Zimbabwe’s labour movement on Tuesday said it is finalising plans for nationwide protests to press for realistic wages, stoking up tensions in a country already on knife edge because of a deepening economic and political crisis.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an ally of labour, has already threatened to call mass protests this winter to force President Robert Mugabe to step aside for a transitional government to take over and organise the writing of a new Constitution and fresh elections under international supervision.
Wellington Chibhebhe, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the umbrella body for the country’s workers, said workers had opted to protest after negotiations involving the government and business for new wages linked to Zimbabwe’s galloping inflation failed to achieve results.
“We are finalising plans for the strikes. We are currently consulting with the workers on the nature and dates for our demonstrations because our partners in the Tripartite Negotiation Forum [TNF] are not taking the issue [of new wages] seriously,” Chibhebhe said.
Zimbabwe’s economy is on a free fall, with inflation pegged at 1 193,5%, the highest such rate in the world outside a war zone. The Central Statistical Office says an average family of six now needs a minimum of Z$55-million per month for basic commodities and services, even though the average salary of most workers is Z$10-million.
Chibhebhe said labour resolved at a congress last month that all workers must be paid salaries that are in line with inflation, which economic experts see surging higher on the back of a rapidly depreciating Zimbabwe dollar and ballooning prices.
The ZCTU official said workers agreed that the issue of inflation-linked salaries should be subject for negotiation through the TNF but the forum has not met to discuss the workers’ salary grievance, a development he said is seen by workers as a sign that both business and the government do not regard the matter as serious.
“Since then the TNF has not met and we believe our partners are not serious. So we are pressing ahead and our members are raring to go on strike because they can no longer afford to come to work and to feed their families,” Chibhebhe said.
The TNF is a joint negotiating body that comprises representatives from business, labour and the government.
Business stalled progress during tripartite negotiations last month when it refused to agree to pay workers salaries that are above the poverty datum line, arguing that a proposed incomes and prices stabilisation protocol must include a clause stating that employers can only pay inflation-linked wages if they are able to do so.
The business negotiators said this is necessary because many companies are themselves struggling to remain afloat and that making it compulsory for all to match wages with rising inflation could force them to fold.
But the ZCTU insists that such a clause making it optional for firms to pay wages according to the rate of inflation would be a loophole that would enable even those companies that were able to pay higher wages to avoid doing so.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of its worst economic crisis yet, characterised by hyperinflation, shortages of food, fuel, electricity, essential medicines, hard cash and just about every basic survival commodity.
Western governments and the MDC blame the crisis on repression and wrong policies by Mugabe, such as his chaotic and often violent seizure of land from white farmers for redistribution to landless blacks, a programme that destabilised the mainstay agricultural sector and knocked down food production by about 60%.
Zimbabwe, once a regional bread basket, has largely depended on food handouts from international donors since Mugabe began his farm-seizure programme six years ago.
Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence, denies mismanaging the country and says its problems are because of sabotage by Western countries out to punish his government for taking land from whites and giving it to blacks. — ZimOnline