Employee-Management Cooperation: The Key to Employee Productivity

This paper aims at examining the importance of cordial and high-level cooperation between management and employees, as identical partners in industrial advancement and progress. There is a legislative obligation to form a participative committee at the industrial enterprises in Bangladesh to achieve labor-management cooperation, but the majority of the executives mainly in the private sector, have ill-treated this prerequisite of regulation. Based on an interview with a good number of respondents (managers, union leaders, experts, and political leaders), the study has attempted to identify the obstacles that stand in the way of cohesive cooperation between these two parties. The important factors deterring collaboration according to the respondents are: mutual mistrust between management and labor, class distinction between managers and employees, labor disputes, politicization of labor unions resulting in intra-and inter-union rivalries, worker's backwardness, problem of determination of a collective bargaining agent, and infringement of labor laws, among others. Because of these factors, this committee has not yielded effective results. The prevailing climate is not encouraging cooperation, rather inhibiting the same. Finally, some suggestions such as top management support and commitment, confidence in people, employment security, trust, adequate information, reward, friendly working environment, acceptance of change, interaction between managers and employees, and timely feedback have been recommended which may help create congenial labor-management cooperation at the plant level as a means of establishing industrial peace and achieving higher productivity.