Wage woes

21 12 2010

Some definitions:
NECA – National Employment Council for Agriculture. Part of the general NEC setup in Zimbabwe that helps set minimum wages and resolves disputes involving the latter.
CFU – Commercial Farmers’ Union. Once a very powerful union representing the commercial farmers in Zimbabwe it is now a shell of its former self due to the war of attrition on the commercial farmers by the government.
ALB – Agriculture Labour Bureau. The division of the CFU that deals with labour issues.
HPC – Horticulture Promotion Council. The organisation that looks after the interests of the commercial farmers in the export market.
ZFU – Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union. The union representing the mainly small scale black farmers.
GAPWUZ – General Agricultural and Plantation Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe. The largest (?) union representing the agricultural labour in Zimbabwe. Independent.
HGAPWUZ – Horticulture and General Agricultural and Plantation Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe. The government backed “other” labour union in Zimbabwe. Headed up by one Joseph Chinotimba, government bully boy of extraordinary brutality. An unimaginative lot as can be seen by the copying of the GAPWUZ name.

In the days of the Zimbabwe dollar the NECA was instrumental in bringing together various interested parties to set minimum wages; and essential task in the multi figure inflation of the time. They were admirably neutral and I used them on a few occasions to settle issues I had with my labour force when they went on strike or go-slows over various wage issues. All farming operations had to pay a levy which is currently set at US$1 per person on the labour force contributed by the worker with the employer contributing $1 per person too. The various unions representing both labour and employers also sat on the NECA  as members. Things started to go a bit wrong when the HGAPWUZ muscled its way into the market. It has never been a registered union and it is illegal to deal with it as such but after a while the GAPWUZ recognized that it was up against the big boys and buckled and HGAPWUZ was in the market. They came around to my workplace some years ago and made all sorts of extravagant promises and signed up most of the labour force away from GAPWUZ. The representative was an odious character both literally and figuratively and was always propositioning the women for sex. I made a point of telling him he was not “my friend” and refusing to shake his hand. I have not seen him since the US dollar took over as the official currency of Zimbabwe. That has not stopped the NEC and other parties from hiking the wages over the last 2 years.

By the beginning of this year the minimum wage for horticultural labour was $50 per month plus $7.50 for various allowances. I should explain here that horticultural wages have for many years been higher than general agricultural wages. This was because “horticulture” implied the business was exporting something and getting hard currency, an obvious advantage in the days of the Zimbabwe dollar. The ludicrous part of the definition was that many farmers were both exporters and local producers so two people doing exactly the same job but in different divisions of the same farm could earn vastly different wages. The export wages were at least 40% more than the local wages. Unfortunately my business is also classified as horticulture even though we have never exported. The “advantage” of exporting has now largely fallen away with the use of the US dollar locally.

In June this year an “official” notice came from the NECA stating that the minimum wage was now $70 per month and would be reviewed at the end of September. It was probably reasonable in that there had been some minor inflation but the ALB and the HPC cried foul. The person who’d signed for the employers’ unions was not authorized to do so and it transpired that the latter had never agreed to the wage increase. But by now the horse was well out of the stable and I increased the wages accordingly and passed on the increase to the customer appropriately. The exporters were not so lucky. Unable to pass on cost increases in a time of economic turmoil externally a number of them had to close. The HPC and others took the NECA to court. But the NECA did not stop there. Last month they announced ANOTHER wage hike of 20%  (to $84) and announced it with somer pretty aggressive newspaper advertising threatening those who did not comply with legal action.

I had noticed a few months back that the NECA had seemed to have lost its impartiality. One particularly obnoxious woman at the front desk had started to spout the government line against the various employers’ unions when I went there to pay dues. I have copies of various documents from the HPC and ALB that state that the NECA’s accounting has been less than transparent (and often totally absent) and various councillors have been claiming fat payment for turning up for meetings. I can’t also help wondering if this latest wage hike has something to do with the rumoured upcoming election i.e.  persuading the labour force to vote for those who have improved their lot.

This all came up today when I payed the staff their wages before Christmas. No I was not going to pay them the “new” wage. It is still in court over the previous increase and the courts have shut for the holiday and the various employers are cancelling their membership of the NECA and proposing setting up another as yet unnamed refereeing body. Yes they would get any backpay IF it ever became legal. I can cope with that but what really got my blood pressure up was the bonus issue (the Christmas bonus has become and unfortunate expectation in Zimbabwe over the years). Despite having been told repeatedly over the years that a bonus is a privilege not a right they just cannot seem to appreciate the difference. I made a testy comment that nobody ever seemed able to say thank you and be grateful for what they got when some 90% of Zimbabweans are unemployed. Thank you came the immediate reply, but why are we not getting as much as the neighbouring businesses? Eventually the foreman who was doing the translating had to attend to a customer so I took the opportunity to wander off too.

