BULAWAYO - Short-term contracts for permanent jobs are depriving workers of their benefits, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Union (ZCTU) has said. The organisation is calling for industry to stop casualising labour. Casualisation of labour is putting workers on short contracts, on jobs that are permanent in nature. Effectively, that deprives employees of all the benefits that they would otherwise get when they are permanent staffers, said ZCTU legal officer Mandla Sibanda, speaking on the sidelines of the Zimbabwe Social Forum. Workers [could be doing] the jobs which they have been doing for the past 20 years, yet industry engages them on a contractual basis, on month to month contract. And that obviously prejudices them in a big way because, prime among them, is the issue of pensionsin some instances they are not even on medical aid.
However instead of offering a glimmer of hope, Minister of Industry and Commerce, Welshman Ncube is on record as urging people to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. Speaking at a Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) meeting in October, Ncube criticised labour laws for being rigid.
When you have an economy on its knees, when you need flexibility for business to reconstruct and reconstitute itself, and you have the labour laws that we have on retrenchment, on short time, which laws end up forcing businesses to go for liquidationWhen they can downsizeand grow later on to employ people, they end up employing no-one because of that rigidity.
Sibanda said his union had raised its concerns with the Tripartite Negotiating Forum, but industry and the government had yet to respond. Currently, there is a law reform process that is taking place. As labour we have put forward our concerns and the issue of casualisation is adequately enshrined in our proposals. The ZCTU and other pro-worker groups are campaigning against casualisation of labour and lobbying for US$500 to be set as the poverty line.
Post published in: News