Workers ’sleep in’ over low salaries

BY CAIPHAS CHIMHETE & VUSUMUZI SIFILE

AT least 70 men and women working for Kingstons Limited have for a week slept at the company’s head office in Harare, protesting against their paltry transport allowances.
The workers are from the government-owned parastatal’s 11 branches in the capital. The company has interests in books, music, stationery and newspaper distribution.

The workers said their salaries were not enough to cover transport costs for a month. The least paid takes home $5.7 million and a transport allowance of $6 million for 26 working days.
Combined, their salary and transport allowance amount to $11.7 million but each worker requires at least $20 million a month for transport alone, by the most conservative estimates.
Trade union activists say the workers are virtually on slave wages.

“In reality, we are not gainfully employed but are subsidising the company,” fumed one worker, who asked not to be named for fear of victimization. “Remember we have families to feed, children to send to school. Where do they think we can get the money for that, when our salaries are not enough to cover transport alone?”

The workers have been sleeping on the fourth floor of the building. They have been authorised to use toilet and shower facilities at Empire Gym, located in the same building.
Some of the workers use a toilet at a Parkade at Julius Nyerere Way. To while away their time, some workers have brought their radios from home. Every day after work, they gather in one of the rooms to pray for divine intervention.

The workers allege the management reneged on an earlier agreement to give them enough transport allowance for the whole month, basing the calculations on workers who commute to and from Chitungwiza where, at the time of the negotiations last week, a single trip cost $500 000. The fares have since gone up.

On 14 November, the workers’ committee appealed to the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare to “restore order in our organisation”.
On that same day, the workers notified the management of their intention to sleep-in. The letter was copied to the company’s human resources and development manager, John Majuru, the Ministry of Labour, and to the wives, husbands and guardians of Kingstons employees.
Reads part of the letter: “As employees of Kingstons Limited . Our employer has refused to review the transport allowance to the current ruling bus fares as per the agreement we signed on 26 March 2007, we are left with no option but to sleep.

“If we don’t report home, find us at No 34 Kwame Nkrumah, 4th floor, Kingstons House.”
Kingstons’ general manager Dunmore Mazonde could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The Minister of Information and Publicity Sikhanyiso Ndlovu - under whose portfolio Kingstons falls - said although this was a management and not policy issue “the plight of the workers should be attended to”.
“Our policy is clear that workers should be taken care of, and if there is a problem, they have to come to us,” Ndlovu said.
The minister promised to look into the matter.

The dilemma of Kingstons workers represents the plight of over 80% of workers in Zimbabwe, who can no longer survive on their salaries, according to statistics released by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
In most cases, their monthly earnings are not enough to cover even their rentals.
ZCTU Secretary General, Wellington Chibebe yesterday said the situation at Kingstons was an example of how workers were now being treated as “slaves” in most companies.
“This is an element of slavery,” Chibebe said. “Transport costs alone are now $40 million, yet most workers’ salaries are far lower than that. Workers are not realising anything from their efforts.”

The ZCTU has warned employers to urgently resolve the salary disparities “before the workers take the law into their own hands”.
Efforts to get a comment from Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ) national director, John Mufukari, were fruitless.
This article was first published in The Standard on November 25, 2007.