THE Health Services Amendment Bill now before Parliament deserves support from all legislators as it seeks to bar labour withdrawal in the health services, but offering compulsory arbitration in return when negotiations are deadlocked.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, in a speech as Minister of Health and Child Care, made clear when the Bill was introduced for its second reading that the primary intent of barring industrial action was because health services are so critical that people can actually die if labour is withdrawn.
In this regard a strike, or similar action that sees labour being withdrawn, in health services is quite different from a strike in a commercial enterprise or even for that matter a strike in an administrative Government unit.
In a factory or something similar, a strike is a serious nuisance and can put pressure on the business owners and managers, but no one is going to die.
The other point made by VP Chiwenga is that the Government is not trying to squeeze its medical staff or get away with underpaying them. The Government policy throughout the Second Republic has been to pay its staff the maximum that it can afford.
The salaries bill is still the largest in the national Budget, and likely to remain so. But the main policy has been to maintain its percentage of total revenue, so when tax revenue rises then salaries follow soon afterwards. In inflationary times, tax revenues do tend to rise at the rate of inflation.
Consumption taxes like VAT and the transfer tax, based as a percentage on money spent or money moved, obviously rise as more money is spent in both nominal as well as real terms.
But even other sources of revenue such as PAYE, income and company taxes rise quite quickly as profits rise, at least in nominal terms, and private sector pay scales rise.
Generally, the Government salary rises follow a month or two behind the private sector rises since the Government must first collect the extra tax before spending it, but the gap is short.
The Government at the moment is determined to at least maintain this policy, combining the fiscal discipline needed for growth and the payment of the highest possible salaries and other benefits.
But sometimes conflict does arise, and that is when we see strikes, other withdrawals of labour or just a refusal to come into work. And some of this action had become a regular cycle, occurring every couple of years in the health sector.
This was not really good enough as whatever was agreed would have been agreed without the action. But where the Bill seriously scores is imposing compulsory arbitration in the event of a breakdown in negotiations. This is the way most industrial disputes in Zimbabwe should be going for a number of reasons.
One big problem for workers going on strike is that they are not paid for the days they do not work, even if their strike is totally legal. This is the standard position throughout the world. No one expects to get paid while out on industrial action, but so long as the strike is legal then they cannot face disciplinary action.
This is why so many trade unions in many countries have strike funds. The unions assign a proportion of the membership dues collected every pay day to the strike fund, and if the worst comes to the worst, would have built up a big enough pool of money that they can afford to pay some minimum payment or can pay half or some other proportion of a member's wages.
Very often the audited accounts of the strike fund are useful at tricky stages of negotiations since the union can make it clear that a strike can last.
But no union or staff association in Zimbabwe appears to have heard of a strike fund and these days no employer pays staff for the days they are indulging in industrial action.
The private sector stopped pay many years ago and the State sector has now followed. This means that any strike action, even if legal, is largely doomed to failure since few workers can survive without regular pay.
But we still need the equivalent of some sort of ultimate provision when negotiations break down, and even when everyone during the talks has been reasonable and responsible this can happen.
Arbitration has been followed in some private sector disputes, with a reasonable degree of success, at least producing a result that everyone can live with.
Quite interestingly and sensibly, the Government now sees this as a good way of resolving any irreconcilable dispute in the public health sector.
This retains the rights of staff not to be totally dependent on the employer in setting pay and benefits, since arbitration involves a large element of independence in those making the final settlement.
Even the time taken for the arbitration process is not a loss as generally the arbiters award back pay, at least to the point when they were called in. So there is no profit for anyone to bring in delaying tactics.
The same approach should be more general across all private and public sectors. One interesting modification that makes negotiation more serious and arbitration less likely is called pendulum arbitration, a system where the most reasonable party is the winner.
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This works with the arbiter forbidden to know what the final demand and offer look like. They are sealed away. The arbiter goes through the process of examining conditions and evidence and comes up with what they believe is the final correct figure. The party that is closest now wins everything.
So if the final offer from an employer is 9 percent and the final union demand is 12 percent, and the arbiter comes up with 10,4 percent, then 9 percent it will be as that is closer.
But if the award is 10,6 percent then it will be 12 percent, as the union was closer. In practice this intense competition to be the most reasonable so narrows the gap that in the end, rather than take a risk, the two parties strike a deal or at least agree to split what is now a very small difference.
But, however, we work the system, the arbitration system involves so many positives, especially when workers are not paid for strike days, with so few negatives and risks that it should become more and more the normal method of resolving labour disputes, just as it works so well in many commercial disputes.
