Labour Matters, Davies Ndumiso Sibanda
WHENEVER the wages collective bargaining season sets in, there is a lot of tension and anticipation from the parties that negotiate with both the employer and employee representatives using various tactics to gain advantage over each other.

In Zimbabwe, the post dollarisation period has resulted in the creation of a different wage negotiation landscape which has seen the power of workers to negotiate heavily eroded.

The economic meltdown resulted in organisations underperforming and workers losing jobs and those who remained at work, in the majority of cases, had many benefits and salaries reduced using various legal and illegal methods which workers could not challenge for fear of losing jobs.

At National Employment Council (NEC) level, negotiations for wage upward adjustments met stiff resistance from employers resulting in no wage adjustment not being effected and in some cases or very modest adjustments being done.

Even organisations or industries that are doing well hid under the cover of a failing economy and gave workers paltry wage increases.

With this kind of environment, NEC wage negotiations today require careful planning and strategic thinking by the parties that go into the negotiations.

Gone are the days when the arguments were centred on the bread basket alone, business performance has become a key factor in deciding wage adjustments.

Further, with the Labour Court having criticised arbitrators over thumb-sucking figures and taking the easy way out by taking the middle figure between parties’ positions, arbitrators today apply their minds and make awards that are defendable mainly from a business survival and best practices perspective.

This puts workers at a disadvantage in that while they could have a good story to tell about the needs of workers, the ultimate question is what the business can afford, what the workers are asking for.

In the majority of cases, workers struggle to prove affordability by the employer.

Having looked at a number of recent arbitration submissions, arbitrators will take into consideration employer’s proposed recovery plan and its cost, debts and debts servicing plans, loans and their repayment terms and try to strike a balance with workers’ demands, economic circumstances of workers and make an award that allows the business to continue on a recovery path while balancing with workers interests.

In most cases, such awards are not acceptable to the workers.

What workers have to accept is that these issues are a reality of the world of wage negotiations and come up with strategies that will allow them to continue to benefit and improve benefits without taking a line that will collapse or stall negotiations.

In some cases, employers have pushed for a breathing space through pushing workers to litigate for wages which is a dispute of  right.

Generally, once workers litigate, the wages dispute leaves the internal negotiation table and takes the journey through the courts thus giving the employer a breathing space.

While this approach works, the downside is that in the end one has a disgruntled workforce that is demotivated giving less to the business impacting negatively on productivity.

Another problem is that as the matter progresses through the legal process, polarisation between the parties increases and in worse cases, when the matter is finally settled by the Supreme Court, if workers lose they get depressed and at times there is infighting among workers with workers accusing their leaders for raising false expectations.

On the other hand, if the workers win and the employer never put in place interim wage adjustment measures, the costs could be crippling on the business.

In conclusion, the area of wage negotiation is a very wide one with many complexities that require expert training and guidance and planning that is very sober if wage negotiations are to bear fruit.

There is a need to balance workers interests with business needs while threading through labour legislation and labour relations.

Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on: Email: [email protected]