A Comparative Study on Workers Job Satisfaction Towards Public and Private Limited Tea Garden in Golaghat District, Assam

: The present study discusses the Job satisfaction level between public and private Ltd. tea garden workers in Golaghat district of Assam, India. Job satisfaction which refers to the positive or favourable attitudes towards their work. Satisfactory attitude encourages a worker to work efficiently while dissatisfaction leads to disappointment of instructive objective. A questionnaire on Job satisfaction developed by Dr. B. C. Muthayya (1984) was administered for data collection. A total number of 190 workers were selected for data collection. Out of 190 respondents 117 respondents were Public Ltd., and 73 respondents were from private tea garden. Out of 117 Public limited, 46 were male and 71 female. Similarly, out of 73 Private tea garden workers, 34 were male and 39 female. The main objective of this study is to find out the significant difference between public and private Ltd. tea garden workers. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) were employed for data analysis. Data were analyzed based on descriptive statistics including ‘t’ test to see the significant differences between two public and private Ltd. tea garden workers, and Inferential statistics –ANOVA to see the significant differences between four groups of employees ( Public male &female and Private male and female). In terms of job satisfaction, the ‘t' results demonstrate that there is a considerable difference between public and private, public male and female, and private male and female tea garden workers. ANOVA result shows the significant difference among the four groups. Duncan’s multiple range tests also depicts the differences between all pairs of means except the group of public female and private male. The obtained results were compared to those of other similar studies.


Introduction:
Tea's origins can be traced back over 5000 years to ancient China.However, British can be recognized as the pioneering for rediscovering tea and cultivation it at a commercial level.India is the world's largest tea consumer and the world's second-largest tea producer.
In Assam among the agricultural enterprises one of the competent, organized industries is tea industry.This industry is the largest organized industry in Assam after railways.The notable expansion of tea industry in Assam was the early part of the 20 th century.Tea is spread in both plains of Assam.In long.On job satisfaction lots of studies have been conducted in India and abroad and researchers found different factors responsible for job satisfaction.According to Lange's (2021) study, the earnings element has a favourable impact on job satisfaction.Employees in the private sector are generally less happy than those in the public sector (b=-0.176,p0.01),according to the researchers.Marriage has a beneficial effect as well (b=0.085p0.01).Similarly, good or excellent health is connected with job satisfaction (b=0.205,p0.01; b=0.122, p0.01).Men in the public sector also have a higher level of job satisfaction as a result of higher pay.In contrast to these female public sector employees, salaries are not a major determinant of job satisfaction.Working hours are more important to women than incomes, and working hours have a negative impact on job satisfaction (b= -0.006, p0.01).The research is based on a total of 24,168 paid employees in Bretain who were interviewed yearly from 1992 to 2012.Maaitah et al (2021) study found that "the turnover amongst the employees in an attempt to develop an incentive initiative via increased remuneration.Based on the findings, administrative staff job satisfaction level was influenced by gender, with male staff members being more satisfied than their female counterparts.The findings also showed that staff with shorter tenure had higher levels of job satisfaction than long tenured staff.The same higher job satisfaction held true for those with lower qualifications and job levels, in comparison to those with high qualifications and job levels.2018) study shows lower job satisfaction among anaesthetists.For increasing the job satisfaction level of anaesthetists they suggest giving more importance on maintaining a good relationship in working place, facilitation of professional development, increasing the employment of anaesthetists, and recognize their profession.Lovering (2017) expresses that in the viewpoint of Herzberg two-factor theory, we can understand the dimensions of job satisfaction.In this theory, there are two types of factors: hygiene factors and motivators.Hygiene factors play a critical role in an employee's job satisfaction in an organisation, and without them, the employee will be unable to work effectively.The second factors motivators also help the employee's to use their individual talents and give a position in the company which will motivate them to work efficiently and ensures more job satisfaction.Organizational commitment, workplace satisfaction, and organisational nationality behaviour show statistically significant and optimistic relationships, according to Tharikh et al. (2016).In a study on job satisfaction, Spencer and Byrne (2016) discovered that junior level managers are less satisfied than senior level managers.In a study of job satisfaction among bank workers, Monga et al. (2015) found that factors such as social association, workplace surroundings, pay, senior's attitude, team work, and contact were more important than factors such as honours and recompense, job safety, training and progress, and job nature in determining workplace satisfaction.

