Retrenchment by Design: How “Restructuring” Can Be Used to Weaken Unions in Zimbabwe

By Given Dingwiza

When Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court handed down Nyamande & Another v Zuva Petroleum (SC 43/15) in July 2015, it reaffirmed an employer’s common-law right to terminate employment on notice, and the aftermath was immediate and bruising for workers.

Within weeks, Zimbabwe’s main labour federation said tens of thousands of jobs had been lost after companies moved quickly to terminate contracts on notice, before lawmakers intervened to amend the Labour Act.

The legal position has shifted since then, but the shock of 2015 left a lasting lesson in many workplaces: when the economy is weak and jobs are scarce, legally defensible processes can still produce outcomes that feel punitive.

Restructuring is, in principle, a legitimate business tool that can keep organisations alive when markets contract, technology changes, or costs outrun revenue.

In Zimbabwe, however, the word “restructuring” has increasingly become emotionally loaded because workers and unions say it is sometimes deployed in ways that shrink collective bargaining power while presenting job cuts as neutral and inevitable.

This is not an argument that every restructuring is a disguised purge, or that every retrenchment is unfair.

It is an argument that restructuring can be designed to be “clean” on paper while leaving employees with the sense that the process was decided before consultation began, and that those who speak up are the easiest to remove.

The fear that drives this perception is rooted in the country’s recent labour history, where formal law has not always translated into fast, practical protection.

Zimbabwe’s Labour Act does not treat retrenchment as a casual administrative decision, and the statute explicitly creates a process intended to force consultation and restrain abuse.

Section 12C sets out a retrenchment framework that requires written notice and engagement through workplace or sector structures, with the Retrenchment Board playing a central role in the formal pathway.

In 2023, Parliament passed the Labour Amendment Act (Act 11 of 2023), which amended Section 12C and reframed parts of the retrenchment process, including how packages may be structured.

In December 2024, the government gazetted the Labour (Retrenchment) Regulations, 2024 (SI 191 of 2024), which provide operational detail to the amended framework, including standard forms and timing requirements.

The regulations include a requirement for the Retrenchment Board to issue a notification certificate within specified timeframes, an attempt to reduce uncertainty that often drags workers into prolonged limbo.

These reforms acknowledge a basic reality: the value of a right is weakened when the remedy arrives after savings are gone and school fees are overdue.

Yet even the best procedure can be gamed, and Zimbabwe’s post-2015 labour debate has repeatedly returned to the same tension between procedural compliance and substantive fairness.

Workers tend to describe the “problem” not as the existence of restructuring, but as how it is sometimes packaged: consultants arrive, new organograms appear, and the human consequences fall hardest on those closest to workplace representation.

That claim is difficult to prove without internal documents and careful case-by-case evidence, and responsible commentary must be careful not to treat perception as fact.

But the pattern has gained traction partly because major restructurings in both the public and private sectors have been widely reported, creating a steady drumbeat of job insecurity.

At Air Zimbabwe, for example, Reuters reported in July 2017 that the loss-making airline was cutting half of its roughly 400 jobs as part of a restructuring plan intended to revive the carrier.

In such cases, the operational rationale is straightforward and often credible, because the financial distress is public and the payroll reduction is openly stated.

The harder question comes after the announcement: whether selection criteria, consultation quality, and post-retrenchment rehiring patterns align with the law’s requirement for fairness, not just a tidy process.

Zimbabwe’s labour framework assumes that consultation is meaningful, which implies engagement before final decisions harden into irreversible outcomes.

Where consultation becomes a briefing rather than a negotiation, the process can satisfy formalities while failing the worker’s expectation of voice, especially if employees believe lists were prepared in advance.

This is why organised labour has sometimes described certain retrenchment plans in overtly political terms rather than purely economic ones.

In June 2016, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said a pending National Railways of Zimbabwe retrenchment of about 1,400 employees was “a clear case of victimisation,” language that shows how quickly job-cut exercises can be interpreted as discipline by spreadsheet.

