SADC should reform labour laws

Richard Thompson, a Chief Consultant on labour laws and relations with a South African based company Epton Labour Consultancy Services, made the announcement at the opening of the two-day sub regional workshop on labour reform and new forms of employment relationships. African labour disputes settlement systems tend to be legalistic and underrate human relations, he said, adding that while it was normal to have labour disputes at the workplace, there was need for an efficient, effective and humane dispute settlement mechanism when these arose. As labour experts and technocrats, you need to find ways of making labour administration more people centred and protective of workers who are the weakest social partners, he said.

Thompson said there was need for SADC countries to reform labour laws to protect migrant workers, the majority of who were engaged as casual and contract workers and, in addition to being underpaid and working excessively long hours, were not receiving benefits such as social protection and protective clothing. He said the emergence of individual bargaining to determine remuneration had also become a cause for concern on the labour market as the trend was coming as an affront to collective bargaining and threatened the existence of trade unionism.

Thompson said productivity alone could not be the basis for remuneration, adding there was need for labour laws in the region to develop faster in order to integrate the continuously moving labour trends. There was also need to reform labour laws to cater for the changing economic situations that were seeing employment levels falling and the majority of people now working in the informal sector, he said. The self employed and vast numbers of people sustained by and working in the informal sector are largely ignored as far as labour administration is concerned, he said.

Speaking at the same occasion, Zambia Congress of Trade Unions first vice president, Samuel Phiri said workers were concerned that some governments in the region were compromising their sovereignty out of desperation for foreign investment. It is a sad affair, he said. On relations between trade unions and governments, Phiri said there should be a limit to the fighting that usually occurs when the two differ on labour issues. Representatives of labour, employers and governments from Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe are attending the workshop that is aimed at identifying new forms of employment relationships and ways of dealing with these.