The government of Zimbabwe has announced plans to embark on a review of the country’s labour laws which could see the reintroduction of oppressive colonial-era legislation.
The country’s Minister of Finance, Patrick Chinamasa, made the proposals in his budget statement presented to parliament on 17 December 2013, saying there was need for labour market flexibility and the linking of wages to productivity.
Chinamasa argues that the country’s labour laws are skewed in favour of workers. He holds this largely responsible for the poor performance of companies in Zimbabwe, where some 1,000 business have been forced to close in the last three years alone.
Chinamasa’s views were echoed by the Harare-based economic analyst, John Robertson, who said that employers were being forced to keep workers they no longer needed because of strict labour laws which required companies to fairly compensate retrenched workers.
“The labour laws are affecting government as much as they are affecting the private sector,” says Robertson.
“The government needs to retrench [workers] but cannot because there is no money. Many workers are retaining their jobs not because they are needed but because they are protected by the laws.”
“Retrogressive”
But Zimbabwe’s trade unions are resisting the move, saying it would be as good as returning to country’s colonial era, where the forced labour of black workers was enforced in a system known as chibharo.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) Acting Secretary General, Gideon Shoko, in a letter to the country’s Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Nicholas Goche, dated 9 January 2014, blasted Chinamasa for his “retrogressive” views.
He also criticised the Finance Minister for failing to understand how the country’s labour market and system operates.
Shoko said labour market flexibility was not an option as it did not comply with the ILO Convention No.158 on Termination of Employment Convention, 1982.
“May we also remind you that the ILO Decent Work Agenda which was adopted by Zimbabwe through the Decent Work Country Programme for Zimbabwe sets an obligation on job protection among others?
“Furthermore,” his letter continues, “our constitution now provides for the right to fair and safe labour practices and standards and to be paid a fair and reasonable wage. Labour market flexibility is not a fair standard as it takes the employees back to the Master and Servant Act of 1901, which among others, our living and dead liberators fought to remove.”
The ZCTU leader said Chinamasa was betraying the very same Zanu-PF government which upon gaining independence in 1980, intervened to address the inequality of bargaining power that prevailed during colonial era-Zimbabwe.
“We are of the belief that the honourable Minister has forgotten the history of labour relations in the colonial era and how the Zanu-PF government intervened to address the inequality of bargaining power in the country and the protection of vulnerable employees through the Minimum Wages Act 1981, the Employment Act, 1980, the Labour Relations Act 1985 and the destruction of the progressive legislation by the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAP) of 1991 which had the same concept of labour market flexibility driven by the Breton Woods Institutions…,” Shoko said.
Shoko warned of looming labour uprisings should the government surge ahead with the proposals.
“Europe is burning with protests as the ill-advised governments, succumbing to the dictates of the global financial powers, embraced labour market flexibility, failed to protect their people and now resort to austerity measures. Greece, Spain, New York, United Kingdom [and] Italy are engulfed in protests. Is this the path that Zanu-PF intends to follow?”
Barking up the wrong tree
Prosper Chitambara, a senior economist with the Labour and Economic Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), said the government was “barking up the wrong tree” as labour laws are not the cause of low productivity in Zimbabwe.
Last October, the World Bank named Zimbabwe one of the worst countries to do business in and Chitambara says this points to the real cause of economic stagnation in the country.
“They (government) needs to deal with structural distortions and to look at issues of competitiveness,” he told Equal Times.
“Structural rigidities result in the cost of doing business in the country going up and losing competitiveness. According to the World Bank, the cost of doing business in Zimbabwe has been going up in the last year.”
Chitambara urged the government to address the country’s high levels of debt and external arrears. It is this, he says, which has brought about economic uncertainty, which in turn, has reduced the country’s credit rating, thus increasing unemployment.
He said labour market flexibility would only worsen the position of workers as it would breed the casualisation of labour and widened the decent work deficit.
Chitambara noted that the collapse of most companies in the past few months was not due to the country’s labour laws, but because of poor corporate governance.
