The Sunday Mail
I read appalling statistics from China last week. The China Youth Daily reported that 600 000 Chinese die annually from working too hard.
Imagine wiping away a population equivalent to an entire province of Zimbabwe? Not from accident-related incidences, no, but from working hard.
The results are just remarkable though. China, because of working hard to death, is now poised to overtake the United States as the world’s biggest economy.
How about we also introduce the working-to-death concept here in Zimbabwe? It sure won’t be difficult to roll out, as it is already taking place de facto anyway. We will be just building on what is there already.
I have read several local reports of Chinese contractors who work their employees very long hours and also unleash their martial arts tradition on our local folk, to beat the laziness out of their system.
In construction, I heard from kombi talk that these Easterners have brought their own type of wheelbarrow whose size is way much bigger than the regular size of a local wheelbarrow so that more can be carried by one man.
Worse still, the wheelbarrow is said not to have the leg support, meaning that once you lift it you won’t be able to rest until you get the cargo in it to the intended destination.
I know it is the Chinese who invented the wheelbarrow, and they have every right to this wheelbarrow-reloaded; but must we not be the ones to invent the amount of cargo our folks should carry?
Well, of course, it will not only be inhuman and immoral to work our employees to death, but unconstitutional too.
We read in the Constitution that the State must “adopt reasonable policies and measures … to provide everyone with an opportunity to work in a freely chosen activity, in order to secure a decent living for themselves and their families”.
But, of course, we have to do something about the work ethic of our workforce in Zimbabwe. If you are a foreigner walking into one of the Government departments, you will be forgiven to ask, “When is your go-slow ending?”
We have such an unproductive workforce in Zimbabwe. Labour is actually trying to continue hiding its lack of productivity behind its little finger by fighting productivity-based remuneration, as proposed by the finance minister.
“It is, therefore, necessary, Mr Speaker Sir, that review of our labour laws also takes account of productivity. I am, therefore, calling upon my colleague, the Minister responsible for Labour, Hon Goche, to seriously consider amendments to the Labour Act that relate work to productivity.
“It is also necessary that we introduce in our Labour Laws, flexibility in the hiring of workers, as well as alignment of wage adjustments to labour productivity,” said Minister Chinamasa in the 2014 National Budget statement.
The issue had already been pointed out as far back as 2011 in the Industrialisation Development Policy, which is on record saying, “Government will expedite the review of both labour laws and the related institutional arrangements, with a view to . . . ensuring that wage and salary payments are inflation linked and also based on productivity.”
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has, however, been at the forefront of driving out this elephant that Government has brought into their living room.
The labour body is on record saying: “According to information we have, more than 60 percent of all companies that are currently under judicial management are a result of mismanagement not unsustainable wage bills.”
I don’t know whether this statement was said with the intention of denying that wages and salaries are causing company downfalls. However, the first mistake the ZCTU makes here is to think that we can judge all the companies based on the performance of bad ones.
Salaries and wages are an issue of particular concern in this economy.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, in one of its annual surveys, established that a certain percentage of local manufacturers had at least 60 percent of their production costs dominated by wages and salaries. For Government it is as high as 85 percent.
Labour is also quick to want to negotiate wages based on the consumer basket, which is about US$600 now. Can Zimbabwe afford to pay a minimum salary of US$600 right now? Should we be talking about salary increases or rather growing the economy?
The state of labour laws in Zimbabwe has been correctly characterised by Minister Chinamasa, when he said that they “tend to be skewed in favour of employees, without taking due cognisance of productivity and the capacity of companies to pay”.
Thus, it is unusual to find a scenario where employees demand a salary increase of 100 percent, with employers offering to pay 5 percent, and the arbitrator simply comes in and makes an unsustainable award of 60 percent.
The next thing is the company directs virtually all its resources towards salaries, while failing to meet other critical issues like acquiring raw materials or to service its machinery. Ultimately, you will begin to see capacity utilisation falling and employees losing jobs.
It is important that we link remuneration to productivity. Everybody must work for what they earn every month. There is no free lunch, so we say. Only a weevil gets free lunch.
“He who will not work shall not eat,” so we read in 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
The sooner labour wakes up to this reality, and stops hiding behind its little finger, the better.
Many workers have children whom they try to give a good education as an investment. Why does a parent tell his Grade Four child that if he or she passes top of their class, he will buy them, say, a bicycle?
Why doesn’t he reward his child for getting 36 units? Here we see that even workers perform productivity-based rewarding to their children. Why then should it be an offence for employers to practise such a noble thing?
As we move towards bringing in productivity-based remuneration, as pledged by Government, we should start to conduct studies on how jobs in various sectors can be measured and rewarded. We should abandon this new culture of laziness, where people want to earn a quick buck that is not even sustainable.
Has anyone noticed how the fraud cases involving people misrepresenting companies to make orders for goods have been on the increase? We need to reclaim our identity of being honest and hardworking people.
The need for a sustainable remuneration mechanism is now necessary given the fact that most promising companies are struggling to pay due to the liquidity conditions.
Productivity-based remuneration has the potential to not only improve efficiency but to unlock the full value of an employee.
There are those who often hide behind team effort.
Productivity-based remuneration ensures each employee is accountable for his work and proves his ability and potential.
We can only be sure that any wage increase translates directly into enhanced competitiveness if we engage the productivity-based remuneration gear. Each wage increase must not put pressure on the general price level.
Instead of working ourselves to death, let’s just work good enough to earn every cent we get.
