Towards the close of a weekly meeting at a factory based in Mutare’s Greenmarket Industrial Area, a manager recently informed workers that they should not turn up for work on May 1 because it would be a workers’ day holiday.
The holiday is commemorated internationally as May Day or International Workers’ Day.
After the meeting, two workers started talking about the significance of the day.
One makes the remark that he lost income for the five days they were not at work over the Easter and Independence Day holidays.
“Now I will be losing part of my salary for time off during the May holiday,” he says.
The other worker retorts: “My brother, go and talk to the manager and tell him that you will be working on the holiday so that you do not lose money.”
For the two, Workers’ Day is just like any other day, and it is not particularly cause for celebration when it implies loss of income for the day off taken to commemorate the holiday.
Indeed hundreds of Zimbabweans still in formal employment are feeling increasingly dejected in an environment where workers’ rights are increasingly getting eroded.
With unemployment now at over 90 percent in a country where the majority of the population are living in poverty, many employers are taking advantage of the situation to exploit workers.
Japhet Moyo the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) – an umbrella body of 33 affiliate trade unions – said the 2017 edition of the International Workers’ Day comes at a time when morale among the country’s workers is at its lowest.
“We will be running under the theme, Fighting Unemployment, Poverty and Inequalities, as we reflect on the ever widening gap between the nation’s working poor and the ruling class elite,” he said.
He pointed out that the theme was relevant as it sums up events obtaining in the economy, where unemployment is rampant and poverty levels are ever increasing. He said the prevailing environment is compromising collective bargaining agreements as workers choose to remain quiet for fear of losing jobs, while politicians, who now dominate company ownerships, capitalise on the situation.
“Within such a terrain, the small clique which is predominantly the ruling class gets even richer hence the gap between those who have the means of production and the workers continues to widen,” said Moyo.
Moyo added that the union will take advantage of the day to discuss strategies to increase industrial capacity utilisation, equal distribution of wealth and encourage workers to participate vigorously in the politics of the country because the existing challenges cannot be divorced from the political situation.
Interestingly, the Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ) concurred with labour, indicating to the Financial Gazette that there was nothing much for workers to celebrate.
“Indeed it is a sad day for the workers because as business, we have not done much in terms of increasing salaries and improving working conditions. The few strides we had made are actually being threatened due to the difficult economic situation which we are operating in. In the past years, our confederation would donate resources for the workers day commemorations, but unfortunately this year, we cannot manage to give any handouts,” said EMCOZ president, Josephat Kahwema.
Government has been accused of not identifying with workers in the past years. Trade unions allege that top government officials are fuelling the crisis faced by workers because most of them now own companies.
Events leading to this year’s May Day commemorations reflected the deteriorating relations between the three social partners – labour, government and employers.
Relations are so bad that an offer by the Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Ministry to co-host the workers’ day commemorations event was rejected by the ZCTU.
The ZCTU president, Peter Mutasa, charged: “The ZCTU General Council rejected that proposal because government has no moral ground to commemorate May Day with us considering the unrelenting attacks it has perpetrated on the trade union movement, workers and trade union leaders. Instead of attempting to hijack this moment, which is dear to workers around the country, Minister (of Public Service, Labour and Social Welafe) Prisca
Mupfumira must instead use the day to educate her colleagues in government about the importance of respecting workers and human rights in general.”
He said government should “take time to resolve the numerous problems which are being faced by workers because it is the same government which owns State enterprises like the
National Railways of Zimbabwe that have not been paying workers for over a year, but are quick to dismiss them when they demand their dues.”
Apart from the dilemma of the 2017 edition of the Workers’ Day commemorations, the previous years have not been good for the workers due to a sustained weakening of labour laws which was highlighted by the July 17, 2015 Supreme Court ruling in favour of the dismissal of workers on three month’s notice. To date, thousands of workers have lost their jobs as employers take advantage of the weak regulations.
A process to revise the regulations, through the Labour Amendment Bill, has been fraught with many challenges and disagreements as social partners disagree at every turn.