Objectives of the study:
1. To find out the significant differences between public and private limited tea garden workers (as a whole) in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.2. To find out the significant differences between male and female of public limited tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat District of Assam.3. To find out the significant differences between male and female of private limited tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.4. To find out the significant differences among four groups of workers (Public male &female, Private male and female) in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.

Hypotheses of the study: Hypothesis-1: (Ho):
There is no significant difference between public and private limited tea garden workers (as a whole) in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.(H1): There is a significant difference between public and private limited tea garden workers (as a whole) in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.

Hypothesis-2: (Ho):
There is no significant difference between male and female of public tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat District of Assam.(H1): There is a significant difference between male and female of public tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat District of Assam.

Hypothesis-3: (Ho):
There is no significant difference between male and female of private limited tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.(H1): There is a significant difference between male and female of private limited tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.

Hypothesis-4: (Ho):
There is no significance difference among four groups of workers (Public male and female, private male and female) in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.• Email: editor@ijfmr.comIJFMR23069848 Volume 5, Issue 6, November-December 2023 (H1): There is a significant difference among four groups of workers (Public male and female, Private male and female) in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.

Methods of Study
The nature of the research is mainly descriptive and analytical.It is a comparative analysis of job satisfaction of public and private limited tea garden workers of Golaghat District.The study is based on primary and secondary data.Four gardens were selected (two public limited and two private limited garden) for collecting primary data.The researcher selected Golaghat district purposively due to the following reasons.There are only seven districts where public limited tea gardens (under Assam Tea Corporation) are found.And there are a total of fifteen public limited tea gardens in these seven districts.Among these districts Golaghat and Jorhat districts have a maximum of three public limited tea gardens.Tea is the largest agro based industry in Golaghat district.Golaghat is one of the largest tea producing districts in Assam where 74 numbers of registered tea gardens are found.It also occupies a large area in the districts.In Golaghat district more than 1 lakh labourers are directly and indirectly employed in tea garden.
For this study, a total of 190 workers were chosen as respondents.Out of 190 respondents respondents were public ltd., and 73 respondents were from private tea garden.Out of 117 public ltd, were male and 71 female.Similarly, out of 73 Private tea garden workers, 34 were male and 39 female.Random sampling method was followed for data collection from Public and Private tea garden.The age group of the respondents varied from 22 -52 years. .
A standardized questionnaire on Job satisfaction developed by B.C. Muthayya( 1984) was administered for data collection.All the items were measured by four point likert scale ranging from 'agree' 4 to 'not applicable' 1.The split half of reliability used for the test showed a coefficient of .81 after applying the Spearman-Brown formula.

Data Analysis:
Data were analyzed by using SPSS, which comprises of Descriptive and Inferential Statistics.Descriptive statistics includes 't' test and inferential statistics includes 'ANOVA'.