Even if an employer disputes that framing, the fact that the country’s main labour federation used it publicly is itself evidence of the deep mistrust surrounding restructuring.

The banking sector has also offered high-profile examples of restructuring framed as strategic realignment and efficiency.

In February 2025, state media reported that CBZ Holdings had completed a restructuring process that resulted in 347 employees being retrenched, with the group describing the move as aligning strategy with an evolving business landscape.

The same CBZ figure was also reported in other local business coverage, which quoted company leadership on the timing and scale of roles affected.

Steward Bank, in turn, has publicly linked staff reductions to digitisation and systems upgrades, a familiar global narrative where automation collapses once labour-intensive roles.

Where digitisation drives job losses, the fairness test is not whether automation exists, but whether retrenchment is handled transparently, with clear criteria and proper consultation, rather than being experienced as a silent removal of “problem employees.”

Retail illustrates another side of the debate, because Zimbabwe’s trading environment can be brutal even for established players.

Reuters reported in May 2025 that OK Zimbabwe was closing outlets amid competitive and funding pressures and seeking capital to stabilise operations, a classic corporate rationale for retrenchment-linked restructuring. 

The company’s own investor communications in late 2025 described organisational restructuring that included the closure of non-viable stores and reductions at the head office, presenting these steps as part of survival and rationalisation. 

NewsDay similarly reported on OK’s store closures and the stated economic drivers, including liquidity and exchange-rate instability, which reinforces that genuine business distress can be real even when the social consequences are harsh. 

In an economy like Zimbabwe’s, the fear that accompanies restructuring is not abstract, because unemployment is experienced as a cliff edge rather than a transition.

That fear matters because it shapes behaviour in the workplace, and a frightened workforce is less likely to file grievances, demand minutes, or insist on collective bargaining rights even when those rights exist in law.

The result is that restructuring can have a secondary impact beyond the jobs lost: it can thin workplace representation and discourage collective action, even without a single explicit anti-union instruction being written down.

This dynamic is not uniquely Zimbabwean, and international comparisons show how “lawful” corporate tactics can still draw public outrage when workers feel coerced. 

In the United Kingdom, controversy over “fire and rehire” led to a statutory Code of Practice on dismissal and re-engagement that came into force on July 18, 2024, aimed at ensuring dismissal and re-engagement is a last resort rather than a routine bargaining weapon. 

In the United States, scrutiny of anti-union consulting and employer tactics has been intense, and reporting has highlighted the scale of union-avoidance spending and related labour complaints at major firms. 

These examples matter for Zimbabwe because they show that, even in stronger institutional environments, the boundary between operational change and worker coercion is contested. 

Where Zimbabwe differs is that oversight capacity and dispute-resolution speed often determine whether rights are lived realities or paper promises, which is why recent reforms focused on procedure and timelines. 

The most credible way to reduce the suspicion that restructuring is being used to weaken unions is not to criminalise restructuring, but to make the process provable.

That means employers clearly publishing selection criteria that can be tested, recording consultations in writing, and ensuring that redundancy decisions are taken before rehiring into renamed roles that appear functionally identical. 

It also means unions matching their rhetoric with internal accountability, including transparent mandates, clear reporting back to members, and a willingness to document and litigate where procedure masks unfairness.

Zimbabwe can borrow lessons from countries where worker voice is institutionally entrenched through workplace representation models such as works councils and codetermination arrangements that make consultation harder to reduce to a theatre. 

None of this removes the reality that businesses face genuine operational pressures, including currency instability, demand compression and policy risk, which are widely cited constraints in corporate decision-making. 

But economic hardship does not erase the legal and moral requirement that restructuring be carried out in good faith, with meaningful consultation and demonstrable fairness, not just a process that looks compliant. 

If restructuring is truly about survival, it should be explainable in evidence, consistent in criteria, and defensible long after the press statement fades.

If it is not, workers will continue to read restructuring notices not as recovery plans, but as warnings about who will be isolated next.