Survey on Human Relations at Two Large Factories in Nagoya

Through Worker's Grievances

Abstract

1. Purpose. The purpose of this survey was to investigate, by adopting the following method, what is the relation of the grievances concerning human relation, in their frequency and intensity, to the whole grievances in a worker's life of two large factories.
2. Interviewees. Out of the whole employees 2197 of M factory, and 2924 of N factory, 297 and 430 workers respectively were selected, excluding the officials of the higher positions, which contain a subsection, chief (kakari-cho). The selection was made according, and in proportion, to the working-status, and the age and sex groups.
3. Method. Neither the directive method of recording worker's grievances upon questionaires, nor the non-directive method in the sense of taking notes of the grievances given quite spontaneously by them, was adopted. We classified the grievances which may be expected from the workers into the following 10 major items ; job, working conditions. working hours, wages, human relations, training, welfare facilities, recreation, transportation, management policy and labour union. These items were recorded separately on so many cords, with subdivided items belonging to each of them, and the cards were presented to the interviewees. This method helped them in finding a clue to the statement of their grievances, and also helped us in coding the results and in acpuiring the basis for it. Thus, we tried to grasp the frequency of the grievance belonging to each major and subdivided item, and further the intensity of the grievance belonging to each major item by counting the points the interviewees gave to it, on the condition that the total 10 points should be given to the whole consciousness of the grievances each interviewee has.
4. Result. The result common to these two factories is that worker's grievance on human relations ranks high in intensity, although it ranks rather low in frequency.