Bankers Demand US$Salaries, Say Their 2009 Contracts Are In US$
Zimbabwe Banks and Allied Workers’ Union (ZIBAWU) secretary-general Peter Mutasa said has revealed that ZIBAWU members are demanding to be paid in US dollars. They argue that the local quasi-currency, RTGS has been eroded by the inflation hence worthless.
Mutasa said:
We are pushing for banks to pay the USD salaries that we are contractually entitled to or be paid the equivalent. We are already preparing to go to court for this. We are in disagreement (with our employers) and we are filing our court papers next week (this week).
Mutasa added that workers were entitled to get paid in US dollars because the agreement with employers was signed in hard currency and could not be reversed. He said:
There is also a natural process of dollarisation that the government has allowed wherein businesses have been allowed to price in US dollars. Government departments like the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority are also getting fees in US dollars, hospitals; schools have also followed this trend.
Again the announcement by Cabinet that they would be ring-fencing certain government contracts that were denominated in US dollars prior to promulgation of SI 133 of 2019 shows that it is not feasible for some sectors of the economy to earn in Real Time Gross Settlement, while all other sectors are dollarising. Only workers are being sacrificed and that cannot be allowed. Allowing this to continue will be unfair because that amounts to redistributing wealth from the poor workers to the rich.
More: News Day
