Unite and confront gvt over poor salaries, working conditions

Harare- CIVIL servants in Zimbabwe have been urged to rise, unite and take the government head on, demanding better salaries and better working conditions.

In an interview with Express Mail Zim’s Workers Hammer, a publication which exclusively focuses on the plight of workers in Zimbabwe, Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, (PTUZ) president, Takavafira Zhou, accused government of ‘acclimitised to command and control tactics rather than logical disputation that has traction’.
This follows the recent increase in civil servants Zig component salaries equivalent to $US40, which most teachers organizations dismissed as peanuts and easily erodable.

“In the view of government’s continued arm twisting and taking unilateral decisions when to comes to salaries and welfare, there is therefore a greater need than before for unity of purpose among workers,” said Zhou.
“Be they teachers, nurses, the rest of civil servants, police, soldiers, college and university lecturers.The days of standing on the touchline to watch a game you should be playing and hoping a struggle by teachers will benefit all workers in Zimbabwe, are over.The struggle needs our collective efforts to unlock the employer’s doors,”said Zhou.

The firebrand union leader said it was high time for the unionization of all workers in Zimbabwe for them to be fully effective and be able to advocate for better working conditions.
“There must be unionization of all workers.Free riders weaken workers’ struggles as they benefit from the efforts of unionized members.At worst free riders must be docked and such dues distributed across all unions in terms of trade and proportional to membership per trade,”he said.
He added:
Government must also allow negotiations under a defective and moribund Statutory Instrument 141 of 1997 to reach a deadlock stage than can be referred for arbitration or used to challenge the defective begging forum.

“There also must be a robust collective bargaining chamber under section 65 of the Constitution and this is now long overdue.The sooner civil servants draw lobbying benchmarks towards that, the better.
Trade unionism is a question of collectively advancing the interests of members always, and defending any gains made.Our numbers, collective wisdom, unified lobbying and opening of new fronts can see us through.Unless we unite as brothers and sisters under the hammer of poverty and misery, we will perish as tools.”