Lesson: 43
Title
: We have a problem! : Employee Grievances
Topics to be covered:
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Definition
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Nature
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Forms
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Identifying Grievances
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Causes
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Effects
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Establishing a grievance procedure
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Guidelines for effective Grievance handling
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Model Grievance procedure
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Essentials of a grievance procedure
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Checklist for grievance handling
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Article: “ Grievance procedure for permanent employees in TISCO”
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Article: “ Practical tips for Mediation”
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Article: “Resolving Complaints”
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Case study: “Ram Avatar”Today we are going to discuss grievances. So are you ready with your list! I am sure you willhave a long one. In fact we are so much used to cribbing and complaining that we forget thegood things of life. We take them for granted!!All right enough of thought provocation!! Let us begin with today’s discussion.So what is your idea of a grievance?Expressions such as problem, discontentment, deep problem etc. can be used to describe agrievance. However please note that dissatisfaction or discontent per se is not a grievance.They initially find expression in the form of a complaint. When a complaint remainsunattended and the employee concerned feels a sense of lack of justice and fair play, thedissatisfaction grows and assumes the status of a grievance.
Dissatisfaction:
maybe defined as anything that disturbs an employee, whether or nor such unrest is expressed in word e.g. engineers and technicians may be upset because they aresuddenly instructed to observe regular hours.
Complaint:
It is a spoken or written dissatisfaction, brought to the attention of thesupervisor and the union leader. The complaint may or may not specially assign a cause for dissatisfaction e.g. “four times this morning I have had to chase around looking for the pliers”.
Grievance:
It is simply a complaint, which has been formally presented in writing, to amanagement representative or a union official. However for most of the people, the word“grievance” suggests a complaint that has been ignored, overridden or dismissed without dueconsideration.ILO defines a grievance as a complaint of one or more workers related to:
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Wages and allowance
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Conditions of work
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Interpretation of service conditions covering such as OT, Leave, Transfer,Promotion, Seniority, Job Assignment & Termination of Service”
The National Commission on Labour Observed that “Complaints affecting one or moreindividual workers in respect of their workers
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Wage payments, OT, Leave, Transfer Promotion, Seniority, Work Assignment &Discharges Constitute Grievances”.Let us examine another definition of grievance.
Definition:
According to Michael Jucius, “ A grievance can be anydiscontent or dissatisfaction, whether expressed or not, whether valid or not,and arising out of anything connected with the company
that an employee thinks, believes, or even feels as unfair, unjust, or inequitable.”Let us understand this definition. A grievance means
any discontentment or dissatisfactionin an employee arising out of anything related to the enterprise where he is working.
Itmay not be expressed and even may not be valid.It arises when an employee feels that something has happened or is going to happen which isunfair, unjust or inequitable. Thus, a grievance represents a situation in which an employeefeels that something unfavorable to him has happened or is going to happen. In an industrialenterprise, an employee may have grievance because of long hours of work, non-fulfillment of terms of service by the management, unfair treatment in promotion, poor working facilities,etc. Now let us go a step further by discussing the nature of grievance.
Nature of Grievance:
Grievances are
symptoms of conflicts
in the enterprise. Just like smoke could mean fire,similarly grievances could lead to serious problem if it is not addressed immediately! So theyshould be handled very promptly and efficiently.
Coping with grievances forms an important part of any job. The manner in which a manager deal with grievances determines his efficiency of dealing with subordinates. A manager issuccessful if he is able to build a team of satisfied workers by removing their grievances.While dealing with grievances of subordinates, it is necessary to keep in mind the following points:
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A grievance may or may not be real.
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Grievance may arise out of not one cause but multifarious causes.
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Every individual does not give expression to his grievances.Please understand that complaints of employees relating to interpretation and implementationof agreements, labour legislations, various personnel policies, rules and regulations, past practices, code of conduct are very much grievances.Another point that needs to be noted here is that the grievances may relate to either oneemployee (individual grievances) or group of employees (group grievances). Individual andgroup grievances are to be redressed through grievance procedure, which we would bestudying in detail a little later in the class. Individual employee or group of employeesconcerned and manager concerned play vital role in grievance procedure. Now let me ask you a question. What do you think is the difference between grievance andconflict? Are they the same? Can they be used interchangeably? Now that is more than one question!Anyway, Please understand that differences between employees and employers relating tovarious personnel policies, wage levels and variety of benefits, awards, rules and regulationsare conflicts. Conflicts are to be settled through collective bargaining. Trade unions andmanagement participate in collective bargaining for settling disputes. Thus, conflicts havewider policy implications as compared to grievances.We discussed in the definition of grievance that it may be valid or not. Now don’t tell me thatyou have forgotten the definition!Let us understand, why we talk about validity.We can get some insight on that by studying the
forms of Grievances.
A grievance may take any of the following forms:
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Factual,
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Imaginary,
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Disguised.
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Employee Grievances
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