A raw deal for mine workers

A raw deal for mine workers
By Post Editor
Mon 03 May 2010, 04:40 CAT

WHEN a system ceases to promote a common good and favours special interests, it must not only be denounced as unjust but there’s also need to break with the evil system.

The workers on our copper mines under their unions have for a long time been complaining about the raw deal they are receiving from foreign investors in the mining sector of our economy. But those in power don’t seem to care, don’t seem interested to listen to them or to hear their cry.

As Oswell Munyenyembe, the Mine workers Union of Zambia secretary general, has observed, the miners have been raising various concerns but the government seems to have turned a deaf ear to everything they are saying.

And when the government has tried to respond to their complaints, it has been by way of lip service and not concrete action. And we agree with Munyenyembe that the government has always been protecting the investors more than the Zambian workers.

And it is not just this government. The Levy Mwanawasa government, like the Frederick Chiluba government before it, also did the same.

The mine workers were even betrayed by their own union leaders at the beginning of the privatisation process who went all-out to promote and protect the interests of foreign investors at their expense.

Mine workers know from experience that they must count on themselves and their own initiatives more than on the help from government. And it would be a delusion for them to wait passively for a change of heart in those who “will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31). It is primarily up to them to effect their own betterment.

They must regain confidence in themselves, their unions and its leadership. They must work zealously to fashion their own destiny.

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

We should not allow foreign investors in the mining sector to come and exploit our impoverished people under the pretext of developing the country. These things incite the exasperating strains of excessive nationalism, which is hostile to authentic collaboration with other peoples and nations in this highly globalising world.

Mine workers, at all mines of some significance, have a right and duty to form real trade unions, so that they may press for and demand their rights.

Chinese mining enterprises should not be allowed to deny their Zambian workers these rights. And these rights include a just wage. It is not enough for these rights to be recognised on paper by the law.

The laws must be implemented, and the government must exercise its powers in this area to serve the workers. It is high time our workers on the mines, supported by all of us including our government, defended their right 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). And the earthly foreshadowing of this is social justice.

Most of our workers on the mines find themselves in a state of poverty due to poor working conditions, the injustice of which cries to heaven for vengeance.

The epoch in which we are living is a critical moment in the history of salvation. For this reason, it is necessary to give this problem absolute priority and orient our work around it.

In this way, we can hope to participate, as best as we can, in the common quest of all our people for a more just and more peaceful society. We should work together toward the construction of a society in which all our people will find their place, and in which they will enjoy economic justice.

The present situation in our country calls for more radical changes. Every human being of goodwill should be committed to changing this social order that is cruelly unjust. To refuse such a commitment would be to make oneself an accomplice of injustice.

If we do not commit ourselves to changing a system that prevents most of our fellow citizens from achieving personal fulfilment, then we are not helping them to live out their vocation. In short, we are betraying their mission to serve the progress of human history.

These poor conditions that our miners are everyday complaining about are the product of unjust economic social structures. But those who benefit from these structures will not allow our workers to change anything. Even their strike actions will be outlawed.

Those who exploit our workers, and who wish to keep doing this, use de facto violence against them. This violence is often veiled under the guise of a fallacious order and legality, but it is violence and injustice nevertheless. It is not human, and hence, it is not Christian.

The structures of our society must be transformed from the roots up. The task is more necessary today than ever before because those who benefit from the unjust order in which we live are defending their interest in an aggressive, intolerant and corrupt way.

They use all the means at their disposal – propaganda, defence of a discriminatory legal setup, repression and dictatorship if necessary – to prevent a radical transformation from taking place. Only by radically changing the way we manage the affairs of our country will our workers be able to get a better deal.

We see, with great clarity, that here neutrality is impossible. Either we serve the lives of our people working on the mines, or we are accomplices to their death.

The priority of work over capital places an obligation in justice upon foreign investors, and all other investors, to consider the welfare of workers before the increase of profits.

The motive of foreign investors, and indeed all other investors, should be not only to make profit but even more to contribute to the common good of society. Their enterprises must be a community of solidarity. They have a strict duty to give their employees a just wage. And of course, their employees also have a strict duty to give them an efficient and conscientious work.

It is clear to all that for our workers to get a better deal, they will need to construct a government that is truly devoted to entirely working and struggling for them and their interests.

The governments they have had so far have governed against them in favour of the owners of capital. This needs to change and it is their duty to change it and act in their own interest.

We say this because if they don’t do it for themselves, no one will do it for them. They work for others but no one works for them.