MDC-T Secretary and Finance Minister Hon Tendai Biti has got it all wrong this time around in agitating for Labour laws and instutional reforms aimed at strengthening employers' dominance over workers in termination of employment contracts based on the problems he is facing in government attempts to retrench Air Zimbabwe workers without paying fair and meaningful severance packages to the employees who are clearly victims of successive management and Zanu PF government profligacy in the past two decades.
Workers are in for a huge disappointment if the Minister of Finance has been accurately quoted on the purpose of the current government initiative to amend the Labour Relations Act (LRA).
According to the Herald the MDC Secretary General and current Minister of Finance has indicated that the LRA is being amended to bring it into line with the prevailing economic environment in the country.
The Finance Minister disclosed that the current LRA is out of sync with the prevailing economic circumstances and is driving business into precarious positions where it is always the loser.
If he is to be believed then the MDC has all but abandoned its key worker constituency at a delicate moment in the history of the party.
According to the worker backed party’s Secretary General the LRA must be reviewed with the object of making it applicable to the private and public sectors.
In tandem with that it must be reviewed to give employers the flexibility and advantage in retrenchment initiatives.
Further the Act must be reviewed both in terms of the laws and the institutional framework to bring flexibility in the labour market that ensures salary and wage payments are within the capacity of the economy to sustain.
"Government will expedite the review of both labour laws and related institutional arrangements with a view to bringing flexibility to the labour market and ensuring that wage and salary payments are within the capacity of the economy," said Minister Biti.
Whatever drove him to the conclusions he announced we can rest assure the MDC Secretary General that he has embarked on a deadly crusade that will alienate his party from the key Worker grassroots that has made it the formidable force that it is today.
He may have his way with the intended changes to the LRA but the party will pay dearly in lost support from disenchanted workers who expected better from the worker based MDC than the Liberation movement based Zanu PF.
In current Zimbabwe the employers are at a massive advantage over employees in matters concerning the employment contract and the Minister’s view that they are to the contrary ever on the losing end is ill advised, elitist and devastating for the expectant workers.
"It is impossible to retrench and many companies are bankrupted because of that,” ranted Minister Biti oblivious of the political consequences of his misguided bleating.
Zimbabwe has an estimated 80% unemployment rate and no sane Minister would be expected to clamour for more layoffs of the few workers fortunate enough to have hung onto the scarce jobs available in the country at present.
Minister Biti must never forget whose interests he must represent and articulate in this government especially now that his esteemed position has opened a window for him to spend more time with the bourgeoisie than the workers and academics whose backing for him has been resolute over the past decade.
He will need them very shortly and they may not be willing to take the risk with him in charge of protecting their right to fair, secure and rewarding employment if he is of the view that they must be easily retrenched by powerful employers.
The workers want representatives in top government positions who protect their security of tenure in jobs and not retrenchment proponents.
They ask what fault they have committed to deserve being sacrificed and retrenched by companies they have selflessly served for decades that has persuaded the Finance Minister who is also the Secretary General of the political formation they have set up and defended in trying circumstances to side with the employers who have exploited them for decades and made millions out of their sweat.
By singling out Air Zimbabwe as an example of a company reeling under the inflexibility of the labour laws, Minister Biti has displayed the clouding effect of power.
Minister Biti is not telling us that the low level employees the Airline wants to lay off are responsible for the demise of the company.
It was the government and still is his government that is to blame for the malaise at Air Zimbabwe.
The government must pay for the recapitalization of the National Airline as it was the one that refused the company permission to charge competitive fares for political expediency of successive Zanu PF regimes.
Incompetent Air Zimbabwe General Managers were and are still appointed and retained by the government even when they report ruinous trading results.
Employee performance has not deteriorated at Air Zimbabwe in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Rather it is management performance in terms of financial and machinery capitalization that has regressed yet the Minister wants the employees and not the bosses of the Airline to take the cane through underfunded severance packages.
This kind of outrage must never be allowed to instruct formulation of our labour laws. If government cannot recapitalise the Airline with what it has pillaged from it over the past three decades it must allow the company to wind up and see the back of not just the innocent employees targeted for retrenchment but also the managers who allowed the company to fall into financial doldrums.
New and competitive entrepreneurs will gladly come in and fill the void that the folding of Air Zimbabwe will create in the aviation industry of the country.
The same employees the company wants to layoff will be re-employed because of their expertise in the aviation industry and will cost taxpayers nothing.
