HARARE (Zimbabwe Investor) - Wage negotiations between employers and employees are promising fireworks with unions across the sectors of the economy all expecting a minimum wage of US$400 per month this year.

“Workers are expecting a minimum wage of US$400 and we need to make sure that we all concentrate on building our economy’, said Mr Nicholas Mazarura, Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Construction and Allied Workers’ Union without expounding how a higher minimum wage rate would help the economic reconstruction effort.

“We expect a minimum wage of US$400 as we feel it is the living wage. Workers are also expecting that companies will be fully capacitated as opposed to last year when most companies were operating below 50%”, said Mr. Nxumalo. This optimism is shared by the Mine Workers Union whose president Mr Tinago Ruziwe also urged harmony in the negotiations to aid the recovery of the economy.

In December, civil servants demanded a minimum wage of between US$500 and US$600 starting from January this year. The workers are currently earning an average of US$155 a month.

In his 2010 National Budget presentation in December last year, Finance Minister Tendai Biti allocated US$600 million for the civil servants wage bill representing 63% of the total budgeted government expenditure. Biti pledged to grade civil servants salaries to take into account rank, skill, and experience of the worker.

Nevertheless, the government and civil servants representatives’ negotiations to increase salaries of civil servants under the National Joint Negotiating Council flopped when the talks turned awry. The government declined to yield the demanded increment offering instead US$122 and US$236 for the lowest paid worker and highest paid worker respectively. The government’s offer however excludes any housing and transport allowances.

The civil servants’ representatives chastised the government’s offer as paltry and an insult to civil servants. The civil servants representatives have revealed that its members are still failing to afford the basics needs and living under privation.

“The talks didn’t go well because of what government offered. It was a paltry increment which we felt as an insult to civil servants. Government continues to widen the gap between civil and private sector”, said Mrs Cecilia Alexander, president of the Public Service Association

Finance minister Tendai Biti says that government’s position on the civil servants salaries can not be changed as the 2010 National Budget has already been approved by parliament.

"Changing the approved budget would translate into breaking the law, which we will try by all means to avoid,” said Biti.

The regional average minimum wage rate is about US$75. Africa’s biggest economy South Africa’s agreed cross sector minimum wage for 2010 is a Rand equivalent of about US$191 per month. With a country with as much capacity as South Africa paying such a rate, it is difficult to establish the rationale of Zimbabwean unions’ demands. The civil service demands for a minimum wage up to US$600 will put them at par with some developed western countries.