The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions is deeply disturbed by utterances by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa that government and the private sector can cut salaries and wages to align their employment costs to the operating environment.
These utterances in praise of TelOne which effected a 15% salary cut last year poses serious interference to collective bargaining with the potential to plunge the already underpaid workers in poverty. The minister needs to be urgently reigned in before he jerks a reign-of -terror of wage and job cuts across all sectors disguised as operational validation.

Chinamasa needs to be schooled that labour costs alone cannot solely affect the viability of business entities because there are various factor some at national policy level as well as the country’s political risk factor that have a huge bearing on investments and business viability compared to labour costs. Chinamasa and his friends in cabinet need to do a reality check on the problems bedevilling the economy instead of fighting shadows and projecting the problem to hapless workers.

Workers are not to blame for the current economic malaise and the buck stops with government. Government officials and Chinamasa’s bosses spend millions of dollars flying all over the world at the expense of the country. We even have a Vice President who has decided to live in a hotel for nearly two years gobbling thousands of dollars in tax payers’ monies. Even Chinamasa himself must lead by example by refusing to be allocated a Mercedes Benz to cut government costs. It is high time government officials walk the talk.

Ministerial interference in labour issues continues to surge despite protestations by labour at all foras including at the International Labour Organisation. The government continues to prop up such violations by heaping praises on errant companies while inciting unfair labour conduct to employers. Such a sick mentality within an individual who controls the national purse spells doom for civil servant’s quests for better salaries and could be used to sanitise labour market flexibility and his capitalistic tendencies to the looming axing of thousands of workers from the civil service.

The ZCTU will not take such threats against the livelihoods of thousands of workers and their families and is sternly warning Chinamasa to retract his unfortunate utterances and depart from this dangerous path before it drags the government before the ILO for violating Convention 154 - Collective Bargaining Convention of 1981.

JAPHET MOYO

SECRETARY GENERAL

29 JUNE 2016