UNDERMINING UNIONS
The doctors opted to strike
over poor remunerations, which compromise their work ethics. The doctors’
plight is understandable. Doctors in public facilities earn on average, about
US$300 per month. This abuse is unheard
of anywhere in the world. In Kenya, the recent doctors’ industrial action ended
with a decent settlement where interns earn US$ 1,900 and the highest
consultants earn about US$5600 a month. The state’s insensitivity to income inequality
and widespread rent seeking signifies deliberate undermining of labour and their unions.
The doctors are seeking for
equitable pay and improved work conditions. Public resources should not only
fund political expediences. The decaying public institutions need fixing, too. Too much politics of self-aggrandizement has deteriorated critical
social services.
Ugandans are dying too often
from conditions caused by social inequities.
Industrial actions are commonplace
these days and perceived to target the state actors, rather than the private
sector employers (corporations and businesses). This is largely because the Ugandan liberal
market is under-developed, and atypical. The market-labor relations are equally
atypical due to patrimonial indulgences by the state and sub-state actors who constantly
distort the markets.
David Booth and Frederick
Golooba-Mutebi studied the formation and influences of developmental patrimonialism
in Rwanda where state’s legitimate interests in the market helps to shape the
direction of the economy, reduces devastating rent seeking tendencies, and spur
real economic growth as measured by reduction in poverty rates . How does patrimonialism
shape Uganda’s liberal market?
Interestingly, the Uganda’s
market economy is not the main employer of the fledgling youthful labour force.
Therefore, externalities (concentrated political interests), rather than the
market, regulates and moderate labour- capital relations. According to the
2016/17 Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS), the general unemployment rate
was high, 9.5%, to signify that the economy was probably liberalizing fast
without expanding, or diversifying in proportions to the growing labour force;
and, about 60% of Ugandans are employed informally.
The high-end investors in manufacturing,
agro-processing, Information technology, banking, energy, tourism,
infrastructure development, and mining avoid chaotic Uganda. The local or
crooked investors have come and run out of business due to political patronage,
pervasive rent seeking, restricted liberal rights and freedoms, making Ugandan
market highly risk-prone. The political
instability signals high potential for large-scale disruptions of the market,
risks that investors avoid.
Today the major institution
of the economy is not the market – rather, the state – the Presidency and
political class who live off rent seeking. In this sense, the Ugandan economy
is atypical in the real sense of a liberal economy as those shaped under
ideologies of neoliberalism.
Incidentally, the state tends
to distances itself from social spending, especially in critical areas of
childhood development, education, health, agriculture, and social securities. For
instance, the budgetary allocation to social sector has declined from 37% in
2002/2003 to 19% in the 2017 budget. This expenditure is far below the global
and emerging marketing standards where health social coverage remains as low as under 3.0%.
The striking civil servants fall
in the social sectors where the state has reneged on its fiscal obligations.
The state wishes to cede social service obligations to the private sector or
liberal market.
Evidence shows that working
and living conditions are far better in economies with high labour union
densities. Where unions thrive, pay inequities
and poverty are reduced, and the sense of social justice supersedes that of economic
justice. However, where the market is the dominant force, liberal rights are
enforced but labour unions are suppressed. The objective of the capitalist
class is maximization of profits by paying low wages and limiting benefits.
The 2014 Uganda Labour market
profile identifies 40 workers unions, covering only 440,000 workers, or 3% of
the labour force, constituting 13% of workers in the formal workforce.
Therefore, the state deliberately
undermines labour and their unions just as it does to any forms of social and political rights.
END
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