{"id":751,"date":"2019-01-01T14:54:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T14:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.com\/zimbabwe\/?p=751"},"modified":"2019-01-01T14:54:05","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T14:54:05","slug":"unions-plotting-mega-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.cc\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/unions-plotting-mega-shutdown","title":{"rendered":"Unions plotting mega shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) yesterday cranked up the pressure on President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his government, confirming it would go ahead with its planned national strike this month.<\/div>\n
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This comes as the government has increasingly come under pressure from restive labour leaders, who are agitating for the salaries of their union members to be paid in United States dollars.<\/div>\n
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At the same time, the government is also still battling to convince striking doctors to go back to hospitals, following a month-long stand-off which has led to the suspension of critical medical procedures at public hospitals.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWorkers are generally worried about the narcissist approach taken by government in making policies. We are in a form of dictatorship worse than what we had during Mugabe\u2019s era,\u201d ZCTU president Peter Mutasa told the Daily News yesterday.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIf things continue like this, the country will be left with no drugs in pharmacies, no doctors and nurses in hospitals, no teachers in schools \u2014 and this is destructive. As a union we have agreed to take action and we want to co-ordinate all workers\u2019 groups to join the shutdown.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe want a welfare State and we want to stop the austerity measures that are making our lives difficult … We have communicated with our members and we are hoping to discuss with other civil organisations before we embark on the shutdown,\u201d Mutasa said further.<\/div>\n
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The planned ZCTU shutdown comes at a time that civil servants have demanded to be paid in United States dollars, or the equivalent in bond notes to cushion themselves from the deteriorating economic environment in the country.<\/div>\n
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However, the government has rejected outright the public servants\u2019 demands to be paid in US dollars.<\/div>\n
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Still, the Apex Council \u2014 which represents hundreds of thousands of civil servants across the public sector \u2014 is adamant that the government should pay its workers a minimum of $1 733, or the equivalent in US dollars.<\/div>\n
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\u201cAll the unions have agreed that they will not be able to come to work in January if the government fails to give us a positive response. It doesn\u2019t mean that we are calling for a strike, but workers will fail to come to work due to the high cost of living.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe did a research in November and we are saying the lowest paid civil servant must get something like $1 733 \u2014 and we have communicated our position to the government,\u201d Apex Council chairperson, Cecilia Alexander, told the Daily News last month.<\/div>\n
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The government has come under growing pressure from disillusioned citizens over the worsening local economic situation \u2014 after Mnangagwa was feted in his early days in office for superintending over arguably the most peaceful elections since Zimbabwe\u2019s independence in 1980.<\/div>\n
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Zimbabweans have in the past few months had to contend with rising prices of basic consumer goods and widespread shortages of items such as cooking oil \u2014 which have disappeared from supermarket shelves.<\/div>\n
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Thousands of commuters have also had their festive season travel plans thrown into chaos, due to the current fuel shortages being experienced in the country.<\/div>\n
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Meanwhile, Mnangagwa himself told the Zanu PF conference in December that his government was battling to fix the country\u2019s myriad economic problems.<\/div>\n
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However, he also told his followers at the Esigodini conference that the government was working flat out to try and solve the multiple crises.<\/div>\n
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\u201cGovernment, along with industry, continues to dialogue and interrogate the cost build-ups, towards finding lasting solutions which will bring permanent relief to consumers and greater stability to the economy.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe also need to address the question of our own domestic currency once the correct economic fundamentals are in place,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) yesterday cranked up the pressure on President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his government, confirming it would go ahead with its planned national strike this month. This comes as the government has increasingly come under pressure from restive labour leaders, who are agitating for the salaries of their union members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,7,9,16],"tags":[165,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-economy","9":"category-files","10":"category-miscellaneous","11":"category-sport","12":"tag-shutdown","13":"tag-zimbawe"},"yoast_head":"\nUnions plotting mega shutdown - zimbabwe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/unions-plotting-mega-shutdown\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unions plotting mega shutdown\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) yesterday cranked up the pressure on President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his government, confirming it would go ahead with its planned national strike this month. 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