Moving forward in Zimbabwe - Brooks World Poverty Institute - The ...

Moving forward in Zimbabwe
Reducing poverty and promoting growth
supervisory rather than one where it deals with almost everything
to do with employment. The new system must implement a
regulated and flexible system that avoids the excesses of the 1980s
(interventionism) and of the 1990s (liberalisation).
Institution building and the role of trade unions
Building the institutions of labour administration should
include an active role for the trade union movement. The trade union
movement merits special discussion. As highlighted previously,
the movement has been an important player in the campaign
for social and economic justice, calling for good governance and
fighting for the protection of workers’ rights. It has mobilisation
and technical capacities that can be harnessed for the purposes
of economic growth and development. Including it in labour
administration through tripartite arrangements like the Tripartite
Negotiating Forum (where labour, government and business come
together to discuss policies) and national employment councils
enriches relations and reduces the occurrence of industrial action.
Tripartism, which is currently unique to labour administration, can
be extended to cover economic policy formulation too, and in both
cases it will be necessary to make the position of social partners
stronger than currently existing under the Tripartite Negotiating
Forum. The labour movement has the capacity to contribute
effectively to policy as shown by its 1996 critique of the structural
adjustment programme. Since then, there has been close tripartite
cooperation and synergy especially at a technical level that should
be exploited for the benefit of the economy.
The trade union movement’s main role of championing
workers’ rights will become even more important during the
economy’s recovery process. While labour standards are generally
high in the economy, the new crop of investors, especially those
from China, will pose a serious challenge. They generally do not
pay competitive wages, and most of them take little heed of
labour standards and health and safety issues. A good example is
the awful accidents record in the copper mines in Zambia. Given
that China is investing heavily in sectors with potentially dangerous
employment conditions (mining, steel processing and textiles and
clothing), it shall be very important to ensure that they abide by
the nation’s labour and health and safety standards and pay fair
wages. This is work that can be left to the trade union movement
to deal with. In this regard, the government should not undermine
unions’ role in organising and educating workers as had become
common from 1998 onwards. Instead, close cooperation can result
in win-win outcomes. Unions can also assist in educating and
training informal sector operators in labour law, health and safety,
and HIV/AIDS. These are activities that the government has never
bothered to engage in, but have important long-term implications
for the economy.
2.4 Conclusions
Based on this discussion it is clear that the crisis had two major
effects on labour markets. The first relates to labour market
restructuring that started with ESAP and accelerated during the
crisis. This reshaped the structure of employment and clearly
formal sector employment is dwarfed by a burgeoning informal
sector. While informal sector employment can be robust and
provide an income to live, we also know that unpredictability and
low wages create levels of insecurity and vulnerability that now
characterise the urban space economy in Zimbabwe. For sustained
poverty reduction, more and better paying formal sector jobs will
have to be created within the manufacturing sector. This will not
be easy, given the massive skills leakage that has occurred over
the past decade as qualified and experienced employees have left
the country for greener pastures. This has implications for the
recovery of the manufacturing industry and with it, better paying
jobs. There clearly will have to be an interplay between formal and
informal sector focused strategies during the recovery period. For
the manufacturing sector to recover, the agricultural sector must
also improve as the two are intimately linked in the Zimbabwean
economy. It is therefore to the agricultural sector that we turn in
the next chapter.
Notes
1. The labour force figure includes about 800,000 people who were classified as home-makers. The inclusion of home-makers (in both rural
and urban areas) as part of the labour force is because they are classified as employed (that is, unpaid family workers).
2. Note that the informal sector referred to here does not include rural agricultural activities.
3. The CSO calculates monthly poverty datum lines for a family of five persons.
4. The decline could also be attributed to the data collection method that excluded students in boarding school and visitors.
5. Reports on this issue were published in various newspapers including The Zimbabwe Independent on 11 July 2008 (Mozambique central
bank warns of Zimbabwe economic threat), the BBC on 10 June 2008 (Zimbabweans seek asylum in Zambia) and IRIN on 16 June 2008
(Zambia: Bracing for a Zimbabwean exodus).
6. It should be noted that there is no data on intra-country migration, making it impossible to gain quantitative insight into rural-urban
migration, or even the fill scale of internal displacement since the beginning of farm invasions.
7. The 2002 census programme operated with a tight budget because of withdrawal of donor support. Since then, the CSO was not able to
carry out frequent surveys because the government did not prioritise data collection. It is thus not surprising that policy processes from
then on were fruitless since the government did not have clear indications of the state of the economy.
8. CSO started using the broader definition of unemployment in 2004. But even on the basis of the broader definition, the statistics are still
unbelievably low and hence are likely of less policy relevance.
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