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Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku

Auxilia Katongomara Chronicle Reporter
Monarch, a subsidiary of Treger products, on Friday fired 48 workers using the Supreme Court ruling which has seen more than 6,000 workers losing their jobs countrywide.

Their counterparts at the Zimbabwe Grain Bag resisted the instant dismissal by refusing to sign the termination of contract letters.

The Zimbabwe Grain Bag workers were allegedly “detained” by management as it tried to force them to sign the letters.

Monarch and Zimbabwe Grain Bag are both subsidiaries of Treger Products.

Workers from Monarch said they received letters of termination of employment on Friday based on the Supreme Court ruling of three months notice.

The angry workers pleaded with the government to urgently amend the Labour Act before more workers lose their jobs.

“We’re disappointed that the government isn’t there to protect us. We’ve lost all what we worked for all these years. Employers are sending us home with only three months’ salary after serving the companies for 10 or more years. That’s cruelty,” said a worker who requested anonymity.

Meanwhile, there was drama at Zimbabwe Grain Bag when workers were detained at the factory on Friday after refusing to sign termination of contract letters.

Workers said the company’s human resources officer Amy Ngwenya ordered security guards to detain workers until they signed the letters.

“At knock-off time on Friday security guards were ordered to lock the gates as management tried to force us to sign the letters. We were called into the office one by one but we still refused to sign,” said one of the workers.

The workers said management told them not to report for work today, saying they will not be allowed entry into the company premises.

“We’re expecting more drama tomorrow (today). Security guards have been told that we’re no longer employed by the company,” said another worker.

On Friday, two Zuva Petroleum managers, Don Nyamande and Kingstone Donga, who were the “first casualties” of the Supreme Court ruling allowing employers to terminate workers’ contracts on three-months or less notice, filed an appeal at the Constitutional Court challenging the judgment.

They are challenging the constitutionality of the law used by the Supreme Court in throwing out their appeal.

Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku and four others, sitting as the Supreme Court’s full bench, last week dismissed an appeal by Nyamande and Donga on the basis that the common law rule that places the employer and the employee on an equal footing was still valid.

The court held that Section 12B of the Labour Act did not abolish the common law position, hence the employer had the entitlement to terminate employment on notice the same way workers do whenever they leave employment.

Since that ruling by the Supreme Court, thousands of workers lost their jobs on short notice, a development that has been widely condemned by legal and labour experts as workers went home almost empty-handed after serving companies for many years.

In the notice of appeal filed at the Constitutional Court, Nyamande and Donga’s lawyers argued that the Supreme Court erroneously ruled without seeing copies of contracts of employment between the two managers.