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Zimbabwean president Mugabe signs new labor law

Xinhua, August 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has signed into law the Labour Amendment Act to halt arbitrary job cuts after it was passed by Parliament last week.

Chief Secretary to the Office of the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda confirmed the presidential assent in an extraordinary Government Gazette made public on Friday.

The law comes into effect with immediate effect.

The enactment of the law comes not only as part of labor reforms by government to prevent unilateral job cuts but also to improve the ease of doing business environment in the country to attract foreign investment.

Following a July court ruling allowing companies to terminate employees' contracts on three months notice without benefits, close to 25,000 people lost their jobs in the struggling economy whose unemployment rate is estimated at over 80 percent by independent analysts, although government puts it at 11 percent.

The law provides for compensation for workers who lost their jobs as a result of the court ruling and removed the common law right of an employer to unilaterally dismiss employees on notice.

The law thus prohibits employers from firing workers on notice unless for disciplinary reasons in terms of the code of conduct, if the employer and employee agree in writing or if the employee has been engaged on a fixed-term contract for a specified task.

Employers who wish to terminate a contract of employment are now required to give written notice of their intention to the works council or in its absence to the employment council for the industry or the Retrenchment Board.

In his state of the nation address Tuesday, Mugabe said the review of the Labor Act was intended to be a win-win outcome for business and labor and was part of the raft of policy measures and legislation being pursued by government to improve the ease of doing business environment.

Employers, however, are not happy with the provisions of the Act providing for compensation to workers who were fired as a result of the court ruling. Endit