Results:
To see the significance difference between public and private limited tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction 't' test were employed.Table-1 depicts the significance of mean values between public and private limited tea garden workers.The table depicts that the value of mean and SD of Job satisfaction of public ltd.workers were 111.59 and 3.32 respectively and those of private ltd.workers were 106.52 and 8.02 respectively.From the mean scores it has been observed that public limited tea garden workers have exhibited higher job satisfaction in contrast to private ltd.tea garden workers.The 't' value came out to be 5.130 which is significant because the significant level is .000which is less than the P value 0.001, which implies that there is a significant difference between the public ltd.and private ltd.tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction.The main causes of job dissatisfaction among private limited tea garden workers are a lack of promotion opportunities, a lack of facilities for working effectively in the gardens, lower wages for the type of job compared to wages for similar jobs in other departments, and insufficient opportunity for independent thought and action in their job.The current finding is similar with the findings of Roy (2017) which states that "Most of the tea gardens workers are not satisfied with works in tea gardens due to various reasons.Most of the tea gardens workers suffer from the rampant hunger, poverty and unemployment, problems like illiteracy, drop-out, malnutrition, and various incurable diseases and combined with the effect of vulnerabilities of trafficking of children and women in particular".According to Gaur (2015) "Both government and Private bank employees were not satisfied with the income earned by their salary.Private employees were more dissatisfied as compared to government employees."Similar results also found in the research of Achanta and Reddy 2014; John 2010; Suki 2011, which revealed that private school teachers exhibited low job satisfaction than government school teachers.Hence the null hypothesis that stated that "There is no significant difference between public limited and private limited tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam." is rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted.
The second objective is to find out the significant differences between public limited male and female tea garden workers on job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.The table depicts that the value of mean and SD of Job satisfaction of public ltd.male workers were 113.57and 2.39 respectively and those of public ltd.female workers were 110.31and 3.22 respectively.From the mean scores it has been observed that public ltd.male tea garden workers have exhibited higher job satisfaction in contrast to female workers.The 't' value came out to be 6.258 which is significant because the significant level is .000which is less than the P value .001,which implies that there is a significant difference between the public ltd.male and female tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction.The study also reveals that female workers are not satisfied with the promotion process since they are engaged in the same position for long time irrespective of their education and experience.They feel that they have not enough opportunity for independent thought and action in their job and they have given too little authority to carry out the responsibilities assigned to them.These findings are supported by the previous research which (Rafeeque and Sumathy 2020, Marimuthu et al. 2019) states that uneducated and ignorance is the main barrier of tea garden working women.According to the findings, there is a link between work environment and sociodemographic characteristics.Work environment objectives differ from one individual to another individual on the basis of their age, educational qualification, marital status, monthly income etc.Adequate welfare facilities and better working environment will increase the productivity of the workers and thus sustain an industry.However, the majority of workers are dissatisfied with their workplace's working circumstances, according to the report.Sufficient and adequate wages must be paid and periodical increment must be ensured for improving the job satisfaction of tea garden women workers.) revealed the opposite result, indicating that female teachers have higher job satisfaction than male teachers.Hence the alternative hypothesis that stated that "There is significant difference between male and female of public tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat District of Assam." is accepted.
The third objective is to find out the significant differences between private limited male and private limited female tea garden workers on job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.The table shows the descriptive statistics for job satisfaction of private limited male tea garden workers mean and SD were 110.85 and 4.72 respectively and those of private limited female tea garden workers were 102.74 and 8.44 respectively.The 't' value came out to be 5.15 which is significant because the significance level is .000which is less than the P value 0.001, which demonstrates that there is significant difference between private limited male and female tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction.Hariharan, N.P., and Siva Kumar, S. (2020) study also identified that the number of female workers are more than the male workers.They have low saving habit and in debt due to their low income level, high medical expenses, higher studies of children, high inflation etc.The present result is identical with the result of Qusar (2018) which identified that "There are insignificant differences in job satisfaction among male and female teachers in private secondary schools".Some studies also revealed insignificant role of gender about job satisfaction of teachers (Carlson and Mellor 2004; Crossman and Harris 2006; Mason 1995).Hence the hypothesis that stated that "There is no significant difference between male and female of private limited tea garden workers in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam." is rejected.
The forth objective is to find out the significant differences among four groups of workers (i.e.Public male and female, Private male and female) in relation to their job satisfaction in Golaghat district of Assam.To see the significant differences among four groups ANOVA was done.The ANOVA results indicate significant difference among the means of the four groups in relation to job satisfaction.F (3,186) =37.06, p<.05 /p=.000.This means that there is a significant difference between at least two of the groups in our data.Hence we can use the Duncan's multiple range tests for testing the statistical significance between specific pairs of means.From the Duncan's multiple range test table we have seen specific differences between pairs of means except the forth pair.If we see the means of the first pair then it is observed that the public male mean is113.57,while the public female mean is 110.31 and the mean difference is 3.26.Since it was significant, this indicates that public male has high job satisfaction than public female.There is an also significant difference between public and private male tea garden workers.Public male workers have high job satisfaction compared to Private male workers.And then difference between public male and private female is also significant.These pairs have also the highest mean differences i.e. 10.83, which show that public male enjoys more job satisfaction in contrast to private female.Significant differences have also observed between public and private female and private male and female also.These findings were not only true in this study, but also in other similar studies.Differences have been observed in some studies (Bedeian et al, 1992; Crossman and Harris, 2006; Koustelious, 2001) where gender effects have been found on job satisfaction.Contrast to this Qusar (2018) states in his study "There are insignificant differences in job satisfaction among female teachers working in government and private secondary schools".The means of public female is 110.31 and private female is102.74,so we can state here that the public female were more satisfied with their job compared to private female.The means of public female and private male lies in the same subset since there is not any specific differences between these two groups.Similar studies have been conducted by (Hautchinson, 1990; Ma and Macmillan, 1999; Qusar, 2018; Scott, Cox and Dinham, 1998 ;) where no gender effects have been found on job satisfaction of secondary school teachers.Qusar (2018) states "There are insignificant differences in job satisfaction among male teachers working in Government and private secondary schools and also government and private elementary schools".His study also found insignificant differences of female teachers in govt and private secondary schools regarding job satisfaction.

