Dr Masimba Mavaza |An economy will never strive in a strike prone environment. A strike threatens business people and discourages the would be investors. Any right thinking leader will try to avoid a strike in any constitutional way possible.
A decent living wage for your citizens must be the objective for any responsible government. However, what happened to citizens responsibility to produce good work at an acceptable level of productivity? This was eroded by promises which were never kept and the iron fist used to silence a legitimate concern. The behaviour of the police creates a bad blood between the citizens and the police force. This is an unhealthy situation for any country. The police are creating an enemy out of the people. The naivity of the police is sen where they take videos of bruised tortured citizen forced to sing our national anthem. This should be condemned with all the scorn. Government must frown at such police officers and surely fire them.
We have written before Where there is mistrust between the citizens and the government professional organizations and the contractors. There is a perception amongst leaders that citizen’s best interests are looked after by giving them less pay and no jobs. Hence this becomes a seed of hatred. These, cause more harm than good. They undermine the citizens ability to manage their lives and create unrealistic and unreasonable anticipations in the people When these expectations are not met the result is a strike. If this strike is stopped the result becomes violence.
It must also be true to say that remuneration levels at the lower end of the skill scale must be kept up with the cost of living that has run away from the control of the government largely due to falling Dollar values and increases in prices. People appear to have been fooled (generally by misstatements by the government into thinking that the inflation was under control and that an annual adjustment was an adequate increase Hence the erosion of workers spending power and the rise in more militant citizens is a headache.
Maybe all these things are just symptoms of a more sinister problem.
Firstly that system in the environment where the wealth of the nation is concentrated in the hands of a few people. That it appears to be governments policy to enrich a select band of cohorts who will join the fortunate few. Further the, what appear to be, obscene remuneration packages that top executives reward them selves with. Is repugnant to justice and surely insulting to the wisdom of many.
The knee jerk reaction to these issues by government is baffling there is no statement to condemn corruption this fuels the strikers to believe that corruption is accepted. It has been said that “the inherent vice of corruption is the unequal sharing of the blessings; the inherent virtue of nationalism is the equal sharing of the miseries”, lets hope we don’t have to test this observation by personal experience!
We need to get back to creating personal relationships with each of our citizens. They need to be recognized as valuable human beings and that their involvement in the nation is vital to the success of the economy. Everyone should have a career path and a means of moving up the ladder. We should reward good work, integrity and recognize by personal interaction the contribution that everyone makes from the lowliest to the highest echelon of worker.
We shouldn’t and can’t deny a persons access to collective bargaining but by rewarding people’s personal efforts and contribution regardless of which party they belong to
Give your people dignity and a job worth fighting for and my bet is we wont have any need for strikes What has been the history of the average strike ? A grievance or grievances ; an appeal for redress. The determination on the part of the capitalist, either justly or unjustly, not to accede to the demands. The men are ” called out.” loudly protesting their hard treatment and their de termination to appeal to the tribunal of ” public opinion.” They strongly proclaim their respect for the laws and aver that no rioting or disorder will be permitted, and offer to protect the property of their employers. Protect it against what? Who is going to molest it? Other capitalists? What rant hypocrisy 1 Taea men hungry for employment and the rewards that employment will bring seek to avail themselves of their inalienable right to ” sell their labor in the highest market.” What follows? Appeals, intimi dation, threats, blows, and all the wild horror and disorder of riot and blood shed. Destruction of property follows or is imminent. The civil authorities are appealed to. The civil arm is paralyzed. Then the power of the military is invoked. The soldiers are called out. The fever is at its height. Rage is rampant. The bounds are overstepped and the deadly bullet sows death and order. The sight of dead and wounded comrades awakens reason. The strike is lost. A mad rush for reinstatement follows, and the lastend is worse than the first. Is this overdrawn? It was the history at Pullman and the centres of sympathetic disturbance superinduced by that act of monumental follv on the part of ” Union” workina:men. The Brooklyn strike is a more recently written page of folly as great and results as deplorable. Admitting that the grievances of the motormen and conductors were great, did their strike accomplish aught? Had there been no workingmen willing to earn wages by taking the places of the striking employees, would the cars have been run? Who received the blows and stones of the enraged strikers?
Beating people to suppress strikes only brings forth blood. But Blood is known to water the fruits of freedom. People need understanding and not hard heart.
If only we can treat people as people we will enjoy peace and love
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