Welfare Facilities for better Industrial Relations – An empirical study of Indian Jute Industry in Post Liberalisation
Provision of welfare amenities enables the workers to live a richer and more quality life and thereby contributes to their efficiency and productivity. It helps to maintain industrial peace. Increased productivity of an industrial undertaking, indisputably, results from mental happiness of  employees.Mental happiness of an employee in turn is a function of welfare facilities provided by the employer. Welfare facilities make the life of the employee comfortable and happy. The labour welfare covers a broad field and connotes a state of well-being, happiness, satisfaction, conservation and development of human resources. The Jute Industry, which is one of the oldest traditional industry providing employment opportunities to huge number of population particularly unskilled and semiskilled. Earlier studies revealed that there were lot of strikes and lockouts taken place in Jute Industry. This is one of the traditional industries which lost huge number of manly hours, loss of productivity due to poor industrial relations. So, the researcher studied the impact of liberalization on industrial relations in Jute Industry in post liberalization particularly relating to implementation of Welfare facilities in North Coastal Andhra Pradesh. The author collected the opinions from the sample respondents through a structured questionnaire and analyzed the same with the help of five point Likert scale and weighted average method. It reveals that in post liberalization employers implement the statutory and some of the non-statutory facilities like restrooms, lunchrooms, hygienic canteen facility, first-aid boxes, ambulance facility, etc. which lead to the more employee welfare.