Satisfaction of Textile Workers with Awards/Settlements: An Empirical Analysis

The Indian industrial relations model is based on the free enterprise-cum-planning-cum-growing public sector-cum parliamentary democracy model of growth. For the purpose of securing peace in industry and to give a fair deal to the workers, Indian industrial relations system has also designed different organs for the settlement of industrial disputes. Two methods are generally followed in the state of Punjab as well as in the country as a whole to deal with the industrial disputes viz., (1) Direct settlement, and (2) Third party settlement. A number of studies have been carried out to evaluate the performance of dispute settlement at the state and national levels. However authors feel that efficiency is not the only criterion to analyse the performance of dispute settlement machinery. Effectiveness, i.e., whether it makes parties, especially the workers, satisfied with those awards/settlements, can be another criterion to evaluate the performance of dispute settlement machinery. The present study has been carried out to address this question. For this purpose an attempt has been made to identify the factors which discriminates the satisfied/dissatisfied group of workers with awards/ settlements. Stepwise discriminant analysis has found that out of thirteen variables only three variables, i.e., marital status of workers, awareness about past agreements, and preference for the method of settlement, have emerged as significant variables to predict the profile of satisfied workers in textile industry of Punjab. Hence, the null hypothesis that no significant difference exists in the profile of two groups in regard to their satisfaction level is rejected.