Davies Ndumiso Sibanda, Labour Matters

WITH the lockdown being eased in phases, the economy remains partially open resulting in many businesses remaining closed and more and more workers being put on unpaid leave and in worse cases workers are losing jobs. The hotel industry workers are some of the worst hit as it remains largely closed and a few hotels have opened their doors but are running at a loss.

With fear of contracting Covid 19, very few people use hotels. Those organisations that rely on imported inputs, the supply chain has dried up or they are erratic and this has been compounded by border delays where goods can be held for several days. Many organisations in this category have not opened up or have opened with a few workers while others have sent workers on unpaid leave after finishing all inputs.

There are cases where the capacity of business to trade has collapsed resulting in employers either sending workers on several months of unpaid leave as others have started the retrenchment process while some have applied for exemptions from paying salaries. All this is happening to workers who were living from hand to mouth before Covid 19, thus, presenting a desperate picture of workers and their families.

One of the biggest challenges for employers and workers is the legal rights of the parties to an employment contract as the economy re-opens. While during lockdown the Labour Act was dwarfed by the occasion, the landscape changed once the economy started opening up. Simply put, once your industry is allowed to work by Government then it means the parties revert back to the Labour Act Chapter 28:01 and related regulations.

At the moment, unless there is an exemption, schools, colleges and universities remain closed and its unlawful to demand that workers in these institutions come to work. The same applies to informal sector.

In the event someone is injured or contracts the Covid 19, then the law is likely to descend hard on whoever demanded that workers should come to work. Where there is an exemption from staying at home, the Labour Laws are applicable and the Covid 19 cannot be used as an excuse for any case of failure to observe labour laws.

Where Government has allowed an industry to be operational, for example mining, the employer who decides not to operate cannot withhold workers’ wages with permission of the appropriate NEC or internal agreement. Telling workers that you cannot afford to pay them due to Covid 19 or you cannot open due to Covid-19 is not good enough. This means that NECs exemptions committees must be adequately skilled to handle cases in a nonpartisan manner, but as guided by the facts of each case.

At NEC, Covid-19 challenges can be presented as reason for applying for an exemption from paying wages at all or any portion of wages but must be backed by facts and figures. Many employers jump to applying for exemption from paying wages or sending workers on unpaid leave or some other similar action without fully understanding the possible implications.

Workers are unlikely to sit and wait for their jobs to come back. Survival instinct will tell most workers to look at alternative means of survival and might not be available. Further, workers might find the new sources of income safer into the future than coming back to their old jobs and also be given the fact that nobody knows when Covid-19 will end and how the new economy will look like, workers are unlikely to sit and wait. They have families to feed and as such they will find new survival means.

The situation is compounded by the fact that the set of knowledge and skills that are going to be needed by organisations into the future are unknown, in most cases, for example trainers now have to develop skills in word processing, graphics design, photography, photoshop, video making and many others. This means that a number of workers in the training world who cannot adapt will not get their job back.

This has led some employers to retrench workers with the hope of purchasing skills when the lockdown is lifted.

In conclusion, there must be a balance between legality and business prudence in the management of labour as the economy re-opens.

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