MANY workers are losing money paying ‘fly by night’ labour consultants and trade unionists who are in the business of representing workers for money reason and nothing else.

Workers need to appreciate that labour law is not as simple and straight forward that anyone can be a representative. Reading the Labour Act and regulations does not make one competent in labour law.

For one to fully comprehend labour law from our courts, persuasive cases from other jurisdictions must be known. Further, one has to have a detailed understanding from the world of work.

I have witnessed a case whereby a labour consultant who represented workers in a retrenchment case did not know the procedure. He continued to mislead workers to a point that the workers got retrenched while he continued to tell the workers it was not over.

He then got a good slice of the retrenchment packages through a promise of fighting the case for the workers all the way to the Supreme Court. In the end, the workers were left alone counting their losses.

While there is no law requiring the registration of labour consultants, workers should seek guidance from those in the know like lawyers and trade unions as to whether they can engage particular labour consultants.

Having been a human resources manager, a trade unionist or a human resources lecturer is not always a qualification to be a competent labour consultant. It must be noted that many of those mentioned above might not have studied labour relations or labour law, worse still their every day work does not involve labour litigation and dispute resolution.

What is disheartening is a visit to the Labour Court where one finds the pseudo labour consultant coaching the client on what to say once inside the court room as he has no audience before the court.

Some do not even tell workers that they have no audience but just help workers file papers and disappear leaving the worker at the mercy of competent lawyers or human resources practitioners representing the employer.

There are many other evils associated with those ‘fly by night’ labour consultants such as taking a huge percentage of workers dues that they would have got anyway without any assistance.

A good example is an employee being retrenched on minimum retrenchment package whose payment would not change even if one brought a top lawyer. Things like gratuity, pensions and cash in lieu of leave are statutory but many ‘fly by night’ labour consultants make workers believe its their effort that made the employer pay.

On the other hand, there are many professional labour consultants who do their work in an ethical manner adding value to the economy helping bring sanity to the world of work. Maybe what is needed is a means of regulating the labour consulting profession or labour consultants themselves coming together to self-regulate.

In conclusion, workers have to be alert and avoid engaging fly by night labour consultants but instead seek proper guidance before engaging labour consultants to represent them.

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