This year’s Workers Day comes just over two weeks to the full year when the entire public service went on a three-month strike, demanding salary increases.
After a protracted three-month standoff with Government, public servants were finally forced to swallow the hard truth that Government was not about to budge and honour their demands.
It was a humiliating climb down for some, but also a moment of triumphalism for others.
The intention of this commentary is to call on the affected to put history behind and look ahead with the fresh eyes of objectivity and balance. More importantly, we want to call on the leaders of the trade unions to remain true to the conditions of their members.
We want to emphasise that we do not subscribe to a narrow prescriptive demand by the Botswana government often trumpeted by President Ian Khama that trade unions have no place in politics.
In a country where they form such a big portion of the electorate, it would be reckless on the workers’ part not to try and use their numerical strengths to influence public policy as well as the direction the country is taking.
What is important, ultimately, is that while engaging in politics, workers or trade unions should not in any way forget that they are not governments. Our argument is that it is easy and very much compatible for trade unions to be actively engaged in politics while also staying true to the conditions of their members.
After all politics, or at least that part of politics that determines public policy, is too important to be left to politicians alone. Telling workers to stay clear of politics, as our Government likes to do, is tantamount to treating the workers as voting fodder for which politicians have no real use beyond elections day. That is not right. We think one of the underlying reasons for allowing trade unions is to give workers an opportunity to use the numbers behind their organization to lobby for their interests.
They could use their numbers tactically and or strategically; it is not for any political party to tell them what is good for them, not even if it is a party in power.
Having said that we want to take this opportunity to call on the workers to use their Day this year to reflect and introspect.
World events are moving very fast and it is only those organizations that have a robust and steady leadership that will survive the many challenges presented by these events. We note that the public service in Botswana has gone for well over three years without salary adjustments.
In the face of the rising inflation that has been so much a feature of Botswana’s economy over the last few years, it is almost certain that for many workers their take home is in real terms significantly much lower than was the case four years ago.
We call on the workers, especially their leadership to engage Government with the objective of innovatively coming up with ways that could fast track the economic recovery of the country so that the historical anomaly that exists today can be corrected as quickly as is humanly possible.
While we do not subscribe to a notion that trade unions should stay out of politics, we should not in any way be construed to be saying trade unions should take the place of opposition parties.
Rather, we are saying their bona fide role as political players is there for all to see.
