Ministry promotes labour management, cooperation at enterprises

Anjana Samarasinghe

LABOUR MANAGEMENT: The Ministry of Labour Relations and Foreign Employment is now working on promoting labour management cooperation at enterprise level.

Minister of Labour Relations and Foreign Employment Athauda Senevirathne in his message to the inauguration of National Level Convention on Industrial Relations organised by the Employers' Federation of Ceylon said a separate unit has been set up in the Department of Labour to facilitate the promotion of labour management cooperation and social dialogue.

'It is necessary to strengthen the social partners of social dialogue and democracy to thrive at the workplace as well as sectoral and national levels', he said.

However a recent study conducted by this unit was able to collect information relating to diverse good practices adopted by the enterprises to sustain workplace cooperation.

'The new culture we are promoting is based on recognition of human dignity and re-appraising human work.

Thus it establishes clearly the need to create an environment of dialogue and agreement among the management and employees, the Minister said.

The problems of each enterprise could be resolved on fair grounds where dialogue and participation in decision-making could be considered as the characteristics of industrial relations.

The adversarial approach of our labour relations and the existing rigidities in our labour relations framework have been considered as negative factors in our labour market.

These factors have adverse impact on attraction of investments, productivity growth, economic and social development in the country', Senevirathne said.

'We need to promote collaboration instead of confrontation. There is ample empirical evidence world over to illustrate the difference of corporate performance when cooperation replaces confrontation in workplaces,' he said.

The Minister also said this convention will be a forum of transforming the culture of industrial relations from confrontation to collaboration.