Tobacco sales halted as workers strike

Zim tobacco sales resume after strike

TOBACCO sales resumed under the shadow of further strikes by workers if pay negotiations fail

• Tobacco sales snuffed by workers' strike

• Nyambuya's workers desert farm

By Staff Reporter

STRIKING tobacco workers who snuffed sales at the Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF) on Friday after downing tools demanding a 250 percent salary increment resumed work on Wednesday.

Sales at the country's biggest tobacco floor had to be suspended last week after only 75 bales were sold out of an average 750 bales that it sells per day.

New Zimbabwe.com has been told that workers will be meeting their employers at at the National Employment Council where their pay demands will be listened to.

Sources said it was highly unlikely the employers would come anywhere close to the $1,3 million monthly salary demanded by the workers for the lowest paid worker, later downgraded to $900 000.

The employers are only prepared to make a 63 percent adjustment which would improve the salary of the least paid worker to $400 000.

Both the TSF and the Burley Marketing Zimbabwe (BMZ) floors opened to business on Wednesday with officials quietly hoping a compromise deal could be reached on Thursday with the workers.

Estevao Cumbulane, Zimbabwe Tobacco Industry Workers’ Unions secretary general said the demands for salary adjustments were based on the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe’s bread basket of $907 000 last February and the Central Statistical Office’s bread basket, which is pegged at $700 000.

TSF managing director David Machingaidze said the strike action by the workers had impacted negatively on their operations "at this time when the country is in dire need offoreign currency."

Machingaidze said the action by workers had inconvenienced farmers, adding that they had to give farmers advance payment pending the sale of the remaining crop.

"The action has been a huge inconvenience to most small-scale farmers. We have tried to assist them with cash advances pending the sale of their tobacco as we have realized that most of them came from far away places and needed money to travel back to theirhomes," he said.

An official with Zimbabwe Leaf Tobacco said the company operated with a skeletal staff after most of them went on strike.

There were also allegations from workers that most employers were intending to retrench after the tobacco-selling season, as the industry was facing operational and viability problems.
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