Wage hikes are damaging other sectors of the Zimbabwe economy too. Chatting to Harry who is in the wholesale garment industry he told me that they are being threatened with a minimum wage of $185 per month. He said exactly the same sort of hike sank the South African clothing industry some years ago and manufacturers moved their factories to the neighbouring states of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland where wages are less. Barry is in the furniture manufacturing industry and already they cannot compete with furniture imported from the previously mentioned states. “The unions have told us that they’d rather have fewer well paid workers than more people employed in a viable industry” he told me. “They just don’t care”.


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The PPRI

4 12 2010

I couldn’t believe how naive I’d been to just assume that there would be power out at Mazowe to get my import permit printed. I closed my eyes and said something really controlled like “I cannot believe this”. The clerk said “It’s your country too” somehow implying that I was responsible for the inconsistency of the power supply. I could think of a response to that but I shut up and asked if they could print it another way. He said they were not going to start the generator to print one import permit and that I should wait a while (how long is a “while”?) to see if anyone else arrived to make it worthwhile. So I sat down and read the notices on the wall reminding customers of the various crop destruction dates that I know are not enforced. Then I needed to find a toilet and decided it was a good enough excuse to explore.

The Plant Protection Research Institute is, as the name suggests, the government agency tasked with keeping an eye on controlling pests and diseases in Zimbabwe in the various crops grown here. All import permits for any sort of plant products are issued here. Once situated behind Bob’s official residence (where he has not resided for some years) near the centre of Harare, it moved some 30km north of Harare to Henderson Research Station in 2002. It’s in a pleasant setting; the Mazowe hills back the property and its quiet and rural. Very quiet as I found out. In the three laboratories that I investigated only one even had chairs and they were office chairs too low to use at lab benches. There were half a dozen test tubes in a rack near a sink but that was all. The glasshouses out the back of the office block were empty.

Then I bumped into someone I knew. M is a pleasant lady who has been working at the PPRI for quite a long time; at least since we imported some olive trees from Egypt and South Africa to be grown by Wedza farmers. I asked her what was being done at the PPRI. Pleased that someone was showing some interest she took me into a growth room and showed me about 12 petri dishes in which imported seeds were being tested for contamination (they were contaminated) but it was all a bit sad. She admitted that there was no money being put into research. We discussed the general situation in the country for a while and bemoaned the depletion of the knowledge base as the commercial farmers had dispersed around the world. Then I asked why GMO was such a dirty word in Zimbabwe – all GMOs are banned.

It all started with a donation of GM maize to Zimbabwe from the US government for the express purpose of feeding the people in the pre-US dollar days. The maize HAD to be milled and the germ, which for various reasons is not included in refined maize meal in this country, HAD to be destroyed lest it find its way into cattle feed destined for the UK where GM cattle feed is prohibited. “Of course the politicians got hold of the issue, totally misunderstood it and turned it (the GM issue) into a monster” she continued with a shrug. The power had been on for some time now so we parted company and promised to keep in touch. I collected the corrected import permit from the front desk which expressly stated that the pine bark that I was importing from South Afrca had to complyh with the conditions – “NO GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMOs) were involved in the production of seed, planting material, plant parts and/or plant material…” and drove back to the nursery.


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Skies at night

28 11 2010

The rains are late in starting as predicted. They are still very patchy too but at least there are some spectacular sunsets and clouds about.

A microlight aircraft comes in to land at Komani Microlight Club near Harare

I took this this evening after flying models. There were a number of storms about which disrupted flying of all types of aircraft for a while.

 

I have no idea what these flowers are but they open very quickly late in the evening. I first noticed them last weekend when I was packing up my models and looked up to see a whole lot of flowers that I was certain were not there when I arrived. The next evening I actually watched one open over a period of about 20 minutes. They don’t last more than a night.


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Maize mania

27 11 2010

We had some good rain (at last) on Wednesday night. Thursday morning I was driving around the industrial sites having taken the expensive pump back for some minor alterations (see previous post) and couldn’t help but notice the frenzy of planting activity on every available piece of land. By the roadside, vacant plots, anywhere that could possibly be cultivated was being cultivated. In some places sweet potatoes had already been planted but most were being prepared for maize. It happens at this time of year every year. Plots are carefully tended but seldom is fertilizer applied and yields are meagre, in no small part due to passers-by who help themselves. The grand irony is that the money and effort spent on this exercise would be better applied to just buying maize meal (mealie meal) out the shop. It is much cheaper.

B (not his real initial) came past the nursery yesterday morning. I don’t see him often. He is not a young man anymore and is quite a lot older than me but we have farming in common and he always has time for a chat. For many years he was farming in the Nyanga area of Zimbabwe growing apples, which being a long term crop, requires years of dedication. I knew that they’d lost a substantial part of their farm some time ago but didn’t know that they’d finally been kicked off in February.

