Mugabe battles wave of job cuts in Zimbabwe

By Ray Ndlovu

HARARE — President Robert Mugabe’s party is set to use its parliamentary majority to rubber stamp through a change in Zimbabwe’s labour laws, in an effort to halt the dismissal of thousands of employees from various work places.

In less than a month after a landmark Supreme Court ruling made on July 17, private sector companies and parastatals have used the judgment as an avenue to dismiss nearly 20,000 workers across sectors — including mining, media and manufacturing.

Observers fear the latest wave of job cuts will add to the country’s 90% unemployment rate.

SA has borne the brunt of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse and absorbed the country’s citizens who have fled hardship in search of greener pastures.

An anxious Mr Mugabe, wary of the repercussions that the job losses may have on his party’s prospects in the 2018 poll, described the labour law in its current form as “an ass”.

The job cuts are also an indictment on the post-election promise that Mr Mugabe made in 2013 to create 2.2-million jobs under his party’s economic blueprint — the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socioeconomic Transformation.

Unions have used the promise to remind the government of the disparity between its pledge to create employment opportunities and what is unfolding in the country.

Under the labour law, employers in Zimbabwe can terminate contracts upon issuance of a three-month notice period for workers and are not required to pay terminal benefits.

Addressing a party meeting at the weekend Mr Mugabe criticised the legislation for being one of the “bad laws” enacted by colonialists.

“But even colonialists did not use that law to dismiss workers even though they could if they wanted. What is three months notice when you have worked for 10, 15 and 20 years?”, Mr Mugabe asked.

“What it means is that workers have become a real community of disadvantaged people. That is not fair, it’s just not acceptable and that is why we are working on amendments to the labour law.

“It should not be that easy to get rid of a person, you just throw him in the streets and forget,” he said.

It is understood that some of the amendments to the labour law would include a framework for collective bargaining that adds other issues such as productivity levels, competitiveness and business sustainability.

Terence Hussein, a lawyer based in Harare, told Business Day that the Supreme Court had force-marched the government to deal with a sticky issue to which it had only paid lip service for 35 years.

“The Labour Relations Act allowed hiring, and not firing, and it was not meant to last forever … (It) was meant to give the government of the day time to come up with something suitable.

“Instead, we have for 35 years had a stop-gap measure being used as the law,” he said. BusinessDay