Conclusion:
The purpose of this study is to determine the differences in job satisfaction between and among public and private tea garden workers.Workers at public limited tea gardens are happier with their jobs than those in private limited tea gardens.The public limited male workers also exhibited higher job satisfaction in contrast to female workers.The result also shows significant differences between private male and females.The results of the ANOVA demonstrate that there is a significant difference between the four groups.Duncan's multiple range tests depict the differences between pairs of means except the group of public female and private male.From the study it is revealed that most of the tea garden workers are not satisfied with their jobs due to their low wage rate, unsatisfied promotion process, lack of essential facilities, no proper incentives, little authority to carry out their responsibilities etc.In order to achieve optimum result from the workers or improving the level of job satisfaction the management must give more attention on their wages.Sufficient and adequate wages must be paid and periodical increment must be ensured for improving the job satisfaction level of tea garden workers.Essential facilities such as clean drinking water, basic medical facilities, better working environment, sanitation, housing facilities must be provided.Promotion process must be handled according to their experience and qualification.They have to provide more authority for caring out their responsibilities.The workers should be rewarded and appreciated for their hard work and thereby motivated them for increasing their efficiency.These aspects have the significant influence on job satisfaction.Therefore, if such essential problems or basic facilities are not fulfilled tea planters or tea traders cannot expect improved services from the workers.
" Szymon et al (2020) conducted a survey on job satisfaction among workers of a chosen metallurgical company and identified that "Happy and satisfied employee performs better his duties, because more responsible, feels part of the enterprise.The employees defined their job satisfaction by referring to 20 statements describing this satisfaction and evaluating three factors that were used to compute the satisfaction index."A research presents a comprehensive diagnosis of job satisfaction indices in Indian Information Technology sector amid COVID -19 times conducted by Arora & Vyas (2020) on 355 IT employees revealed that "the employees at the IT organizations were slightly satisfied with their jobs.The result shows that working conditions, chance to try my own methods and co workers harmony are the most important factors contributing to job satisfaction during COVID-19.Steady employment has been an area of concern which has come out clearly in area of dissatisfaction.Analysis also revealed that extrinsic satisfaction factors are significantly positive."The importance of job satisfaction to the higher educational institution was recognised in a study by Hee et al. (2019).The factors which influence more on job satisfaction must be given more importance for ensuring quality education and positive student's learning outcomes.This study helps the management for practical implications in the development of job satisfaction and also offers theoretical implications to guide future research among faculty members.In a study of sixty Jordanian employees, Abuhashesh et al. (2019) revealed that pay and position are more important than any other component.As a result, they recommend that Jordanian manufacturers prioritise the salary range for each position in order to avoid losing a competent employee.Job security, training and development, wages, job satisfaction, benefits, organizational culture, and promotion prospects are the factors which they have given more concentration.Fentie et al. ( Similar findings have been observed in other studies ( Crossman and Harris 2006; Joo et al. 2013; Mertler 2002) that demonstrate male teachers are more satisfied with their jobs than female counterparts in primary and secondary schools.In contrast, some comparative studies of teachers' perceptions of job satisfaction based on gender conducted by ( Aydin et al. 2012, Borg and Falzon 1989;Chen and Sun 1994;Demirtas 2010; De Nobile and Mc Cormick 2008; Gunbayi 2001; Medhi 2018; and Mage 2013; Qusar 2018