But as long as this government wants to continue abuse of the Airline facilities it must then be prepared to subsidise operational deficiencies as opposed to victimizing innocent workers through ill considered retrenchments.
Why is it difficult for Air Zimbabwe to justify its grounds for wanting to retrench the workers?
It is because they are executing a government directive which is not in tandem to operational requirements of the Airline in terms of staffing levels.
The company’s fleet of planes has been run down and never replaced even though each year provision was made for their depreciation and replacement.
Retrenchments would not replenish capitalization deficiencies in the company nor will they make it more attractive and competitive.
Why does the government not consider savings it would make from avoiding retrenchments to be channeled towards recapitalizing the company and making it competitive?
That is what the people of Zimbabwe want and not the laying off of the airline staff through cynical labour law changes to exonerate Government of its plunder and pillaging of the company in the past.
No Minister Biti the workers targeted for retrenchment at Air Zimbabwe are not the cause for its demise nor should they be at the receiving end of a severance settlement that condemns them to destitution after most have dedicated the majority of their working lives to the company.
The laws must be tightened to discourage wanton job losses and ensure companies double their efforts to stay afloat and avoid resorting to layoffs that exonerate them of liabilities towards welfare of employees in advanced ages nearing pensionable age.
The economic strain of destitution will cause more damage to the image of the country than the demise of Air Zimbabwe after it has paid retrenchment packages. While Air Zimbabwe has the option to work out a recovery plan with its current owners and employees to retrenchment there will be no option for the government’s responsibility for the welfare of the destitute retrenchees.
The current retrenchment laws are meant to discourage wanton retrenchment of employees at the slightest hint of economic inconveniency for employing organizations by requiring them first to institute retrenchment avoidance measures and involving affected workers in developing strategies to overcome retrenchment threats.
Where all these have been done without success the employer must then apply to the Labour Minister for approval of the retrenchment option regardless of it having the support or disapproval of the Workers Committees and or Trade Unions.
In cases where procedure has been followed to the letter the Minister has always approved the retrenchments but it is in State owned companies like ZBH, Municipalities and Air Zimbabwe where the political appointees run to politicians for authorization to retrench without following due process where the courts have rightfully refused to sanction the illegal retrenchments.
In typical Zanu PF reaction to failure in courts Minister Biti is now announcing that the MDC has joined the Zanu PF bandwagon of refusing to live by judgments from courts through circumventing them with reactionary law changes.
The seniority of Hon Biti both in the MDC and Government makes his statements more worrisome than if they had been said by any other.
The reason why most cases are not being finalized at the Labour Courts is because Minister Biti lacks emotional empathy and sympathy for the prejudiced employees who have been unlawfully laid off and fought for years in some cases decades to reverse the injustices they have been meted by unscrupulous and powerful employers.
If he had he would have long paid attention to numerous reports and recommendations from the courts to address the paralysis in the courts caused by migration to multi currency usage without guidance on what should happen to cases that occurred during the Zimdollar era that spilled into the Multicurrency era before resolution.
With his attitude that employers are always on the losing side in retrenchment cases it is not surprising why he has not been willing to order that courts must convert pre-multi currency claims to multi currency equivalents to the official Reserve Bank rate of exchange prevailing at the time the disputed separations occurred.
But the same employers he wrongly believes are now holding the losing end in severance package backed separations had access to the funds they denied the employees whose contracts they knew they had willfully and deliberately terminated unlawfully in the security of knowledge that even if they were to be ordered by the courts to reinstate or retrench by way of damages in lieu of illegal terminations the payments would amount to nothing after hyperinflation interventions are taken into account.
How Biti who has been so incisive in his assessment of issues troubling the country has failed to see through the smokescreen put up by employers that they are handicapped by stringent retrenchment laws from turning around companies is surprising.
It is a ruse that has absolutely no justification because the same employers have made substantive profits from the use of the same employees that they have invested elsewhere and are still yielding benefit to them but that they do not want to prop up institutions they have looted.
They would rather see the Minister dig his own political grave by confronting his key worker constituency with labour laws that endear him to the filthy rich employers who sucked wealth from the impoverished workers now being squarely burdened to pay the price for the looting by the employers through unjustified and easy to implement retrenchments.
Unless the review of the Labour Act improves the security of tenure in jobs by workers the MDC will invite protest votes against it in any future elections and that is political suicide the party can ill afford at a time when Zanu PF is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to reclaim the lost confidence of the workers in it.
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