Beginning 2011 when public sector trade unions embarked on a long strike, relations with the government have been really strained. That is why Ketlhalefile Motshegwa, the Deputy Secretary General of the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) looks askance at the near-rosy picture that the Global Competitiveness Report paints of Botswana.
“Since 2011, government unilaterally and unlawfully withdrew organisational rights of trade unions, something which was ultimately interdicted and ruled against by courts of law. We in trade unions view government as having unleashed a campaign to end trade unions, something which is not achievable because no weapon fashioned against the working class can work,” Motshegwa says in reaction to the Report’s depiction of “Cooperation in labour-employer relations” in Botswana.
On a scale where 1 represents “generally confrontational” and 7 represents “generally cooperative”, Botswana got a score that leans towards the latter (4.3) as well as position 69 from a total of 144 countries.
Motshegwa’s contention is that Botswana’s score doesn’t comport with reality because the state of labour relations “is ugly and untidy and therefore cannot be accorded marks that seem to suggest that all is healthy.” He attributes this to a “poor choice of interviewees” by those carrying out the survey.
“That is because labour has not been asked to participate in these surveys,” he says.
The World Economic Forum (which produces the report) has a network of over 160 partner institutes worldwide that have the capacity “to reach out to the business community” and “follow detailed sampling guidelines to ensure that the sample of respondents is the most representative possible.” In Botswana, the WEF partners with the Botswana National Productivity Centre.
With regard to “flexibility of wage determination”, Botswana’s interviewees responded positively to a question that asked them how wages are set: 1 represented “by a centralized bargaining process” and 7 represented “by each individual company.” Botswana got position 42 with a score of 5.4.
“Collective bargaining is relatively new in our labour relations. There could be strides in the public sector with regard to the Bargaining Council if the government was not continually usurping the Council’s powers and thereby undermining it. In private sector, collective bargaining is almost non-existent. This has led to employers paying less than the living wage, which is the reason we have the working poor,” says Motshegwa, adding in another part that the 2011 strike was a direct result of the government’s refusal to bargain with BOFEPUSU “saying that it could only offer 0 percent.”
On hiring and firing practices, respondents were asked how they would characterize the hiring and firing of workers on a scale where 1 represented “heavily impeded by regulations” and 7 represented “extremely flexible.” Botswana scored 3.8 and got position 82.
Motshegwa’s response is that while on paper Botswana has laws that are meant to protect workers, the reality is that workers are fired from work “willy nilly” with the private sector coming off as the worst offender.
“Some employees have been fired just for falling pregnant and are about to go on maternity leave. Others are fired when they are getting to five years of being paid gratuity as the company will want to save costs by not paying gratuity benefits. Employers have the latitude to dismiss employees as they please because they know that the Department of Labour is powerless in its role of alternative dispute resolution mechanism while the Industrial Court is slow in dealing with labour matters as it can take between four to eight years for one to finally have their matter adjudicated,” he says.
He then makes a startling allegation with regard to the public service. By his account, senior civil servants compete among themselves over who can fire the highest number of employees and that the “winners” are seen as hard workers.
“The approach of the current administration seems to gauge the effectiveness of senior government officials on their ability to coerce employees. This arbitrary firing mostly affects lower-level employees who live on the margins of the economy,” Motshegwa says.
With regard to hiring, he asserts that meritocracy has been replaced by nepotism, leading to a situation where competent civil servants are either passed up for promotion or purged to make way for the establishment’s favourites. Some of the favourites he cites in this particular regard are Olebile Gaborone, Louis Malikongwa and Mmoloki Raletobana, all ruling party activists who lost elections and were subsequently appointed to plum positions in the public service.
“We can only interpret this as reward for being loyal to the appointing authority. There is also the gender aspect of this discrimination wherein the rights of women are abused. There are stories going around that in order for some women to climb the ladder in the civil service, they ought to succumb to the sexual demands of some powerful males in the system. There are whispers from within the Government Enclave that some women attained positions through this route which is dubbed “the thigh process.” This practice robs the country of competent and principled civil servants who can’t survive under such a polluted system.”
The final labour-related indicator relates to pay and productivity. On a scale where 1 represented “not related to worker productivity” and 7 represented “strongly related to worker productivity”, respondents were asked to state the extent to which pay related to worker productivity. Leaning towards the latter, Botswana scored 3.8 and got position 82. Motshegwa counters by stating that in Botswana,pay is not related to productivity “because employers here, including the government, don’t reward productivity.”
He adds that even before considerations of pay increment based on productivity, the working class in Botswana faces a number of economic challenges such as inflation which they are never cushioned against.
“The purchasing power of workers in Botswana has therefore been gravely eroded over time. That is why the working class in Botswana is heavily indebted. Such conditions have brought about a lifestyle of continuous borrowing for consumption,” he says.
The report says with regard to the “labour market efficiency” pillar: “The efficiency and flexibility of the labour market are critical for ensuring that workers are allocated to their most effective use in the economy and provided with incentives to give their best effort in their jobs.”
