(HERALD ZW) New labour body formed

New labour body formed
Monday, 15 October 2012 00:00
Business Reporter

A new labour organisation, Zimbabwe Industrial Revolution Workers’ Federation, has been launched with the aim of bridging the gap between employers and the employees. Addressing journalists in Harare on Friday, ZIRWF president Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Makureya said the organisation was non-political and would work towards bringing back workers’ confidence.

“Employees had lost confidence in their workers’ representative bodies in Zimbabwe with companies closing willy-nilly and employees sent home without any benefits and at the end they could not even get proper legal representation hence the coming of the organisation on board,” said Rtd Lt-Col Makureya.

“Some workers’ representative bodies have become political and transformed into political parties and thereby deviating from their purpose of being a labour movement organisation and could not fulfil their mandate which we say as ZIRWF is aimed to eradicate that for the betterment of the workers,” he added.

Rtd Lt-Col Makureya said it was high time labour organisations brought trust in the Zimbabwe labour industry.

“One cannot be both a political and a labour organisation at the same time since the two are parallel and cannot meet. Industrial democracy will never prevail in such an environment but instead such a labour movement will be more biased towards employers,” he said.

Mr Pascoe Chakanetsa, who is the organisation’s interim executive secretary, said they would revive closed companies through engaging the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment.

“Some companies pleaded insolvency and made their workers redundant and there was no one to represent them, neither was there anyone to instill confidence of the future prosperity of companies in Zimbabwe and engaging Government in such labour matters,” said Mr Chakanetsa.

“We want to stop such scenarios and if we (ZIRWF) were in existence by then, this could have been dealt with accordingly with workers benefiting for having served the company.”