Cargill taken to court

At least 10 employees whose contracts of employment were terminated by Cargill at the beginning of the year, after their posts were scrapped off, have taken the agricultural company to court over unfair dismissal.

The employees who had worked between four and 10 years had, through their legal representative Dzimba, Jaravaza and Associates, given the company up to October 7, 2014 to respond to their demand for reinstatement.

However, Cargill had not responded by last Friday.

According to the workers, they were engaged by the company in different capacities as field managers, field operations managers, field operations officers and accountant.

The workers allege their posts were unceremoniously scrapped off in January before being served with letters of termination of employment. The employees further say they had a legitimate expectation of being re-hired since they had been renewing their contracts for more than four years.

Their lawyers argued that the repeated renewal of the employees’ contracts of employments for a long time amounted to, “casualisation of labour so much that by operation of law, the employees were deemed to be employees on contracts without limit of time and as such were now permanent workers.”

Documents seen by The Sunday Mail show that Cargill had engaged new employees to fill the posts that were purported to have been scrapped.

“It is respectfully submitted from the foregoing that the above facts show that the employees have satisfied all the requirements of legitimate expectation and ought to be reinstated to their position,” argued the employees legal representative.

Contacted for comment, the company’s managing director Ms Priscilla Mutembwa, said she would only respond once written questions were submitted to her.

However, she had not responded to the questions by the time of going to print.