Government and labour were recently at loggerheads after it emerged that government had unilaterally directed a consultancy to craft a zero draft Labour Bill that sought to save workers from the effects of the July 2015 judgment.
The ZCTU alleges that the draft copy left out most of the issues agreed on at the social partners’ roundtable, the Tripartite Negotiation Forum.
The trade union argues that the draft is retrogressive. For instance, retrenchment packages have been reduced to two weeks salary for every year served.
The situation is worse for some pensioners who are getting as little as US$11 monthly payouts owing to the distortions that took place at dollarisation in 2009.
Most workers have not been paid their full salaries with some having gone for over a year without any form of wage.
Besides, industry and commerce have not been awarding meaningful salary increments in the past few years.
The tobacco industry is one of the sectors that have failed to increase wages amid speculation that employers wanted to downsize.
Parties to the tobacco industry’s National Employment Council (NEC) agreed to freeze wages and to maintain the minimum wage at US$209,36 a month. Negotiations held between the Zimbabwe Tobacco Industrial Workers Union and the Tobacco Industry Employers’ Association agreed on a salary freeze, citing high operational costs and low returns due to low quality tobacco resulting in low prices on the international market.
The last time tobacco sector workers got a wage increase was in 2015 when the tobacco industry set the minimum wage at US$209,36 after parties agreed on a 2,5 percent increment.
In the security services sector, employers are also doing their best to reverse a 10 percent wage increment, which was awarded in 2014.
The Zimbabwe Security Guards general secretary, Phillimon Nhema, told the Financial Gazette that two employer bodies in the security industry had filed applications to the Labour Court pleading for an immediate reversal of the award.
The same situation is also obtaining in the transport sector.
Officers at the Transport and General Workers Union said most employers in the sector were failing to pay salaries on time.
Most of the employees whose contracts of employment were terminated after the July 2015 ruling had not yet been paid despite having been rendered jobless one and a half years ago.
The transport sector is still paying a US$268 minimum wage, which was last reviewed in 2014.
The transport union said employers turned down discussions for an increment and instead proposed salary cuts.
Government employees are also singing the blues due to a sustained wage freeze, having last received increments during the inclusive government which ended in 2013.
The civil servants are yet to receive their bonus payments for 2016.
Many people eking out a living through the informal sector are, meanwhile, unlikely to celebrate May Day.
Economist, John Robertson, said despite the fact that 2,9 million people may be working in the informal sector, they are not considered under the standard normal category of workers in “paid employment”.
“The definition does not apply if you are not being paid. An employee is somebody who has got a pay slip and can get certain privileges like accessing credit,” said Robertson.
A recent study conducted by South Africa-based FinMark Trust said the informal sector has only created a paltry 638 000 jobs that could be categorised as employment.
This effectively means that informal sector workers are worse off than all workers in the country because they have no access to adequate finance which affects their ability to provide good jobs. The bulk of the informal sector generally has no access to proper markets for their goods.
An International Labour Organisation (ILO) commissioned study titled World Employment and Social Outlook Trends states that over 70 percent of Zimbabweans are deemed to be living in working poverty while 65 percent of the workers are living on less than US$3,10 per day.
The workers’ plight has not spared female employees who have remained invisible in the world of work.
In another study, Future of Women at Work Initiative, the ILO established that Zimbabwean women are victims of unpaid work, precarious employment, low wage jobs, and all the ills associated with informal economies such as lack of job security, poor social security and lack of empowerment.
Zimbabwe’s female workers find themselves confronted by traditional challenges, such as sexual harassment, unpaid maternity leave, and are soft targets during retrenchment and general gender discrimination by virtue of being women.
According to the study, 30 percent of the country’s employees are women, and a paltry five percent of the women are in senior management positions, with only three percent of Zimbabwe’s boards being chaired by women.
“Given the current scenario there is need for policy makers and government to come back to the drawing table and holistically tackle economic fundamentals affecting the workers,” said Davies Sibanda, a renowned labour analyst. Financial Gazette
