Q & A

More strikes to follow—MCTU

Malawi has been rocked with industrial strikes in parastatals demanding pay hikes after the devaluation.  Some quarters have blamed the Ministry of Labour for failing to handle the issue effectively. Mwereti Kanjo talks to Malawi Congress of Trade Unions (MCTU) secretary general Robert Mkwezalamba on the possible way forward and other issues related to the sit-ins.

Q: What role is MCTU playing in dealing with these strikes?

A: We have been on the ground long enough and we knew this was going to happen and have played the role of providing necessary guidance and direction in so far as the law is concerned.

   Besides guidance on legal aspects of the workers concerns, we have engaged employers and government through Ministry of Labour and offered solutions on how the strikes can be stopped. The major strategy we implored was to call for an all inclusive stakeholders forum to discuss the plight of parastatals.

The meeting was to bring all chief executives and human resource managers, the union presidents and general secretaries, the comptroller or parastatals and even the Secretary to Cabinet under OPC to dialogue and agree on the way forward. Unfortunately, government has not seen the reasoning and failed to take advantage of this initiative as they have chickened out and remained non-responsive to this meeting.

   As a result, we have told Ministry of Labour through its PS that we are standing down and will only watch how they will resolve the over 20 strikes that we have been holding the workers back pending this meeting. Our attention will simply focus on addressing the plight of the workers to encourage them to follow procedures and only engage in legal strikes until government starts thinking big!

 

Q: Government seems to allocate different percentages to the companies. For instance, university staff (Mzuni and Unima) were offered a 21 percent increment while other organisations have been offered five percent. Is this fair considering the kwacha was devalued by 49 percent?

A: This is double standards and clearly shows where the interest and reasoning of government is. Any increase less than 40 percent is pure mockery. It is only in situations where management and workers have discussed their plight and based on their situation, have settled for a lesser percentage.

But any forced award without consideration is a mockery. Such poor awards will contribute to cases of theft, corruption, poor service delivery, lawlessness, inequalities, poverty and exploitation in the country

 

Q: Are the strikers’ demands realistic considering that the budget for this financial year was already passed? If government accepts these demands, will this not affect the country’s economy?

A: Yes, they are justified, their organisations’ budgets provided for what they are demanding. For some of them, the others have experienced a 10 percent devaluation in 2011, 40 percent in 2012, inflation rate of over 21 percent coupled with increased commodity and service prices on the market. They cannot make ends meet. If government were honest and visionary, they knew of the devaluation they should have provided for it in the budget and salaries.

 

Q: How can employees of essential service providers such as water boards, health workers and Escom best handle the issue of their grievances with their employers without affecting their companies’ service delivery to loyal clients, who pay their bills and deserve the services?

A: The laws are very clear: The workers discuss with their employers and where there is a deadlock, the ministry has adequate time to help in the process. But you have the OPC which is stepping its foot on the process making the interventions by Ministry of Labour doubtful and not trusted by the workers. This is because workers now feel all what the minister and her officials are saying are lies, not knowing that it is the other part of government which is confusing the process by making unreasonable orders.

According to the law, there is no company or organisation which is classified as an essential service that is why you have the nurses, water, and so on, going on strike. We started a process in 2003 to have essential services identified by way of a gazette, the process stalled. As we speak, it is only the Industrial Relations Court which has the mandate to declare a strike as taking place in an essential service or not on an application by the Minister of Labour to the court. But as individuals, by simply looking at the definition or meaning of essential services, we conclude that water, nurses and Escom form essential services. We are sorry to say that all workers have the right to strike and all rights as accorded by the law. Where an essential service has been declared or provided for, the union always puts what we call skeleton staff to still manage the services.

 

Q: What would be your advice on the way forward to this problem?

Dialogue is the only solution. We commend management in all the concerned parastatals for living above the tides and giving their workers an ear and allowing meaningful dialogue. But as pointed out above, government should have specific issues to supervise the parastatals on and refrain from dictatorial tendencies especially over workers’ benefits. Let them guide over matters of operation and expansion but not workers benefits. They are killing them. They need also not forget that the workers see and know how government is benefiting from their organisations and to them, it may not make sense to be denied same benefits and privileges.

 

Q: Any last comments?

A: We maintain that strikes are a last resort. First, we would like to call on government to act responsibly and timely to address the plight of workers and further call on all workers not yet unionised to join unions. Over and above these, we call on government through Ministry of Labour to convene the stakeholders meeting to review these events towards joint solutions otherwise, they have not seen enough yet.

Related Articles

Check Also
Close
Back to top button