The variables like value expression (X18) and prevention technique
(X22) come under the fifth factor. These variables significantly explain
the security, protection, shelter and safety to the worker and
therefore, can be categorized as 'safety measures'.
Finally, the variables of participation and involvement (X8) and
job security (X10) are analogous in factor six. These variables have
identified the sharing and support, which might be named as
'workers participation'.
Conclusion
The study has revealed that the factors like management-employee
relation, employee commitment and responsibilities, nature of work,
employee motivation climate, safety measures, workers participation etc
influence the overall employee relation climate in the sample
organization. By bringing significant improvements in these factors a
conducive climate can be achieved. However, different variables are
required to be qualitatively enhanced for ensuring significant
improvements in the classified factors.
Limitations
Certain limitations of the study can not be denied as all the data
have been collected through single source self reported measures.
Therefore, common method variance may be a major problem. Responses of
individual survey items may not be truly independent as there has been a
chance influence of group membership. From this perspective, it can be
said that more research is needed to examine the generalization of this
study.
References
Cascio, Wayne F. (1998), Managing Human Resources, McGrawhill, New
Delhi.
Harper, Sally (1987), Personnel Management Handbook, A Gower
Handbook, Vermont
Kashyap, Subhas (1997), Indian Leather industry: Growth and
Productivity, Deep and Deep Publications, New Delhi
Michael, V.P. (1996), Human Resource Management and Human
Relations, Himalaya Publishing House, Bangalore
Ray, Satyaki (2009),"Labor Issues in Unorganized Sector
Employment", Economic and Political Weekly, 12 (29
&30):1159-60.
Department of Labor Report (2011), Government of West Bengal,
Kolkata.
Indian Leather Products Association Report (2009), Kolkata.
R.K. Mudgal is Registrar & Professor, Teerthanker Mahaveer
University, Moradabad, 244001.
E-Mail: registrar@tmu.ac.in
Indranil Bose is a Ph. D Scholar, Teerthanker Mahaveer University,
Moradabad & Senior Assistant Professor, Lal Bahadur Shastri
Institute of Management & Technology, Bareilly 243001. E-Mail:
sentindranil@gmail.com.
Table 1 Brief Profile of Sample Distribution across
Workforce in Surveyed Units
Sample units Total Total Total
number of workmen supervisory
employees staffs
Kim Lung 208 138 70
Associates
Ahmedia 227 149 78
Enterprises
Total 435 287 148
Sample units Total Total
surveyed surveyed
workmen supervisors
Kim Lung 53 30
Associates
Ahmedia 54 29
Enterprises
Total 107 59
Source: Primary data
Table 2 Demographic Details of the Respondents
Supervisory Percentage Workmen Percentage
cadre cadre
Educational details
Up to 6 10.2 83 77.5
School level
Above 53 89.83 24 22.5
school level
Total 59 100 107 100
Age
< 30 years 4 6.8 11 10.2
31-40 years 13 22 38 35.5
41-50 years 20 34 32 30
>50 years 22 37.2 26 24.3
Total 59 100 107 100
Marital status
Married 55 93.2 98 91.5
Unmarried 4 6.8 9 8.5
Total 59 100 107 100
Experience
> 2 Years- 5 8.4 12 11.2
< 5 years
> 5 years- 13 22.1 79 73.8
< 10 years
> 10 years I4 65.9 16 15
Total 59 100 107 100
Source: Primary data
Table 3 Mean Scores of Employee Relations Attributes
Attributes Supervisory Workmen level
level
Mean Std. Error Mean Std.