“They arrived with a letter signed by Mutasa himself” B commented. “And what with the half dozen AKs that came along too we decided it was time to go”. It must have been soul destroying to have to abandon most of your life’s work. “But my cook, who seems to be the font of all knowledge”, he added with a chuckle, “tells me that they are stumping out the apple trees to plant maize” and he looked decidedly downcast. Then he brightened up and asked me “But how’s the rain been? You see we have been away for a couple of months…” and we were back on familiar, comforting territory.


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The service-exchange deal

22 11 2010

Service-exchange in Zimbabwe works like this: I take along a pump (say) that is in need of repair and buy another pump of the same type for less than the price of the new because the business that repairs my pump will sell it on to someone else in the same manner. Get it?

 

Smart (on the left) and the pump

 

I took this photo this afternoon. That’s Smart on the left. He is the nursery foreman with a weakness for beer and very few teeth but he is just in the photo for a bit of scale. The pump as you can see is quite small and is a backup for when the power goes off. It is normally driven by a 6h.p. Lister diesel engine that is probably older than me but it does the job. The pump has 4 moving parts: a drive shaft, 2 bearings and an impeller (fan like thing that actually moves the water). Aside from the bearings it is wholly locally manufactured (amazing hey, we DO still make things in Zimbabwe!). My pump had got water into the bearings and they’d pretty much destroyed themselves together with the shaft and impeller.

Now about 18 months ago I had the gearbox in my Mazda pickup truck replaced (that’s it – the Mazda – in the background) also in a service-exchange deal. I would guess that the gearbox is not a lot bigger than the pump but it has LOTS of moving parts!

Guess which was the most expensive? Yes, you got it – the pump! The pump cost US$460 before VAT and the gearbox $400. Now let me explain why. The manufacturer of that brand of pump has been around a really long time so there are an awful lot of this type of pump around. He knows that most farmers who bring a pump to him for repair need it pretty urgently, especially if it’s attached to a diesel engine which is frequently being used when the power is off (also frequently). He also knows that few of us would be interested in re-arranging all the pipes to fit another make of pump as they are usually steel pipes that are not easily moved. I could probably have sourced a gearbox from a number of places.

 


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Weekend farming in the tropics

15 11 2010

Saturday. I get to work at 07h45 when a customer wants to talk to me about buying some tobacco seedlings. We chat for a while and then I go back home to try photographing the flowers I was collecting. It doesn’t work for some reason – too much light reflection or something. I get back to work at 10h30 to find that we have dropped a phase on the electricity supply and the pumps won’t run. I am vaguely concerned as it is already hot and there was power at my house when I left home (we are on the same grid). I assume that someone will phone ZESA (the supply authority) and get on with work using one of the working phases to run the computer.

By noon the sweet potatoes are wilting and there is no sign of anything happening on the power front. I have a look across at ART Farm and can see the sprinklers working and I know they use a 3 phase-powered pump. It’s time to panic a little so I go across to the golf club which shares a transformer with us. They are also on 2 phases. I point out that their MCB (miniture circuit breaker) is tripping because the circuit is drawing too much power not because there is anything wrong with the MCB. We suspect there might be a loose fuse on the transformer, something that has happened before and phone ZESA. They promise to send someone around. I go home to wait – I need to know how long it is going to fix the problem and tell the duty foreman to give me a call when the team arrives. I cancel going into the Gallery Delta to chat about life and other issues and drink wine and eat cheese.

At 2p.m. I call ZESA. A team is definitely on the way, they have to fix another fault first. I call again at 3.30p.m. and at 5p.m. and get the same answer. The person on duty takes my cell phone number and promises to keep in touch but I am very sceptical that anything will happen before Sunday.

Sunday. I wake up with a blinding headache that even the strongest coffee and paracetemol will not cure. At 07h30 I go into work to see if by a miracle the ZESA lot have done something. They have not so I phone the faults centre and get another person who has had no contact with yesterday’s duty officer but he promises to send a team forthwith. I have a sense of deja vu but it is another hot day and I must do something about the now very wilted sweet potatoes in case nobody arrives or maybe they do and then the power goes off anyway. I instruct a supervisor to bring the small diesel pump over to an emergency water tank. The pump has not been run for some time so the supervisor checks the oil, which he has topped up, while I am checking the water suction. It looks like there might be too much oil on the dipstick but I am otherwise occupied. The engine is started and water sprays out the socket union (pipe join) and oil sprays out the top of the engine. My cell phone falls out of my shirt pocket into the mix of mud, oil and water. I flick it away in annoyance (with some bad language) and Kharma, who is standing behind me, takes offence. There is no socket spanner set in the Landcruiser to get the oil drain plug out so I have to go home to get one. I get back and we do a complete oil change anyway. I wipe down the cell phone and it is still working.

