Zimbabwe celebrates May Day

By Dr Takavafira Zhou

The Workers’ Day celebrates the labour movement and its achievements, specifically the 8-hour day movement which advocated for 8 hours of work, 8 hours of recreation and 8 hours of rest since the 17th century.

Since the 1889 victory Workers’ Day has been associated with commemoration of better salaries and working conditions or what is dubbed the Decent Work Agenda.

Sadly, on this important day workers in Zimbabwe are mourning their demise from grace to grass with monotonous regularity.

In theory it is good that the employer, Public Service Commission has joined government workers in commemorating Workers’Day at Allan Wilson High School under the theme ‘Creating a Formidable partnership, to promote social justice and a decent work agenda.’

The great question of the day is: How can an employer who has been evading meetings with employees since July 2024 suddenly change her leopard sports of prevaricating?

The Public Service Commission must confess its callousness in evading the 2024 agreed quarterly engagements. It is also prudent to remind the Public Service Commission that a realistic partnership, promotion of social justice and a decent work agenda must start with the restoration of the purchasing power parity of government workers’ salaries as of October 2018.

Teachers were earning a basic salary of US$540. There must be no negotiation over such a basic salary. What must be negotiable in this collaboration must be the 30% of basic salary as rural & hardship allowance, and other allowances that resonate with different professions under government.

Housing and transport allowances must resonate with the actual costs of transport and house suitable to a particular government post. For example the paterson system reflects that a senior teacher must stay in a three bed-roomed house.

Government workers expect nothing less than collaboration, social justice and a Decent Work Agenda. The time for homiletic bellicose is over, and now is the time for pragmatism and realism in formidable partnership, social justice and a decent work agenda.

Workers do not eat false promises but need salaries that are above PDL, alignment of labour laws and Statutory Instruments with the Constitution, robust collective bargaining chamber under section 65 of the Constitution and ILO Conventions 87 and 98, and improved conditions of service.

On this day, Workers’ Day, we urge the government to urgently address the parlous state of the salaries and conditions of service for its patriotic and hardworking employees in order to enhance industrial harmony and productivity.

Any continued prevarication will bring an equal and opposing force that will end in industrial disharmony.

We will not accept to continue wallowing in poverty in a country with abundant resources enjoyed by cartels.

We urge workers across the union divide in Zimbabwe to unite, mobilise, organise and fight for better salaries and conditions of service.

*Dr Takavafira Zhou is Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe President