With no explanation being tendered, Cresta hotels management has gone back on its earlier decision to award a five- percent salary increment to its employees.
Although management has not tendered an explanation, the Union representative, Nicholas Motiki had written it a letter advising it against implementing that decision unilaterally and before the wage dispute is resolved.
The situation could get uglier and one scenario that management has proposed is the ‘immediate’ retrenchment of between 230 and 250 staff members at its eight hotels.
Last week, the managing director of the hotel group, Tawanda Makaya notified the staff union – the Botswana Hotel Travel and Tourism Workers Union – through a letter that management would award a 5 percent wage increase when processing the January salaries.
Having earlier offered an increase of 10 percent before workers embarked on strike, management has revised the figure down to five percent. Information that has come into Sunday Standard’s possession indicates that management revised the figure because of lacklustre performance in the 2009/2010 financial year; below budget performance in the 2010/2011 year to date; P2.5 million loss as a result of the strike; ‘remarketing the brand so as to instill confidence in the customers that it lost during the strike (especially the international clients for Mowana)’; and, the strike aggravating the financial situation of the company.
Right from the beginning of the wage negotiations, management said that the company did not have enough money to award the increment that staff members wanted.
When union representatives and management met in July last year, the latter stated that the company’s revenue was P9 million down and that occupancy rates had slipped by three percent. The explanation given was that Riley’s Hotel in Maun had been operating with less rooms while the company had to pay staff salaries and P100 000 rental per month.
One sticking point has been the refusal of management to show the Union its books of accounts to prove the point that the company does not have money. Motiki rejects the assertion of there being lacklustre performance in the 2009/2010 financial year and says that the company’s performance (as reported in its own annual report) tells a different story. Last August the company reported profit of P31.7 million. Last year was also when Cresta Hospitality was listed on the Botswana Stock exchange. In presenting their case to management, the Union has stated that it strange that a company that is not doping well financially would list on the stock exchange. Minutes of a meeting that was held last year between the Union and management, quote the latter as saying: “The listing of Cresta Marakanelo cannot be used to assume that the company is doing well. It should be noted as well [that] the money raised from listing company did not go into the Cresta Marakanelo coffers.”
The non-diplomatic language of a letter that Makaya wrote the Union a few days after the strike shows that tempers were still frayed.
He wrote: “The Union not only mocked the attempts of management, but further went on to castrate the financial limping status of the company by embarking on an industrial strike, ignoring management’s call to engage a neutral party whose judgement would be binding both parties (arbitrator)”
The Union had its own missiles to lob at management. Before the strike the two parties agreed on the rules of engagement in line with labour law. In terms of that agreement, Cresta was not supposed to employ replacement labour and Union members not to picket the premises of the employer. The Union kept its end of the bargain but management engaged casual workers whereupon Motiki fired off a letter asking management to ‘nullify engagement of all casual employed’.
The strike ended upon the intervention of Tati East MP, Guma Moyo who now takes the view that management is negotiating in bad faith. He suggested a ‘cooling-off’ before the talks resumed and when they did two weeks later, management offered no more than 5 percent. Moyo had a meeting with Elias Dewah, a Cresta board member and former executive director of the Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower. Documents that detail the engagement between the two men say that ‘Mr. Dewah proposed 10.5% on behalf of the Company and Mr. Guma Moyo accepted it on behalf of the Union.’
Makaya has distanced Cresta management from ‘alleged discussions’ between Dewah and Moyo.
While he admits having had a meeting with Moyo, Dewah says that he was acting in his personal capacity and not on the instructions of the board, that the board never discussed the 10.5 percent offer and that the outcome of his meeting with Moyo was not binding on management.
Moyo, who feels that management is being ‘unreasonable’ has extricated himself from the whole process.
The Union has sought the assistance of the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) whose leader, Andrew Motsamai, tried to arrange a meeting with Cresta management. He got what appeared to be a favourable response but the meeting has yet to happen and it appears highly unlikely that it would ever. Makaya has written Motiki to say that he doesn’t understand why Cresta would have a meeting with BOFEPUSU when it has no dealings with the confederation of unions.
That notwithstanding, Motsamai says that BOFEPUSU whose membership is around 88 000, will rally behind the hotel workers every step of the way: “There is no way we can abandon them. We will support them with all resources at our disposal – including finances.”
