The Labour Court has ordered Kwekwe City Council to pay $102 561 in backpay to the 160 workers it inherited from the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) in 2009.
The ruling, made on June 29 this year, put the two-year dispute between the workers and the municipality to rest.
The workers, represented by the Zimbabwe Urban Councils Workers’ Union, had taken the local authority to court after it slashed their salaries by 50% when they rejoined council after a short spell at Zinwa.
They subsequently won an arbitration award, but council appealed against the ruling at the Labour Court. The appeal was last month dismissed with costs by Gweru Labour Court president Maxwell Takuva.
In his appeal, Kwekwe town clerk Emmanuel Musara had argued that Zinwa illegally increased the workers’ salaries a month before handing them back to the local authority.
Musara argued that at the time the salary increases were effected, the workers already belonged to the local authority and therefore Zinwa had no legal grounds to do so. Council then reversed the salary increases, a move the court described as a violation of section 16 of the Labour Act.
Part of the ruling reads: “Whenever any understanding in which any persons are employed is alienated or transferred in any way whatsoever, the employment of such persons shall, unless otherwise lawfully terminated, be deemed to be transferred to the transferee of the undertaking on terms and conditions which are not less favourable than those which applied immediately before transfer.”
