|
|
Mauritius: Coping with Redundancy
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
L'Express (Port Louis)
12 March 2008
Posted to the web 12 March 2008
Nirmal Kumar Betchoo
Port Louis
The precarity of jobs in a globalised and liberalised world has become more than ever commonplace; the fact that hundreds of factory workers - as in the recent case of Manupan Ltd- can find themselves jobless overnight poses the question of finding ways to help redeploy workers who have sometimes spent a lifetime in a company.
Factory closures and cessation of businesses are commonly coined nowadays as current workplace issues. The recent closure of Manupan Ltd, a textile factory with long standing reputation in the Export Processing Zone, raises immediate concern from people involved within this unfortunate event. In the middle of some confusion between the receivership of the company and government's rescue intention, workers were the first to suffer from the direct consequences of the closure.
Employees are now redundant despite the fact that some of them might have worked since their late adolescence to maturity age. It is more like a human tragedy to witness every now and then, hundreds of workers who are suddenly laid off from their companies, which they otherwise considered as their second home.
The textile sector remains the most turbulent area of the industrial activity of the country since it evolves in a state of permanent flux and adjustment where shocks are usually difficult to contain.
Financial organisations may be in turbulent states during cessation of activities or a takeover bid but the very nature of white-collar jobs linked with the professional status of their employees, make them apt to be re-employed.
In the manufacturing sector, things look uncertain and dreary for many. Companies cannot anticipate their closure or sudden failure. Though some businesses are loss-making, they might reassure their employees that this is a temporary situation about to be remedied as soon as the economic situation improves. Meanwhile, the losses are so enormous that owners have no other choice than to bring them into receivership, prior to a takeover or imminent closure.
Government intervened several times to remedy the redundancy situation facing workers. In the past, a textile employment support team (TEST) was implemented to bring short-term relief to the redundant employees. This consisted of immediate financial support while waiting for the redundant employee to get a decent and stable job in the future. Further, job fairs were held in order to allow better-performing textile companies to propose a one-stop shop facility whereby the redundant workers could find possible outlets for redeployment.
"Though LITRA failed to maintain its worker company status as a result of adverse economic conditions and an absence of strategic leadership, the example of the worker company remains more than ever a possibility to re-examine."
- The worker company
Ideally, workers could have preferred to take responsibility of the business during the receivership term. On very rare occasions, one might have witnessed workers deciding to take ownership of their company.
The situation occurred in the eighties when a private company, Litronix, stopped its activities at a time when the economy was at peril. Employees, under a full socialist whim, decided to take the reigns of such a business and renamed it Linité Travayer. LITRA, as the new acronym, grew as an example of a company, which could stand up the fate of redundancy and work out a new work philosophy at that time.
The success of the company was immense and the example of the worker company to combat redundancy remained a classical example both to society and those concerned with human resource issues.
- The worker co-operative
Though LITRA failed to maintain its worker company status as a result of adverse economic conditions and an absence of strategic leadership, the example of the worker company remains more than ever a possibility to re-examine.
Workers are still agreeable to have a company run by themselves. Some trade unions admit that workers are already baked with their company culture and find it fair enough to manage business on their own. In this perspective, a worker cooperative would make sense.
The worker cooperative would comprise representatives of the workers' union within the company, team leaders and representatives of small interest groups within the organisation. This should definitely get the support from the government authorities to devise strategies for the company so that it could first get out of its troubled waters and make some initial recovery.
|
It is true that the success of the worker cooperative and company depends upon leadership and management strategies. Assuming that workers are not mature and competent enough to run the company, authorities within the industry could appoint managers who would temporarily assist such companies in difficulty while expecting them to be self-managed once the situation improves.
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
