Collective Bargaining Agreement - Ferro-Alloy Industry in Zimbabwe

This registered collective bargaining agreement further amends the Ferro-Alloy Industry agreement published in S.I. 76 of 2017. It is an agreement between the Ferro-Alloy Industry Employers' Association and the National Union of Metal and Allied Industries in Zimbabwe, and its whole subject is child labour.

The interpretation section gains definitions of "child" (a young person under 18), "child labour", "worst forms of child labour", "hazardous work" and "light work", drawn from standard ILO language.

The operative rule is a new subsection (j) in section 22 of the principal agreement. No employer may employ anyone under 16 in any position, whether as an apprentice or otherwise. No one under 18 may be employed to do hazardous work, or to work in an undertaking at all except as an apprentice or in conjunction with training at a vocational or technical school.

The agreement then bars any person under 18 from work that would jeopardise or interfere with their education, work involving contact with a hazardous substance, article or process, underground or surface mining, work exposing them to electrically or fuel powered tools or cutting or grinding blades, work exposing them to excess heat, cold, noise or whole-body vibration, and any night shift.

A table of hazards specific to the industry is included as the list of work children may not do: confined spaces in the plant, moving trucks and machinery, manual offloading of overweight trucks and loaders at the weighbridge, oil spills, acid fumes, heat and cold, water ponds, snakes, material falling from trucks and conveyor belts, noise during tipping, loading and crushing, furnace eruptions, dust, and working at heights.

The agreement sets no fines of its own — enforcement runs through the Labour Act and the employment council. Note the timing gap: the parties signed at Kwekwe on 14 July 2022, but the agreement was only gazetted on 23 August 2024, and no commencement date is stated in the text.