SWAZI TEXTILE STRIKE SUSPENDED

The Swaziland textile workers strike that was marred by police brutality has been suspended as employers agreed to meet union demands.

Workers will get a 10 percent wage increase across the board, 15 days paid holiday, one week paid bonus, double pay on Sundays, triple pay on public holidays and one and a half times normal pay for overtime during the week.

The Swazi Government has also agreed to engage with the workers over housing and travel allowances.

The Times of Swaziland yesterday (2 April 2008) quoted Swaziland Manufacturing and Allied Workers Union (SMAWU) Secretary General Sipho Manana saying until the negotiations with government were completed the strike would remain suspended. The strike was not over, he added.

The Swazi Observer (2 April 2008) reported that to ensure the back to work deal, Swaziland’s Minister of Enterprise and Employment, Lufto Dlamini, had to travel to Taiwan to talk to the owners of the Swazi textile companies.

The legal strike of textile workers had caused international attention when police brutally assaulted workers. On separate occasions Swazi Prime Minister Themba Dlamini and members of parliament condemned the police action.

It also drew public attention to the poor working conditions endured by workers in textile factories in Swaziland. All are owned by foreign companies, mostly those based in Taiwan.

The working conditions were likened to ‘slave labour’ by one newspaper columnist. Vusi Sibisi writing in the Times of Swaziland (2 April 2008) said that Swaziland had become beholden to foreign investors who wanted cheap labour. He blamed this on Swaziland’s ruling class.

Sibisi recalled the time just after Swaziland gained independence from Britain in 1968 when ‘anyone wanting to do business in [Swaziland] had to inform the ruling class about the range of salaries they would be offering to their Swazi workers.

‘No, it had nothing to do with the ruling elite’s benevolent disposition and/or enforcing the principle of minimum wages in order to protect and ensure that Swazis were not underpaid.

‘To the contrary, it had to do with ensuring that foreign investors did not spoil Swazis by paying them humane and reasonable wages because the ruling class believed that if handsomely salaried, Swazis would be spoilt to the extent of losing respect for the leadership and stop being subservient.

‘In some ways, I am informed, the ruling class would thereupon decide the wages the investors should give to their Swazi workers and perhaps be good corporate citizens by remitting to themselves the balance between what the investors had initially budgeted to pay and what the leadership finally decided should be paid.

‘After all they, the leadership, carried a heavy burden, as it were, of having to nanny a nation that is completely vulnerable and entirely dependent on them as squatters in their fiefdom, a service for which they believed they should be rewarded by whomsoever.’

See also
SWAZI POLICE ‘KILL BABY WITH TEARGAS’