Error
Adjustment 2.86 .12 2.75 9.11E-02
function
Cooperation 3.12 9.99E-02 2.94 6.75E-02
Communication 3.1 7.91E-02 2.62 6.85E-02
Compensation 3.14 7.82E-02 2.89 5.84E-02
Employee worth 2.75 .15 2.21 .12
recognition
Executive- 3.27 7.96E-02 2.07 .13
supervisory
relationship
Future 3.2 7.16E-02 2.65 .10
Resolving 3.12 8.40E-02 2.85 8.37E-02
grievances
Job-content 3.1 7.13E-02 3.1 5.62E-02
Job-security 2.9 9.88E-02 2.85 7.37E-02
New ideas 2.71 .15 1.84 .12
Participation 3.08 8.81E-02 3.15 4.75E-02
and involvement
Prevention 3.1 7.91E-02 3.01 5.55E-02
technique
Promotion 3.05 9.18E-02 2.77 8.46E-02
Trade union 3.29 8.39E-02 2.74 8.74E-02
effectiveness
Management-union 3.19 7.44E-02 2.52 .11
relationship
Rewards 2.75 .14 2.42 .12
Supervisor- 3.2 7.94E-02 2.81 7.87E-02
worker
relationship
Supervision 3.31 7.35E-02 2.87 6.52E-02
Value Expressive 2.83 .10 2.59 9.84E-02
Welfare 3.39 6.40E-02 3.33 4.56E-02
Working condition 3 6.84E-02 2.81 6.52E-02
Table 4 Factor Loading & Component Matrix
Variables 1 2 3
Job content (X1) -.139 -.231 .599
Work condition(X2) .160 -.230 .650
Communication(X3) .484 -.238 -.028
Executive- .667 -.307 .290
supervisor
Relationship(X4)
Supervisor- .512 -.487 .163
Worker
Relationship(X5)
Compensation(X6) .448 2.E-02 .100
Welfare activities(X7) -.175 .175 .359
Participation .261 -.100 -.078
and Involvement(X8)
New ideas(X9) .311 .400 9.E-02
Job-security(X10) .260 -.102 4.E-02
Cooperation(X11) .258 .204 6.E-02
Supervision(X12) .543 -.093 -.157
Promotion(X13) .433 -.161 3.E-02
Rewards(X14) .446 .241 -.042
Adjustment .375 .468 -.137
function (X15)
Development 8.E-02 .500 .404
of employee
potential (X16)
Employee-worth .466 .343 .125
recognition (X17)
Value expression (X18) .391 .149 .382
Quality of .315 .255 5.E-02
union activities(X19)
Union-management .420 .152 -.007
relationship(X20)
Resolving .297 .471 -.159
Grievance (X21)
Prevention .324 .352 -.348
Technique(X22)
Future (X23) .266 .134 -.044
Variables 4 5 6
Job content (X1) .122 .334 .038
Work condition(X2) -.018 .085 -.087
Communication(X3) .368 .046 -.208
Executive- -.043 -.124 -.059
supervisor
Relationship(X4)
Supervisor- .066 -.280 -.042
Worker
Relationship(X5)
Compensation(X6) -.097 -.110 -.425
Welfare activities(X7) .361 -.162 -.016
Participation .253 .142 .507
and Involvement(X8)
New ideas(X9) .111 -.203 -.130
Job-security(X10) .076 -.047 .438
Cooperation(X11) -.419 .100 .193
Supervision(X12) -.269 -.057 .104
Promotion(X13) -.135 .414 .024
Rewards(X14) .509 -.120 .314
Adjustment -.133 -.179 .000
function (X15)
Development -.239 -.307 .157
of employee
potential (X16)
Employee-worth -.153 -.336 .165
recognition (X17)
Value expression (X18) -.247 .427 .079
Quality of .139 .214 -.279
union activities(X19)
Union-management -.034 .213 -.117
relationship(X20)
Resolving .253 -.111 -.312
Grievance (X21)
Prevention .004 .450 -.079
Technique(X22)
Future (X23) .508 .190 .116
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis
(8 components extracted)
Table 5 Results of Factors Influencing Relation Climate
Variables Code Factor1 Factor2 Factor3
Job content X1 .599
Work condition X2 .65
Communication X3 .484
Executive-supervisor X4 .667
Relationship
Supervisor-Worker X5 .512
Relationship
Compensation X6 .448
Welfare activities X7
Participation X8
and Involvement
New ideas X9 .4
Job-security X10
Cooperation X11
Supervision X12 .543
Promotion X13 .433
Rewards X14
Adjustment function X15 .468
Development X16 .5
of employee
potential
Employee-worth X17 .466
recognition
Value expression X18
Quality of X19 .315
union activities
Union-management X20 .42
relationship
Resolving Grievance X21 .471
Prevention Technique X22
Future X23
Variables Factor4 Factor5 Factor6
Job content
Work condition
Communication
Executive-supervisor
Relationship
Supervisor-Worker
Relationship
Compensation
Welfare activities .361
Participation .507
and Involvement
New ideas
Job-security .438
Cooperation .419
Supervision
Promotion
Rewards .509
Adjustment function
Development
of employee
potential
Employee-worth
recognition
Value expression .427
Quality of
union activities
Union-management
relationship
Resolving Grievance
Prevention Technique .45
Future .508