We connect a hosepipe from the pump to an irrigation riser, effectively putting the water into the system the “wrong” way, connect the drip system and start the pump. The duty foreman in the meantime has phoned ZESA again and they insist a team is on site at the transformer. They are not so the foreman goes to the golf club where he suspects they might be. Sure enough they are there so he takes them to the transformer. By the time I arrive at the transformer they have tightened the errant fuse holder and are performing a few other checks. They finish the whole operation in about 10 minutes. All electric pumps are running by 10h30 so I go home for a late breakfast and tend to the headache which is tormenting me.


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Where have the big notes gone?

12 11 2010

Chatting, in French, to my teacher at the Alliance Francaise yesterday morning when the athletic looking fellows at the next table raced off into the car park. Two shots were fired in the vague direction of the opportunists trying to break into their car. When they came back I asked why they’d missed. They replied that there are some things you don’t do in Zimbabwe these days. I had to wonder who they were that they could fire weapons in public without having to worry too much about the police asking questions.

We settled back into the conversation about Air Zimbabwe’s woes. Shelton, my professeur de Francais, doubles up as an air steward with Air Zim. The previous day a messenger of the court had arrived at the airport to affix property in the ongoing squabble over unpaid wages. The aggrieved parties have taken Air Zim to court over the unpaid wages and the airline has had to pay – some pilots were back paid between $40,000 to $60,000 and the messenger of the court was after about $500,000 worth of property. Apparently luxury vehicles “belonging” to the senior management were confiscated along with a few buses and other assets. I had to wonder if this pay-out had anything to do with the lack of $100 and $50 bills at my local bank which is the de facto bank of the nation (see a previous post some time back). Earlier last week I drew out $2,300 entirely in $20 notes. This was odd considering in the early days of US “dollarisation” the smaller notes were in very short supply and the larger 50s and 100s were easily available.

In March next year I am likely going to Austria to see what can be done about my left knee which is giving a lot of trouble. Air Zim is usually the cheapest option to the UK but I am not sure they will still be in business. The government, which has a large share in the troubled airline, is trying to offload its shares but not surprisingly there are no takers. Very surprisingly Air Zim has just purchased two new Airbus long haul aircraft. I cannot think for a moment that Airbus gave them any credit. Interesting stuff but just maybe I will be booking on SAA or BA!


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It’s bug season!

10 11 2010

With the rains come the insects. The rains as such haven’t really started but the insects can sense it’s their time to make an appearance. I always check the outside lights for interesting specimens in the morning. This moth was high on the back door yesterday but when I came home in the evening it was in Kharma’s bowl. Here it is sitting on my shoe – hardly a natural setting but certainly different!

I didn't know they were so furry! Click on image to enlarge.


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Starlight Dancing 2010

9 11 2010

The Dance Trust of Zimbabwe held its annual Starlight Dancing show last month literally under the stars outside the National Ballet premises. I was invited along to take photos. I’ve also been invited to take photos of the “Stars of Tomorrow” show later this week where the various dance studios show off the youngest dancers (I guess it will be entertaining if nothing else). One day I will be paid to do this! Actually, I don’t mind doing it for free. I need the practice and a bit of publicity is good. My last year’s photos of Starlight Dancing made it onto the cover and inside of Hello Harare monthly “what’s on” publication and were credited to the wrong person!


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Global Warming

6 11 2010

Early season storms in Zimbabwe can be ferocious; lots of lightening, wind and often hail without a lot of rain. This season’s storms have been unusually savage. Last night I was sitting on the verandah and I could hear the gust front approaching. It was not long before the power went off, came back on and then went off until around midday today.

The various global warming models have predicted that weather will become more extreme. Whether the ferocity of the recently experienced storms is anything to do with this would be very difficult to say but I cannot help but think that the appalling bush fires of the dry season are not helping the situation. Burnt veld of course is darker than grassed veld and therefore heats up a lot more.

In Zimbabwe dollar days we actually paid a carbon tax based on the size of the car engine of the vehicle we used. It had nothing to do with CO2 emissions or any sort of remedial action on the pollution – it was just another tax. It may even still exist for foreigners bringing their cars into the country but we found that the disc that had to be displayed on the windscreen as proof of payment was easily forged with a scanner and a bit of image processing so it did not last long. Maybe the Greeks could learn a thing or two about tax evasion from us!

Last weekend I took the Landcruiser up to Nyanga to get away from the heat and work. I did not give a lot of thought to the CO2 footprint I was generating. Paragliding was off the cards due to the storms around but I still managed to get a few good photos of flowers, this being the flower season. On the way back I went through the tail end of a storm near Juliasdale that had dumped a sizeable amount of hail on shade cloth covering a Hypericum crop and another near Ruwa that slowed traffic considerably.


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