Trends in Collective Bargaining Coverage and Union Membership Level in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Collective bargaining is a powerful weapon in the labour field as the 'Contract of employment' is a negotiation between two unequal parties. In a contract of employment employer is the powerful and decision making party and that party always tries to draft the contract infavour of their own benefits. In a particular situation the other party, employee is in a vulnerable situation and normally these contracts create in a favorable manner. So it is very difficult to identify these contracts as voluntary contracts.Trade unions as agents or representatives of the employee have to play a main role in such a situation with handling the collective bargaining on behalf of their members.But in the last decade with changes of social , Economic and political culture with influence of inter-war and post-war experiences trade unionism shows significant changes and emerging trends with their behavior as an instrument to protect labour rights . Among several changes this research focused on the decline of active registered trade unions and cancellation of registration.This is a qualitative research mainly based on literature review done together with the preliminary survey. As the main sources in this research it based on the Registrar office of trade unions in Colombo . Registrar and assistant registrars of trade unions in-depth interviewed as key formants. And there also several focus group discussions with Trade union leaders in several sectors. Instead of that telephone interviews were conducted with trade union members of cancelled trade unions.Participatory method also done with participating some trade union meetings as a observer. Secondary data was gathered from journals, books, reports and internet and statistics from the Labour Department and ILO. According to the statistics of the labour department of Sri Lanka on 2013, while 8394 trade unions have been registered with the registrar office of trade unions only 2192 trade unions can be find in active mode. All the other trade unions have been cancelled by the registrar of trade unions based on several reasons . So this research basically focuses on this critical situation and tried to clarify the reasons for this negative trend. And finally some solutions were gathered to protect trade unionism in Sri Lanka as a final output of the research.