Differences between Government and the Public Sector Trade Unions have become more strident than ever before with every small detail of it playing in public and at shrivel tones that ever before.
We want to point from the onset that Government occupies a unique and indeed special position to take leadership role in efforts to tone down and restrain the deafening crescendo of the drums of war ringing on the backdrop of a dispute emanating from the Bargaining Council ÔÇô a creation of the Public Service Act that is supposed to negotiate increases and conditions. The standoff between government and public sector trade unions has been so long and protracted that it now is perilously undermining economic fundamentals.
And this at a time when recovery is still fragile and uncertainty is on its own at unhelpful heights. We cannot emphasise strong enough the economic benefits that would immediately accrue to the nation if government and trade unions were all of a sudden to appreciate the importance of talking to each other rather than talking at each other. While we condemn and indeed abhor the rent-seeking culture among trade unions and their leaders we equally condemn growing culture of prickliness and intolerance increasingly demonstrated by government. Because of the corresponding behaviours of these two parties it has become so difficult to know just who is in charge of the country. We cannot as a member-country of a civilized world afford a government that itself takes a cue or behaves like the very insurgents which it now clearly seems to regard Trade Unions.
If things go wrong, as it now seems ever more so likely, Government will have no option but to accept their share of the blame especially for their sordid failure and intransigent refusal to rise to a moral high ground by way of demonstrating flexibility and preparedness to make even painful concessions. We have in the past pointed out and lamented the dangers of a Government that stoops to such low levels where scorched earth now seems to be the policy of both sides. Many key reforms that would make the public service more efficient, more productive, more responsive and modern have for now been shelved as Government and trade unions are engaged in a sparring match.
The situation has degenerated so badly such that it has now become a life and death battle; with each side clearly all out to obliterate the other when in fact they should be constructively working to engage one another. We call on either party to sensitively and kindly assess each other’s apprehensions, reservations and misgivings while also narrowing their gap as they move towards a win-win era. The current tit for tat is totally reckless and meaningless and it will bring no clear winner in the end. From the behavior of both parties there is no doubt that the current leadership on both sides of the aisle is a direct impediment to progress. On the government side, President Ian Khama is wholly occupied with rendering trade unions, especially their leaders irrelevant.
The strategy is to sow seeds of discontent between the unions’ leadership and the general membership by portraying government as the true custodian of membership interests. Otherwise senior civil servants at DPSM and Office of the President would not have behaved in the manner that they recently did without explicit blessing of the President. On the trade union side, the leadership seems more preoccupied with regime change than with negotiating the immediate interests and benefits for their members. This has derailed unions from the core issues they were created to address. It has effectively become a race to the bottom. The case for reaching out to one another, emerging from hard-line cocoons and trying to put the interests of the country ahead of is not possible under the current climate. This is not to say that government current position is in anyway synonymous with the interests of the country. Quite to the contrary. The current position adopted by government is as harmful to the interests of the nation as the sectoral attitude currently adopted by trade unions. Tragically there is no shortage of cheerleaders on either side.
People who would otherwise be calling for restraint on either side are the same ones who are fueling the embers of hell by goading the leadership to fight harder and get their positions more entrenched, however untenable those positions are getting as is now becoming increasingly clear to every detached or fair minded observer. Only the blind cannot see the palpable economic and social effects that will dog this country for many years to come unless government and public trade sector unions start to engage each other. There seems to be new thinking within government that the Public Service Act of 2008 was a mistake especially in as far as it gave rise to creation of trade unions and also conferred in those unions substantial powers including allowing them representation at the Bargaining Council. If indeed it’s true that there is such a feeling of regret within some sectors of Government, then such a feeling is as unfortunate as it is ill-advised. There is nothing wrong with creating trade unions. What is wrong i9s when relations between unions and government mismanaged to a situation where each views itself as a contender for state power against the other as is currently the case.
