“Capturing a Grievance: Definition, Resolution and Remedy”

Jean Jenkins

Cardiff University

Abstract

This research took place over a period of 30 months in Bangalore, India. It was supported by the ESRC GCRFund and over the course of the research, the research team recorded and analysed reports of grievances made by garment workers to their grass roots trade union. A grievance is a workplace issue in search of remedy and has the potential to open a window into the power relations of the factory. What a worker reports – or perhaps just as importantly what a worker does not report – is a major insight into workplace norms and conditions. All too often, workplace violations are dismissed as isolated aberrations by the brands. This is not the case in practice and the motivation for undertaking this research was therefore to provide a rigorous, systematic body of evidence of conditions from a range of garment workplaces, in one location. The findings offer a means to better understand first, the power relations of the factory regime, second, the HR function’s role in perpetuating and facilitating oppression, and finally the entanglement of grievances with the broader system of control and exploitation at workplace level.