Staff reporter

…as ZCTU politicisation stalls TNF progress

The Civil Service Apex Council has established an alternative Labour Union called the Zimbabwe Confederation of Public Sector Trade Unions (ZCPSTU) to counter the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union (ZCTU) that has been politicising trade unionism, a development that has been slowing down progress on the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF).

The formation of the ZCPSTU is meant to fulfil the Trade Union’s mandate of representing the interests of the workers that ZCTU failed due to massive politicisation by its leader, Peter Mutasa who is a close ally of the MDC Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa.

 The new kid on the block brings together all trade unions in the Public Service Sector, such as the ones that represent, nurses, teachers and the rest of the civil service.

ZCPSTU has also managed to register with the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and has also notified the International Labour Organisation (ILO) of their formation.  So far the Organisation has managed to attract large numbers that now surpass those of ZCTU.  As such, it has won the right to represent the workers in the TNF and other International forums.

The new ZCPSTU’s interim President is Cecilia Alexander of the Apex Council, while David Dzatsunga is the Secretary General.

The politicisation of trade unionism by the Mutasa-led ZCTU has seen three previous TNF ending pre-maturely after ZCTU walked out leaving Government and Business with no option, but to abort the meetings.  The bone of contention between Labour, Business and Government is that ZCTU insisted on the return of salaries to the pre-October 2018 levels indexed at the last auction results, an idea that had always been propagated by the MDC A vice president Tendai Biti in a bid to disable Government economically.  The labour body continues to insist on the gazetting of the universal minimum wage.  Labour insists that the minimum wage should be in-line with the Poverty Datum Line which is currently at ZW$20 166.35. 

Government and Business are disputing saying the minimum wages must be set by National Employment Councils and have insisted that they have no capacity to return to the pre-October USD salaries. 

ZCTU has been accused of abandoning the interests of workers in pursuit of opposition politics. The West used the labour party as the springboard for the launch of the MDC Alliance, a development that has occasioned a water and fish relationship between the two. As a result, workers’ interests have been playing second fiddle to politics in the ZCTU. A number of workers have dumped the labour body and joined other mushrooming labour bodies, while others chose to remain independent.