16 November 2022
For immediate release
PRESS RELEASE
SUBJECT: PAYMENT OF ANNUAL BONUS
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has noted the government initiative to pay bonuses in United States Dollars (USD) to cushion the suffering civil servants and call upon all other employers to follow suit.
Though the ZCTU appreciates the principle of payment of remuneration in foreign currency as a noble example by government, being the major employer, we call upon government to extend this same example to all its workers’ pensionable emoluments to permanently alleviate them from the current economic hardships.
In the same vein, we are calling upon all employers, including those in the private sector, to emulate the government by incentivizing their employees by giving them a well-deserved bonus after a year of hard work. Every year most workers look forward to the 13th cheque as a goodwill by employers to motive them to work harder. Indeed in some companies, the 13th cheque is part and parcel of an employment contract.
There is no doubt that the gesture to pay bonuses in USD by the government is an indirect admission that the current wages and salaries are worthless and as labour we believe the inescapable solution is for all employers to pay salaries and other benefits in United States Dollars until the economic fundamentals are stable.
We reiterate that the devaluation of salaries was as a result of government policy which, through the promulgation of Statutory Instrument (SI) 33 of 2019, converted USD salaries to be at par with the Zimdollar equivalence and the SI subsequently distorted wages.
The Zimbabwean economy has dollarized, all goods and services are now indexed to the USD and we cannot continue to sink our heads in the sand and pretend otherwise while salaries remain depressed. It is our demand that if goods and services are indexed to the USD the same must apply to wages and salaries because labour is a service.
Runesu Dzimiri
ACTING SECRETARY-GENERAL
