Emerging Trends in Employment Relations: The Case of Essential Service Employees in the Botswana Public Sector
This paper is intended as an advocacy for a more pragmatic approach to employment relations particularly within the public sector. To do this, the paper uses the recent problems surrounding the issue of essential services in Botswana as a context. The paper acknowledges that such an exercise calls for an objective appreciation of the state as an employer, a prime mover in employment relations and the institution in control of both legislative authority and political power. The paper also recognises the apparently unfettered discretionary authority reposed in the upper echelons of the public bureaucracy not only to implement policies and laws but also to make rules and purport to apply such rules in a quasi-judicial manner. Furthermore, the paper also asserts that the impact of the actions of all these adjuncts of the state machinery on worker formations and their members including those employed in ”essential services” has not been mutually beneficial. The paper notes that, where the state appears to be weakening, the agencies created, including the coercive institutionalised structures, take over the functions of both the Executive and the Legislature.1 An undesirable consequence of the state being held captive by these agencies in the field would be the deleterious impact on several spheres of social interaction. These issues are discussed within the framework of labour law. To do this, the paper attempts to define the relationship between public service workers and the state as the employer. These issues are tested within the context of how “essential services” are determined. The paper concludes that the modalities by which workplace phenomena, such as “essential services” are prescribed will determine the sustainability of deliberative social partnering. In default, legislation and coercive authority will both be inefficient and ineffective simply because the legitimizing constituency will always be the final arbiter.
