via ZCTU turns to Mugabe January 25, 2014 By Christopher Mahove NewsDay
THE Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has turned to President Robert Mugabe in its quest to stop the government from introducing labour marker flexibility.
The labour body wrote to the President last week pleading with him to stop Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa from introducing the concept, saying it was a tool used by Western capitalists to destroy African economies and turn the people against their own governments.
In his letter dated January 14 which was addressed to Mugabe, ZCTU acting secretary-general Gideon Shoko said the move would effectively remove the protection which the government was providing to workers through deregulation of labour laws.
“Your Excellency, on behalf of the workers of Zimbabwe, we appeal to you not to accept the prescribed concept as it is likely to cause social unrest in the country, increase poverty and inequalities,” Shoko said.
He said Chinamasa was championing the interests of global financial lenders who wanted to manipulate the country’s legislators to push their agenda as happened in the 1990s when they introduced structural adjustment programmes.
“Your Excellency, the global financial lenders; the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and others deceived your government in the 1990s to embark on the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) under the guise of growing the economy and employment creation.
“The Global Financial powers are back again, prescribing how we must manipulate our workers for their benefit by influencing our policymakers under the same guise of labour market flexibility,” Shoko said.
He said the current Labour Act Chapter 28:01, was already flexible enough as it allowed for negotiation of conditions of employment in terms of Sections 25 and 74.
“It allows termination of employment through a collective bargaining agreement entered between the workers and employers, It allows retrenchment of workers through negotiations between the employer and the employees or their representatives and only requires government intervention if the parties are deadlocked and also allows for court intervention if a party is not satisfied with government decision. So what more flexibility do they want?,” Shoko queried.
He said the flexibility which Chinamasa was advocating for would make every employee in Zimbabwe a casual worker who would be paid on commission.
Presidential spokesperson George Charamba could not be contacted to confirm or deny receipt of the letter as he was not picking up his phone yesterday afternoon.
Mugabe is currently on his annual vacation and is expected to be back in office towards the end of the month.
The ZCTU has also written to Nicholas Goche, the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, registering their distaste at Chinamasa’s proposals.
Goche is yet to respond.
COMMENTS
This is like asking a lion to stop eating meat. Gideon is just messing around. (clowning)
The cost of redundancy payments is one of the main reasons for company closures. Simply put, it is cheaper to close the business thus losing all the jobs in the company than it is to make a portion of the staff redundant, thus saving the remaining jobs. Now instead of only the lazy and the useless suffering even the hard workers suffer too. Since the ZCTU only represents the lazy and the useless you can see why they might have a problem. Hard working people deserve a better deal.
Empty, baseless and tedious rhetoric. This is why the country is going back to the pre-industrial era as the people managing it are intellectually and morally bankrupt. Fancy imagining that introducing flexible labour laws would allow capital to destroy the economy? It is obvious that the economy is already dead due to internal management. Capital did not need any help in their so called mission of destruction – it was entirely home grown. What a joke!
ZCTU now runs out of ideas, bankruptcy. Writing to the boss of Chinamasa is not going to work out
Fat chance of mugabe doing anything, he only thinks of himself and his close cohorts.
Marching bravely on to madness. Forget “Da Dreaded West” and work harder. Productivity brings prosperity – laziness brings poverty. Fair labour laws are essential but “protecting” the under-productive is a madness many socialist countries have tried and failed disastrously.