Members of the Private Security Workers Union (PSWU) on Wednesday picketed at Fawcett Security company to force the company to review salaries and working conditions for its employees.
PSWU represents more than 10 security companies.
Currently, the lowest-paid security guard is said to be earning ZWL$72 000, which the union says is too low considering the high cost of living.
The demonstration came after ongoing negotiations between the employees and the employers reached an impasse.
In an interview with CITE’s Senzeni Ncube, PSWU Matabeleland regional officer and the national negotiator, Nduna Dladla said:
We were supposed to come up with a new wage structure with effect from 1 October. When we went for an NEC meeting in Harare, we had listed our agenda and the main issue that stalled the negotiations was the grading of employees which was not very important, we told them as employees that we were not prepared for that because we told them we had not put submissions for it and they said if we haven’t discussed the grading system we are not going to discuss anything about wages.
They wanted us to scrap it and again they wanted to regrade the workers and impose a new grading system.
The Fawcett employees were not saying they don’t want to go to work but the cost of living is too high, the company has to address their plight by giving them decent salaries.
We are the only industry where the lowest worker is paid something less than US$100 and when we are raising this issue they don’t listen and the only way they can listen to us is if we do what we did yesterday.