NHE board snubs union meeting request

The National Housing Enterprise (NHE) board has snubbed a request by the Public Service Union of Namibia (PSUN) to meet for discussions aimed at finding solutions to a labour stand-off that has crippled operations at the housing agency.

NHE employees have been on strike for the past three weeks, but it has done little to unsettle the company’s management. Through their union, workers had even proposed to suspend the strike - provided that the company suspends its ‘no work, no pay' rule - but management did not budge.

With no favourable response from management since the strike began on 24 February, PSUN turned its sights to the board.

“We address this letter to you and the rest of the board to meet with us urgently in order to resolve the ongoing dispute and resume operations at NHE,” secretary-general Matheus Haakuria wrote in a letter dated 15 March, addressed to board chairperson Toska Sem.

Sem responded a day later rejecting the union’s advances.

“The board shall not engage the union directly, as this would be against the accepted principles of corporate good governance,” she said.

She added that the strike falls under operational issues.

No salaries

Sem also made it clear to the union that NHE will not drop its ‘no work, no pay’ rule, saying it was agreed upon by both parties under the strike rules. She reiterated that the company will not remunerate workers for services not rendered.

With the strike hitting the one-month mark later this week, as it stands, striking workers will not receive their March salaries.

With Haakuria claiming in his letter that the company’s management has been engaging the union without a mandate, Sem said: “The appointed management team is entrusted with the operations of the entity.

“The said management has been duly mandated to conduct negotiations on behalf of the employer. As such, PSUN should continue to engage management with the aim of reaching an amicable solution to the ongoing industrial action for the benefit of both parties”.

Blame game

In the same letter, Haakuria said “operations at NHE could have been restored if the CEO and management were serious to resolve the matter”.

He also complained that the enterprise is not responding timeously to the union’s proposals.

“We submitted proposals on 2 March and only received a response on 9 March. Another clear indication that the NHE management team have no intention to resolve the matter,” he lamented.

The striking NHE workers want their remuneration to be increased by 7% across the board as well as a housing allowance increment of 5% and transport allowance increment of N$25.

They also want the proposed increments to be backdated by 12 months in order to cover the 2021/2022 financial year.

Wide implications

Several striking employees, who spoke to this publication on condition of anonymity, said management runs a great risk of disrupting the company’s work sequence if it applies the ‘no work, no pay' rule.

“Management needs to understand that our work is in sequence and there is no way they can apply that principle, because when we go back to work, we will have to fix and clear the backlog in order to continue the operation chain,” an employee said.

Another added: “This is not NBC where radios and TVs did not play and workers simply returned and it’s business as usual. Here you must remember that payments are not allocated, so those and other records must be updated once the strike ends. “Unfortunately for them, the operations are a sequence. You do not just stop and continue as if there was no stoppage. If they decide not to pay us, we will also not do old work.”