The Zimbabwe Construction and Allied Trades Workers’ Union (ZCATWU) has rejected recent claims by the Zimbabwe Building Contractors Association (ZBCA), arguing that delayed government payments affect only a few employers and warning against misrepresenting the challenges as industry-wide.
ZCATWU General Secretary M.N. Mazarura addressed comments made by the ZBCA in a story published by The Independent on 30 May 2025.
The article was titled “State Suppliers Plot Treasury Showdown at Funeral Parlour… Desperation Peaks as Firms Reel From Unpaid Government Contracts”.
ZCATWU, however, dismissed the notion that all contractors are facing similar challenges, arguing that the ZBCA’s position risked creating unnecessary instability in the sector. Said Mazarura:
To set the record straight, ZCATWU confirms the challenges that were indicated by ZBCA to be affecting only a handful of employers.
We note that the ZBCA seeks to blanket all players in the construction industry to be facing the same challenges.
This has a net effect of disturbing harmony in the industry as it has a huge bearing on collective bargaining.
The union said that many employers, even those without government contracts, have used alleged government payment delays as an excuse to avoid wage increases. Mazarura said:
For over a year, we have been experiencing difficulties on negotiating salary and wages for the construction sector.
Most of the times when we engaged for negotiations the response we got from these employers is that the government is failing to pay the contractors but we are aware that we do have some contractors who are not contracted by the government and they are just not paying or increasing wages citing late payments by government.
ZCATWU maintains that the construction sector has the capacity to offer fair wages and urges employer representatives to promote the use of internal works council platforms in support of the National Employment Council (NEC). The union said:
ZCATWU feels that the industry has the capacity to pay decent wages and is appealing to the contractors’ representatives to advise some employers who are not contracted by the government to utilise their works council platforms to complement the National Employment Council (NEC) efforts.
Our concern is that employers in the industry are waiting for the NEC to bargain and if the NEC does not inform the industry on the new rates, the employers will not increase the wages.
ZCATWU also noted that some foreign-owned companies operating in Zimbabwe are refusing to raise wages, citing payment delays affecting government-contracted firms as justification.
In addition, the union accused certain employers of misusing Statutory Instrument 45 of 2013, which regulates employment contracts and wage exemptions.
According to ZCATWU, some employers are now seeking exemptions from paying gazetted wages and are misinterpreting the S.I.’s provisions, including making requests for employees to sign multiple contracts at the same worksite, a practice that is clearly prohibited. Said Mazarura:
All these issues are arising owing to issues raised by our contractors engaged by the government.
We are appealing to all employers in our sector to engage each other through the NEC so that we bring sanity in our sector.
We cannot allow every employer not to pay a living wage on account of a few contractors in our sector who are citing non-payments by the government.
We urge contractors to use the right platforms. The negotiating platforms we have are not the arena for complaints against the government.
While we appreciate the economic situation affecting all parties we expect all parties to engage in good faith and not hide behind unsubstantiated issues relating to the government.
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