adminDavies Ndumiso Sibanda
In most cases, collective job action by workers in organisations reflects badly on the quality of board members and the chief executive the organisation has as people are one of the very important assets that have to be effectively maintained and managed for organisation goals to be met.
Further, collective job action by workers reflects problems with or absence of a planned maintenance programme for human assets of the organisation. Unless human assets are given the attention that is given to other assets, organisations will run into problems of collective job action and at times the collective job action could have ripple effects resulting in heads rolling at the top like Marikana in South Africa whose ripple effects will continue to be felt by many sub-Saharan countries in Africa.Unless the organisation is led by a board that is capable of balancing shareholder expectations with effective maintenance of human assets, illegal expensive collective job action is likely to occur as the chief executive battles to implement board resolutions that poison labour relations despite meeting board objectives. It must be noted that brutal labour management methods achieve results for a limited period and all gains made could easily be lost to crippling collective job action. Directors therefore have to thoroughly interrogate the quality of their resolution establishing both short and long term impact on labour relations.
Many chief executives are experts in most areas in general management but fall short when it comes to people management. The Marikana incident has helped awaken the need to have senior management teams that are not only knowledgeable on people management but experts. The major weakness with many chief executives is that they relegate people management to a junior employee called the human resources manager whose office is usually located at the back of the factory. The individual is usually an old friend of the chief executive whose job became redundant and was asked to “hold fast”. The individual learns the basics through trial and error and in most cases cannot give meaningful advice if he is lucky to be consulted.
In the meantime, the chief executive surrounds himself with finance, marketing and production forgetting that without people, organisational goals cannot be met thus the need to have the human assets management internal consultant nearby.
Relying on lawyers on people management matters is not the best option; its dangers have been exposed in many cases as labour relations advice is different from legal advice. In Marikana it is reported that lawyers got an order removing striking workers from the mine and the situation got out of control burning the whole sub-Saharan region.
Many executive team members in organisations have never had formal training in labour relations management and labour laws resulting in them making rules and setting up procedures that violate the law and set them on a collision course with workers, for example, not long ago, a marketing manager sent out a memo to all sales staff that all who are required to work on public holidays shall get one day off for each worked public holiday day.
This is clearly against the labour laws of the country as each public holiday day counts double, simply put, if one works one day during a public holiday, the employer has to pay the worker at double the rate and if parties agree the worker will get two days off for each day worked. The workers objected and did not turn up for work on a public holiday. There was conflict which could have been avoided.
At times the chief executive takes the workers for granted and forgets that while many of them are not highly educated, they have a supervisor indirect capacity to take the employer on through use of educated relatives, union and political connections which the board the chief executive might not have.
This makes it important for the board of directors to avoid making illegal board resolutions and for chief executives to avoid making unlawful operations decisions otherwise they could be left with rotten eggs on their faces.
Poor allocation of funding for the “planned maintenance” of human assets and defective compensation programmes are some of the major causes of collective job action.
Chief executives would need very strong human capital managers to guide such processes and the board also needs persons to ensure effective management of labour relations is threaded into board decisions.
A powerful institution that is poorly managed by many chief executives is the Works Council. I am of the view that it is the duty of every chief executive to chair the Works Council and ensure meetings take place at least monthly in order to be able to directly take over labour relations temperature of the organisation.
Care has to be taken to avoid bullying workers representatives at Works Council meetings otherwise meetings become a monthly ritual where workers’ leaders come in, listen to management without making an input that adds value to the business.
In conclusion, while collective job action cannot be totally avoided, management has to minimise such cases and when it occurs there is a need to re-visit the collective job action handling plan, adjust it accordingly to swiftly ride through the collective job action as minimal cost to both parties.
It must be remembered that when workers go on collective job action they do not mean that they no longer want their jobs but that there is a problem which the board and chief executive have to deal with.
Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on: e: [email protected] c: 0772 375 235
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