Causes of employee grievances at workplaces in Tanzania: a case study of Commission for Mediation and Arbitration (CMA) in Dar es Salaam zone.

The study examined the causes of grievances at workplaces in Tanzania by focusing on the Commission for Mediation and Arbitration (CMA) in Dar es Salaam zone. This study was guided by three research questions: What are the causes of employee grievances at a workplace?; what causes the increased employees’ grievances at a workplace?; and how effective are the procedures applied to resolve grievances at a work place?.To address these questions, the researcher selected the Commission for Mediation and Arbitration (CMA) in Dar es Salaam zone as a case study to represent other institutions in Tanzania. Thus, participants were selected from CMA and – through questionnaire as a tool for data collection – information was gathered. The questions asked were close ended and, using liker scale, they aimed at measuring people’s opinions and attitudes on the causes of grievances and how to solve them. The collected data were analysed through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) in order to get simple descriptive statistics such as frequency tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs. The findings found that at workplaces there are grievances (though not for all employees). And these grievances are caused by several factors such as poor working conditions, fault of machines and equipments, poor communication, poor management, unequal treatment among employees, low payment, organisational changes, short term contracts and insecurity as well as long working hours. Moreover, the study revealed the causes for increased grievances at work places (which included increased awareness of labour laws, trade unions and personal representatives, wrong advice, poor mediation practices and termination without adhering to rules and procedure) and mechanisms used by organisations to resolve such grievances. These mechanisms include regulation of internal policies and involving disciplinary committees to control the problem.Finally, since grievances are inevitable in work places, the study recommends several measures that can be used to reduce them. These measures include equal and fair treatment to all employees in the organisation as well as good and adequate communication in all lines of authority in an organisation.