This study examines the role of the board and the trade unions in building and maintaining the industrial relations in the electricity industry. To maintain good relations, the board on its part makes available many benefit schemes and facilities to the employees. Further, the day-to-day operational grievances of the employees are successfully resolved by the heads of the various departments through ‘Collective Bargaining’. The issues related to ‘wages, work load norms, policy formulation and policy revision’ are also settled in a mutually cooperative manner. The management and the unions respect the settlements reached and their implementation. It is also observed that the policies of the political parties are very well reflected in the policies of some of the trade unions. By and large these extant industrial relations continually help to put the board on a higher tragectory of growth.

This study titled ‘Labor-Management Relations in Tamil Nadu Electricity Board’ explores the role of management and the role of trade unions in the process of building and maintaining the industrial relations of the electricity industry. In this perspective the various benefit schemes and facilities made available to employees from the Board, the formation, growth and development of labor unions and their differing political and social nature are examined. The grievance handling procedure is also explored. The mechanism of ‘Collective Bargaining’ is examined in the context of arriving settlement between the Board and the trade unions.

Tamil Nadu Electricity Board was formed in the year 1957 in pursuance of the central law called Electricity Supply Act 1948.The central act asked the states to form their own electricity boards to spur the development of power industry on a regional basis. Accordingly the electricity board in Tamil Nadu was formed. By that time it had 252 megawatt of generating capacity and a little more than 0.1 million service-connections.1 The newly created organizational structure has grown over the years in terms of building generating capacity, effecting service connections and extending electricity to rural pockets of the state. The generating capacity became 7488 megawatt and the service connections became 15 million in the year 2000-01.2 It is the achievement of theorganization to bring electricity to all villages, all Adi-Dravida colonies, fishermen hamlets and even to hilly areas much earlier than 1997. Indeed these facts show its tremendous progress.