The plight of workers

The plight of workers
By Editor
Friday May 02, 2008 [04:00]

AS they have been doing over the years, workers yesterday marched carrying banners with literally the same demands they have been making at every May 1 parade. Instead of improving, their conditions are worsening by the day. Workers today face more difficulties and complex challenges than they did 17 years ago.

So many pieces of legislation have been enacted over the last 17 years whose effect has been to erode the workers’ rights. Things which our workers won for themselves over the years have been lost over this period.

It should be understandable why workers have become so suspicious and less trusting over legislation affecting them that our politicians try to enact.
Although our workers are the creators of the wealth of this country, their interests are usually subordinated to those of capital.

Those who own and manage enterprises have a better hearing from our political leaders than the workers and their representatives.
But we shouldn’t forget that the trade unions which enable workers to improve their conditions should be valued and promoted by everybody in society. the government should regulate industries and commerce to protect workers’ rights and to curb their exploitation. Remuneration for work should guarantee people a dignified livelihood for themselves and their families.

We say this because the rights of workers, like all rights, are based on the nature of the human person and on her and his transcendent dignity. Among these rights are: a just wage; a working environment not harmful to the workers’ physical health or their moral integrity; social security, and the right to assemble and form associations.

The workers know from experience that they must count on themselves and their own initiatives more than on the help of politicians and those who own and control enterprises. And it would be a delusion for them to wait passively for a change of heart in those who, as our father Abraham warns us, “will not be convinced even if someone would rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

It is primarily up to the workers and their legitimate leaders to effect their own betterment. They must regain confidence in themselves. They must educate themselves and overcome their lack of knowledge. They must work zealously to fashion their own destiny. They must develop themselves by utilising all the media that modern society places at their disposal.

They must open their ears to those who can awaken and shape the conscious awareness of the masses. Certain erroneous viewpoints must be wiped away without delay. No, it is not God’s will that a few rich people should enjoy the goods of this country and exploit the workers. No, it is not God’s will that some people remain poor and abject forever.

Of course Jesus warned us that the poor will always be with us (John 12:8); but that is because there will always be powerful people who expropriate to themselves the goods of this world and because there will always be certain inequalities resulting from differing degrees of capability and other unavoidable factors.

But Jesus also teaches us that the second commandment is equal to the first, since we cannot love God without loving our fellow humans. We shall all be judged by the same standard: “I was hungry and you gave me food…in so far as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (Matt 25:35-40).

All the great religions and philosophies of the world echo this sentiment. The Quran spells out the last and ultimate test to which humans must submit when they are judged by Allah. What is that test? “Have you redeemed the captive, fed the orphan in his need or the beggar on your door-step, and lived your life as a rod of mercy?” (Sura 90, 11:18).

It is our duty to share our food and all our goods. If some try to monopolise for themselves what others need, then it is the duty of public authority to carry out the distribution that was not met willingly.

In like manner, we cannot allow rich and powerful trans-national corporations to come and exploit our impoverished people under the pretext of developing commerce and industry; nor can we allow our rich and powerful nationals to exploit their own fellow citizens.

These things incite the exasperating strains of excessive nationalism, which is hostile to authentic collaboration with other nationals that is very much needed in today’s fast globalising world.
Workers have a right and duty to form real trade unions, so that they may press for and defend their rights. It is not enough for these rights to be recognised on paper by the law.

The law must be implemented, and the government must exercise its powers in this area to serve the workers. The government must face up to the task of stopping unnecessary industrial unrest. And contrary to popular belief, this unrest is often incited by those who own and manage enterprises; and they do so by exploiting the worker through inadequate wages and inhuman working conditions.

It is a subversive instability that has been craftily waged throughout the world for a long time by money interests, annihilating whole nations in the process. It is high time the workers defended their rights to live. When God appeared to Moses, it was said to him:

“I have seen the miserable state of my people in Egypt, I have heard their appeal to be free of their slave drivers…I mean to deliver them” (Ex.3:7). Jesus took all humanity upon himself to lead it to eternal life. And the earthly foreshadowing of this is social justice, the first form of brotherly love. When Jesus freed humankind from death through his resurrection, he brought all human liberation movement to their fullness in eternity.

Therefore, in the intermediary professional structure, the workers’ unions, to which the workers have a right, should acquire sufficient strength and power. Their unions will have a unified and responsible strength, to exercise the right of representation and participation on the levels of production and of national, regional, continental and international trade.

They ought to exercise their right of being represented, also, on the social, economic and political levels, where decisions are made which touch upon the common good. Therefore, the unions ought to use every means at their disposal to train those who are to carry out these responsibilities in moral, economic, and especially in technical matters.

The fight against injustice is meaningless unless it is waged with a view to establishing a new social and political order in conformity with the demands of justice. Justice must already mark each stage of the establishment of this new order. There is a morality of means.

In the way things stand today, there is need to take a lot of care when enacting any labour laws. With private interests in control of commerce and industry, workers are increasingly becoming more vulnerable to merciless exploitation and injustice.

If even the government itself, is increasingly becoming insensitive to the plight of workers, what more private capital? Every law that we pass in our parliament, we should try to pay a lot of attention to its effect on workers and the poor. Any law that in any way weakens the workers and their unions should not be passed by our parliament.

If this labour relations amendment bill in any way weakens the workers and their unions or takes away something from them, from their rights, it should be withdrawn. And in doing so we should not be inhibited by political expediencies of the moment. If its Joyce Nonde or Leonard Hikaumba we don’t want, let’s deal with them politically or by other means without putting unnecessary legislation just to get them out.

Changes must be made; present conditions must be improved. The workers and their various representatives must get together, for only unity will enable them to demand and achieve real justice.