Final Term Assignment

SOC-201
Socio-economic Studies of Bangladesh

Submitted to:
Umma Nusrat Urme,

Lecturer

Department of Business Studies

State University of Bangladesh

Submitted by:

Md Parvez Sheikh
ID: - UG01-39-15-004
Batch- 39
Department of Business Studies
State University of Bangladesh

Date of Submission: - 30th September 2020

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2. Differentiate between traditional & participative collective bargaining. 
Answer: Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of
employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and
other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees
are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong.
The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working
hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in
workplace or company affairs. It’s a contract between two or more entities which creates a legal
obligation to do or not to do a particular thing or things.  Collective bargaining is the process
whereby workers organize collectively in a Union and bargain with employers regarding issues
in the workplace. It is coming together of workers to negotiate the terms of their employment as
a group, taking advantage of their collective strength in members. There are two type of
bargaining process which are:

1. Traditional collective bargaining

2. Participative collective bargaining

Traditional collective bargaining- A legally regulated collective bargaining unit or a union that
assists members to gain control over practice, economics in the health care industry, and other
health issues that threaten the quality of patient care.  Nontraditional collective bargaining-
shared governance, or interest-based bargaining; a collaborative-based, problem-solving
approach to assist nurses to have a voice in the workplace and control over issues that affect their
practice. Acquiring organizational autonomy and control over nursing practice, through a
combination of traditional and non-traditional collective bargaining (CB) strategies, is emerging
as an important solution to the nursing shortage crisis. For the past 60 years, nurses have
improved their economic and general welfare by organizing through traditional CB, particularly
during periods of nursing shortages. During the past decade, however, the downsizing of nursing
staffs, systems redesign, and oppressive management practices have created such poor nursing
practice environments that improvement in wages no longer is viewed as the primary purpose of
CB. Much more essential to nurses is assuring they have a safe practice environment free of

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mandatory overtime and other work issues, and a voice in the resource allocation decisions that
affect their ability to achieve quality health outcomes for patients. The thesis presented in this
article is that traditional and non-traditional CB strategies empower nurses to find such a voice
and gain control over nursing practice. This article describes the current shortage; discusses how
CB can be used to help nurses find a voice to effect change; reviews the American Nurses
Association's (ANA's) history of collective action activities; explains differences between
traditional and non-traditional CB strategies; and presents a case study in which both strategies
were used to improve the present patient care environment.

 3. "In Bangladesh, employees are not satisfied with the management"-why? What are the
reasons for such dissatisfaction? 
Answer: Job satisfaction is the key factors for the success of an organization. Most of the
organizations usually take initiative to satisfy their employees for makes them committed and
developing their effective roles. It is the difference between the level of rewards employees
receive and the level they believe they should receive.

In Bangladesh labors do not get what they deserve which causes labor turnover and absenteeism.
Labor turnover and absenteeism is a vital issue in an organization especially in the clothing
industry. It is mainly causing of employee dissatisfaction in workplace. Every organization needs
to give focus on how to change employee mind from job dissatisfaction to job satisfaction.
Otherwise organizations are badly affected by this. High labor turnover and high absenteeism
causes low productivity and efficiency. My aim is to find out the reason behind employee
turnover and absenteeism and focuses on factors increases the turnover and absenteeism ratios
which are the main barrier of organization development. So, organization needs to find out the
best way to motivate employees to reduce labor turnover and low absenteeism and get best
performance where company can increase productivity and efficiency. There can be several
reasons of labor dissatisfaction which are following below:

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 1. Employee expectation: The employee’s expectations are not matching with the job such
as bonus, benefits, holidays and etc. That factors causes dissatisfaction of job. It is more
likely happened with the new employees of the organization.

2. A lack of attention: Employees are found that managers are not giving attention to them
and they are not providing supporting training to develop themselves. For that reason,
they are not well performed in the job.

3. Work environment: Work environment is not friendly with the employee such as lack of
freedom in work, limited responsibility, no challenging environment and there are no
innovative works within the organization. 

4. Appraisal system: Some organization doesn’t have the proffer evaluation systems. So,
employees are disappointing with the unfair promotion and worried about the
development opportunities system. 

5. Management system: Due to unskilled management and their unfair treatment with the
employees and lack of knowledge of how to motivate employee.

The reason for employee turnover has several reasons to quitting from job such as more pay
from other company, better career prospects, more job security, more opportunity to develop
skills, better working conditions, poor relationships with manager or supervisor, poor
relationship with colleagues, bullying or harassment in workplace, and personal reason like
pregnancy, illness, moving away from area etc. From the above reason to resolve personal
reason is beyond management control but other all reason management can do further
analysis to do better for employee satisfaction.

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4. Discuss the nature of participation of workers in management in public and private
organizations in Bangladesh. 
Answer: Participation is the mental and emotional involvement of people in group situations that
encourages them to contribute to group goals and share responsibility for them. There are three
important ideas regarding participation in decision making-involvement, contribution and
responsibility. Firstly, participation means meaningful involvement - rather than mere muscular
activity. A second concept in participation is that it motivates people to contribute. They are
empowered to release their own resources and creativity to achieve the objectives of the
organization. Participation especially improves motivation by helping employees understand
their paths towards goals. Finally, participation encourages people to accept responsibility for
their group activities. It is social processes by which people become self-involved in an
organization and want to see it work successfully. Participation tends to improve motivation
because employees feel more accepted and involved in the situation. Their self-esteem, job
satisfaction and cooperation with management may also improve. The results often are reduced
conflict and stress, more commitment to goals, and better acceptance of change. Turnover and
absence may be reduced because employees feel that they have a better place to work and that
they are being more successful in their jobs. The act of participation in itself establishes better
communication as people mutually discuss work problems. Management tends to provide
workers with increased information about the organization’s fiancés and operations, and this
sharing of information allows employees to make better-quality suggestions.

