Female workers in banks are now at the mercy of managers who are frequently abusing them.

MPs heard that female workers were being told to sleep with bosses or get termination letters. Representatives from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions who appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, said employers were using the Labour Amendment Act that was passed into law last year to convert workers’ contracts from permanent to one-year fixed contracts.

ZCTU vice president Peter Mutasa said female employees were the most affected. “You have to choose between being harassed and three months’ notice. If it’s a female-headed household you can guess what the employee will choose. In short, the impact of that amendment is that it eroded all the other pieces of law that seek to protect workers.”

“We have done a survey in the banking sector and the figures that are coming from these banks are too high. You hear women testifying that ‘our managers are telling us to book for lodges and hotels using our own money and say call us when you are ready’.

“Managers will be holding a three-months’ termination letter. If you don’t want, you are put on the (termination) list. So people are suffering. Women are suffering much more than men with this amendment. If we don’t protect labour by protecting job security, we are destroying the nationhood of this country which is against our ideals,” said Mutasa.

He said some companies such as the Metropolitan Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Econet Wireless and Steward Bank were abusing employees using the Act. Mutasa said at MetBank, employees contracts were converted from permanent to fixed term contracts while at Standard Chartered Bank, several workers were retrenched.