The Sunday Mail
Japhet Moyo
Firstly, unions never agreed with the interpretation of our law in the first place, and they felt that the Supreme Court sitting in the Zuva judgment erred.
Hational Handling Services terminated contracts of several employees on three months’ notice, citing the Labour Act (Chapter 28:01).
Interpretation of the law then was that the employer had the right — under common law — to terminate contracts of employment by merely giving three months’ notice. This interpretation was given in a Zuva Petroleum case involving a long-protracted labour dispute.
Like many other employers in the country, NHS proceeded to terminate contracts of several of its employees.
In fact, the judgment opened the floodgates through which over 20 000 workers lost their jobs within a month of labour chaos.
Labour unions were not amused, and petitioned authorities to intervene and stop the carnage. Government took (considerable) time to deal with the matter, but eventually amended the Labour Act.
The amendment then came with a section requiring employers to compensate all those who were affected by the en masse terminations. The seven NHS employees then approached the Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Ministry in terms of the prevailing dispute resolution system and got an order in their favour.
They went further to get it confirmed by the Labour Court. This confirmation can be appealed against in terms of our laws, and we wait to see whether the employers would proceed to the higher court.
What does this mean to unions?
Firstly, unions never agreed with the interpretation of our law in the first place, and they felt that the Supreme Court sitting in the Zuva judgment erred.
After Independence in 1980, Government crafted legislation that ousted the common law position on termination, proving that the Zuva judgment was an economic decision rather than a legal one.
The Zuva judgment took our jurisprudence to the pre-colonial era. We call it “judicial activism” when the bench is influenced by policy rather than what the statutes say.
The amendments that then sought to protect the workers were welcomed by unions because, after all, that was what we fought for during the war and after Independence. This is what we continue to advocate. The retrospective clause on compensation is in order because it is meant to correct a wrong. Parliament was spot on in this regard.
The thrust to bring back neo-liberal policies like labour market flexibility, productivity-linked wages and embracing programmes from the World Bank and IMF like the Staff Monitoring Programme are likely to influence Zimbabwe’s law development.
Furthermore, labour law development is likely to be rewound to the pre-colonial era because of the factors mentioned above and movement of Civil Service personnel to business.
Ministers, Members of Parliament, judges and influential civil servants are now businesspeople unlike before.
We continue to make retrogressive labour laws like what we are witnessing with sections of the Special Economic Zones Act.
For the past seven years, we have failed to incorporate international labour standards in our legislation. There is no guarantee that the Labour Court judgment on NHS vs Seven Workers — while very progressive — will not be overturned on appeal.
Our highest bench has remained very conservative and anti-worker.
Mr Japhet Moyo is Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. He shared these views with The Sunday Mail’s Senior Reporter Lincoln Towindo in Harare last week.
