Zimbabwe doctors win, nurses strike
By Norm Dixon
Nurses in several Zimbabwean cities went on strike on November 9 to demand a pay increase, three days after doctors ended their seven-week strike in protest at low salaries, poor working conditions and the country's run-down health system.
The doctors ended their strike after the government backed down and gave a written undertaking to increase salaries and improve working conditions in January. The strike, which began at the end of September, forced the closure of most services at government medical facilities, volunteer private doctors attending only to emergency cases.
The nurses said the government had ignored their ultimatum to increase their salaries, leaving them with no option but to strike. In the affected cities, all medical departments at government hospitals were closed except emergency wards.
"We will not go back to work until the government gives us something", Michael Mashingaidze, vice-president of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association, said.
The government faces escalating industrial action. Newspapers reported on November 5 that the country's civil servants are to demand increments of up to 700% in housing, transport, funeral and other allowances, plus 66-90% cost-of-living salary adjustments from next year.
On November 9, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) appealed to the government to drop a proposed AIDS tax or face a potentially crippling nationwide strike.
Isidore Zindoga, the ZCTU's acting secretary-general, said that the 3% AIDS levy announced by finance minister Herbert Murerwa in his budget for the year 2000 would "hit workers on low salaries hard" because it would be in addition to the average 15% taxation they already pay on monthly salaries often as low as the equivalent of US$100.