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This comes as salary surges after dollarisation now fade while productivity gains are much slower.
With inflation so low, all increments around 5 percent are real.
Workers argue that they are still far behind, with minimum wages usually well below half the poverty datum line, and so real gains are still needed, while employers argue that unless their businesses make more money, they simply cannot afford to pay more.
Said Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions president Mr Alfred Makwarimba: “Companies are always lamenting that they are operating below capacity. However, it should be ta-ken into cognisance that workers are equally hard hit by the rising cost of living.”
Mr Makwarimba expressed concern that salary and wage increments were now mostly negotiated once a year, instead of bi-annually or quarterly.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions president Mr George Nkiwane said: “The Government should strive to put more resources on production in order to create employment.
“If production is low with industry not ex-panding and unemployment remaining marginally high, it will be difficult to negotiate with employers.”
Mr Nkiwane urged NECs to stick to Pover-ty Datum Line-based salary demands, as it was the only reasonable way for workers to get fair remuneration.
Employers are pushing for production-based wages.
According to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, industrial production is currently around 47 percent.
In some cases, the tension has been worsened by non-implementation of salaries and wages agreed on last year.
There were some deadlocks last year in the negotiations in various sectors with cases referred for arbitration, and those matters have been carried over into the New Year.
The food-processing sector was ordered to pay minimum wages of US$220 as set by an arbitrator on May 10, 2011, backdated to January 1, 2011 in December and the workers are waiting for the payments.
Meanwhile, the employers are saying comp-liance will result is mass shutdowns.
The Zimbabwe Bank and Allied Workers Union is demanding that banks showing high profits pay their workers more than the NEC set minimum salary of US$575, in addition to US$150 and US$26 housing and transport allowances.
A labour analyst Mr Nhamo Tumbare said insincerity on all sides is the biggest challenge in increment negotiations. “If companies apply for exemption not to pay salaries approved by their NECs, and are yet seen to flaunting around a lot of luxuries at the top, it becomes difficult to maintain industrial harmony,” said Mr Tumbare. Renowned arbitrator and labour lawyer Mr Rodgers Matsikidze late last year said that demands on both sides were mostly unrealistic.
“You have a situation where the employer is offering 0 percent increment and the workers demanding 1 000 percent.
“Both parties come to the arbitrator with a dangerous mentality that he can solve their impasse, but the truth is that he can’t offer home made solutions to their impasse,” said Mr Matsikidze.
He said it was high time that employers and their workers negotiated new salaries at their workplace without taking the case to an arbitrator or the Labour Court.
He pointed out that cases to be taken for arbitration should concern dismissal and disciplinary issues so as to avoid antagonism, which can be detrimental to production or performance
Unions also continue to call for the narrowing of the gap between salaries earned by Chief Executive Officers and minimum wages in various sectors.
According to a survey carried out in 2011 by the ZCTU through the Labour, Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, although disparities exist across the board the biggest is in the hospitality sector.
CEOs in this sector earn gross salaries of US$11 540 against the US$154 taken home by the lowest paid worker. But the CEO, after all deductions, will take home less than half his gross.
Figures released in December by the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe pegging the low-income earner’s monthly basket for a family of six at US$540,80.
Online Reporter