In private and public sector employee relations are based on an underlying philosophy supported
by necessary attitudes and skills. Here it covers the employment relationship with top level
management in garments sector, which determine an employer and employee's mutual
obligations and expectation towards each other. Every individual at the workplace shares a
certain relationship with fellow workers. Human beings are not machines who can start working
just at the push of a mere button. They need people to talk to, discuss ideas with each other and
share their happiness and sorrows. An individual cannot work alone, workers needs people
around. If the organization is all empty, will not feel like sitting there and working. An isolated
environment demotivates an individual and spreads negativity around. It is essential that people
are comfortable with each other and work together as a single unit towards a common goal.

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However, recent incident of garments sector is happening due to the conflict relation between
management and workers reason of low compensation. Moreover, the present study is designed
to unearth the causes of employee relation in garments sector of Bangladesh. The major causes
of labor relation with top level management have been explored from the responses of the
respondents. Besides, the study also identified causes of poor participation in decision making,
absence of willingness of the management, absence of labor union activities, lack of workforce
diversity, irregularities in payment, low wage, mistreatment of the workers by managers/officers,
rumor, conspiracy, non-execution of labor laws, unruly nature of the workers and political
intervention. Furthermore, this researcher suggested most of the employee relations factors have
to be improved in the Bangladeshi garments sector for taking competitive advantage in world
market.

 6. Do you think that industrial conflict can provoke political unrest in Bangladesh? Justify
your answer.
Answer: The relationship between political unrest and trade raises a number of methodological
problems. Political unrest is just one of many factors influencing trade, and it is difficult to
disentangle its effect from that of other variables. Lacking a counterfactual (we do not know
what would have happen on trade if there were no political unrest) makes the causal
identification problem substantial. Trade and globalization may also have a reverse impact on
unrest as there are winners and losers of increased trade. In the following, I will conduct a
descriptive analysis where the focus is on the impact of political unrest on trade in the short to
medium term. A causal analysis would have required a more rigorous approach which is beyond
the scope of this project. These include death, injury and anxiety among ordinary people,
increased public and private spending on security, and increased costs of other domestic
industries, for instance in the retail sector where shops close during political unrest. In addition,
there are measurement problems, in particular in terms of unrest. I apply the frequency of hartals
(general strikes mainly initiated for political reasons by the opposition party) and terrorist
incidents as my main indicators of political unrest. I also refer to some other measures of policy
uncertainty used in the literature in Section 3. In Bangladesh, hartals, violence and terror
incidents are intertwined as one normally observes violent activities during hartals.

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Unrest may affect not only trade at a given production capacity, but also the capacity of the
garment sector through reduced investments. However, investors can be assumed to be rational
and will reconsider investment decisions only to the extent that political unrest constitutes new
information suggesting that expectations need to be revised. Moreover, political unrest and
terrorist activities are only one form of political uncertainty that influence decisions. Before
making investment decisions, a rational investor would analyze all types of (political)
uncertainty, and if increased risk of one type is counterbalanced by decreased risk of another
type, investment decisions do not necessarily change. To the extent that they are unexpected,
terrorism and unrest may influence investment through the same channels as they do trade (such
as absenteeism, transport cost and perceived risk). One significant difference between
investments (either domestic or foreign) and trade, however, is that the agent’s investment in
manufactured capital, while giving ownership right of assets, at the same time exposes the
investor to potential hold-up problems. When the capital investment is irreversible (it does not
have full secondary value after it is invested), investors may be vulnerable to changes in
government policies. Investors accordingly need guarantees to secure their investments,
particularly in times of substantial uncertainty in government policies. Investors might therefore
delay or drop irreversible investment if unrest makes government policies more uncertain.

Hartals and violent incidents in Bangladesh more prevalent, particularly around elections
There was labor unrest related to demands for better working conditions including higher
minimum wages, payment for overtime and improved safety regulation. An increasing
international focus has been devoted to labor and safety regulations in Bangladesh, particularly
after the fire at Tazreen Factory in November 2012 and the Rana Plaza collapse in April 2013. In
July 2016, Bangladesh was again on the front pages of international newspaper as terrorists
(belonging to the Islamist terror group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen) killed 24 people at the Holey
Artisan Bakery. Some of the victims were connected to the garment business. After the attack IS
proclaimed that this event was the first in a series of coming terrorist attacks in Bangladesh. As a
result, perceived risks of terror have risen among foreign buyers, investors and donors. Buyers
became reluctant visiting Dhaka, and some donors like the World Bank do not allow their staff to
bring with their family members during their secondment to Dhaka.

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Although the short-term impact of political unrest might be small both on trade and investment,
long term reputational effects can be strong. Bangladesh has now overcome the reputation of
producing low quality products, but at the same time faces the challenge of having a reputation
as an insecure country. In addition to reputational effects, political unrest also influences the
strategic choices of suppliers in terms of markets and products to produce. Finally, but not least,
political unrest has economic impacts on other sectors that could be substantial.

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