Zimbabwean Textile workers struggle against retrenchments

Some of us have been working at Whitehead Textiles for more than 10 years. They have a spinning section in Kadoma, fabric section in Chegutu and hosiery in Gweru. In all we were about 1400 workers. In September 2009 , the boss applied for provisional liquidation. Our own union leadership were divided, some supported us to occupy the factory and take it over, while the union secretary and his grouping in the leadership proposed to the bosses that we offer the boss that some workers would retrench themselves (voluntary retrenchment). The secretary of the union even proposed that we accept only 2 months retrenchment pay while even the pro-boss law states that we are entitled to 3 months pay.

While the leadership of the union were divided, the bosses moved the machinery from the factory, stopped paying the workers. We could not even meet to discuss our strategy as workers did not have transport money.

Our union, the ZTWU (Zimbabwean Textile Workers Union) wanted to go ahead with their congress but we stopped them, we said they must first fight our case; we are currently in negotiations with the bosses over the terms of dismissal- this is being overseen by the ministry of labour as some of the workers were on the point of using violence against the bosses. The ministry of labour stepped in to save the boss.

The boss wanted to put us on unpaid leave while he is retrenching us, a total of 577 workers were dismissed. How can we be on leave and be dismissed at the same time? The workers are paying for not being decisive to occupy the work place as now the boss has moved the plant from Gweru to Chegutu. There is no such thing that if some workers are retrenched then those who remain behind are ‘safe’ – look now, how will workers travel 140km to get to work, when they are still owed months of wages.

The ministry of labour hides behind supposed support on technical grounds for workers, such as saying that the bosses must pay us even for the months of ‘unpaid leave’ but they do nothing to enforce this, and the government allows the big companies to walk all over the workers. So the government is really for the bosses, not for us.

The textile industry here has been decimated by mass dismissals- there are still 72 companies in the National Textile bargaining council but workers are isolated and only meet rarely.

Editorial comment: The way forward?
What we need is to mobilise for a congress of all textile workers to kick out the pro-boss leadership and to install worker leaders who will advance working class interests, the same must be done at ZCTU level; our first demand must be to share all work among all who can work; this must go hand in hand with a demand to expropriate all companies that want to retrench any worker, place them under workers’ control; but what must be at the centre is a demand to expropriate all imperialist companies- these are the companies who take billions in dollars of profits out of Zimbabwe and Africa every year and they leave us with the scraps- to conquer bread we need to agitate for a congress of delegates from all workplaces, delegates from the poor peasants as well as rank and file soldiers, following the heroic example in Madagascar; indeed without taking this plan to the rest of Southern Africa and linking it with a struggle for workers’ power in the imperialist centres, our struggle will not advance. We need to break with the unity government, they are the local managers of imperialism.