Conference on Organized labour
Responses to the Conference Paper
Dr. Dev Raj Adhikari
Associate professor, Central Department of Management, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
30 August 1998
Industrial Relations in Nepal: Issues for the 21st Century
Introduction
Nepal is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary form of government and an independent judiciary. Until 1990 Nepal was a monarchy with a one party political system. Most of the large corporation were state owned. Therefore the three main industrial relations (IR) actors were the government as employer, management as a representative of the government and union leaders. The were nor free unions and the existing one was dominated by the government and its representative. In the small private sector unions have not had an important voice either and were just fighting for survival. One of the
most important reasons for this was that about 40 per cent of the total workforce is illiterate. After the political change in 1990 to a multi party system, the new constitution gave every employee the right to establish and join unions and associations. Most of the unions and employee associations which have been founded since then are affiliated with political parties. Usually there are at least three different employee associations in each organization. Trade unions are still struggling for developing their administrative structure to organize workers, bargain collectively, and conduct worker education programs. Workers mainly join unions to increase their job security. At present only 30 thousand ( 6 per cent) of the 5 million workers are organized. Hence there is a clear need to develop a proper IR structure for the next century.
Problems and Issues
Some of the major problems and issues of IRs in the 21st century are the following:
1. Since the adaptation of a more market oriented economic system in 1991, the government has privatised about 16 state corporations. Privatisation has led to massive downsizing of organizations. As this process is still going on, a major problem is how to provide jobs for those employees that are being made redundant in privatisation's?
2. Due to high unemployment and an abundant supply of unskilled labour, workers are not interested to offend their employer by joining a union. Therefore a major issue is, to make the workforce more competent and self dependent.
3. Managers in public enterprises are mostly non-professional and appointed by the government. These managers have to work according to the political agenda of the government rather than the business requirement of their company and the needs of their employees. Hence an important issue is to make managers aware about the importance of productivity, commitment, quality and innovation to increase the quality of work life in Nepal?
4. The most likely sectors in which new jobs will be created in Nepal are hydro-power, aviation, environmental, tourism and computer hardware. In all of these industries trade density is particularly low. Thus a major problem for unions will be to organize employees in the growth sectors of the economy.
5. In most workplaces there is a low trust relationship between unions and management. This is at least partly a result of the political affiliation of trade unions and there abuse by politicians. Therefore an important issue in Nepal is to develop a co-operative industrial relations climate.
Guidelines to solve problems
These are the major problems to be solved in regard to IRs in Nepal. An attempt to solve these problems might look as follows:
- Provide a logical description of the effects, if the above issues are not addressed by government, labour and management .
- Work out the proposed change plans to develop a sound industrial relations system for the coming century.
- Prepare detailed time bound operational programmes of implementation .
Once we succeed to examine these questions and convince workers, managers and government with a logical operational programme, industrial relations could help to transform Nepal in the next century.
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