A Report on the Industrial Relations Film 'Indaba Ye Grievance.' Research Finding PERS-392.

Attitudes and reactions are reported regarding the South African film, "Indaba Ye Grievance," (produced by the Human Sciences Research Council) which was designed to show unsophisticated workers the advantages of a grievance procedure and the problem of acceptability. Chapter 1, "Background to the Film 'Indaba Ye Grievance'" (R. S. Hall), discusses film objectives and production. Chapter 2, "'Indaba Ye Grievance': Discussion of Film Realism and Its Communicative Competence" (Keyan Tomaselli), offers comments on the documentary film, discusses assumptions made on the context of the film, and reports responses of white supervisors/managers and black workers to the film. It finds that the workers endorsed the portrayal of themselves, while supervisors/managers were more skeptical of the accuracy of the situations presented. Chapter 3, "Audience Reaction to the Film" (G. Godsell), presents results of a small qualitative study to assess the kinds of impact the film had on managers and workers, to discover which issues should be covered in a companion manual, and to ascertain problem areas and possible areas of improvement. This chapter discusses use of the film for instruction on interpersonal relations, grievance procedures, and general principles of industrial relations and for management training. Chapter 4 lists possible improvements to the film. Appendixes, amounting to over one-half of the report, include the script outline, the narrative in both English and Zulu, and interview schedules. (YLB)