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Labour relations in the local public health sector are often poor.
As a result strikes and demonstrations are common. A strike by junior doctors that started early last month is continuing. They are demanding higher salaries in a protest that, however, appears to have become bigger than a simple labour dispute.
As the strike drags on, patients at public health institutions are suffering with no doctors to examine them. In response, the Health Service Board (HSB) has said it remains committed to dialogue and has also agreed to pay doctors higher salaries, allowances and incentives. The Labour Court ruled the strike illegal early this month but the medical practitioners are pressing on with the work stoppage.
With negotiations failing, court orders being defied and salary increases failing to convince the doctors to return to work, the employer will, from tomorrow, begin taking disciplinary action against its employees.
Therefore, when nurses told our Harare Bureau on Monday that they will not go on strike demanding better salaries and working conditions but continue negotiating with the Government we were delighted. The general public is in agreement, we are sure.
Zimbabwe Nurses’ Association (Zina) president Mr Enock Dongo said while their members’ salaries remained low, they had negotiated for other non-monetary benefits of a long-term nature.
“Yes, we are yet to get a meaningful adjustment from the employer, but as Zina we have also managed to negotiate for other incentives which are valuable to the profession as a whole and have long-term benefits,” said Mr Dongo, adding that the non-monetary benefits including a pension fund for nurses working in mission hospitals, changing of the ministerial structure to also consider nurses for top posts and housing and motor vehicle loans were being finalised.
“Through the negotiating forum, Zina successfully lobbied for consideration of nurses for managerial positions in the ministry’s structure,” he said.
“For a long time, only doctors would be considered for these posts. We also lobbied for absorption of mission hospital nurses into the Government pension fund, an issue that has also been on the cards for a long time. Zina, therefore, values the continued engagements which have reaped fruits to these and other non-monetary benefits. We, however, note with concern that the cost of living adjustment remains low ever since we started negotiations, but we will continue pushing for a meaningful offer.”
Mr Dongo and his colleagues have taken a very important, selfless decision which doctors must consider by calling off their strike and coming back to the negotiating table with the HSB. Negotiations are always the best way to resolve any disputes as fighting is economically destructive and hurts patients, kills some even.
Other civil servants, who might be unhappy with their salaries and working conditions must give negotiations a chance instead of engaging in disastrous strikes. We are saying this because teachers have been grumbling in recent months, the same for lecturers. We plead with them to do like what Mr Dongo and his team have done.
It is regrettable that the economic challenges facing the country coupled with the Government’s austerity measures are making it impossible for the employer to pay its workers higher salaries. The Government has acknowledged this fact many times. Inflation is high and prices of all commodities have overtaken wages.
Be that as it may, the Government has done as much as it can to give its workers cushioning allowances from time to time. Finance and Economic Development Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, last week assured civil servants that the Government will pay them a bonus based on their gross earnings.
In addition to monetary incentives, the Government has rolled out a number of non-monetary incentives to its workers among them duty-free importation of personal-use vehicles for civil servants, provision of housing, and so on.
All these may not be enough to make all civil servants happy and well catered for, we appreciate. However, the salaries they are being paid, the regular cushioning allowances being paid and the range of non-monetary incentives being made available are all what the Government can honestly afford under the prevailing circumstances. The commitment to pay more is there, the employer often indicates, but resources are too tight to give employees a better deal.
We therefore applaud nurses for appreciating the prevailing difficult economic conditions and ruling out strikes to demand higher salaries. Doctors are implored to emulate that position by ending their industrial action and giving negotiations a chance.
Online Reporter