Collective Bargaining Agreement-Zimbabwe National Water Authority Undertaking

This registered agreement is the employment code of conduct for the Zimbabwe National Water Authority. It covers all permanent, contract and casual employees in grades 8 to 15. Managerial employees are excluded and stay under the national code in SI 15 of 2006. It runs from the first day of the month after its registration and stands for five years before review.

Misconduct is sorted into four bands. Minor covers lateness, untidy dress, leaving early, extended tea breaks and horseplay. Moderate covers negligent damage, unsatisfactory work, absence of one to two days, sleeping on duty and running private business in work time. Serious covers wilful damage, absence of three to four days, refusing lawful instructions, malingering, safety breaches causing injury, and driving an Authority vehicle without a licence or authority. Gross covers theft, fraud, bribery, sabotage, embezzlement, sexual harassment, fighting, drinking or drugs on duty, and absence of five or more consecutive days.

Four gross offences are specific to this employer and worth knowing. Illegally connecting water or electricity for a customer, for your own use or for gain — including bypassing measuring devices — is gross misconduct. So is losing a firearm or ammunition in your charge, or failing to report a loss within two hours. So is any abuse of the Authority's ICT systems, including attempting to access accounts.

Social media is treated unusually broadly. Posting confidential information, defamatory or demeaning remarks about the Authority's shareholder, Board, management or any employee, crude or threatening posts about a director or manager, or simply "inappropriate work-related posts" are gross misconduct — expressly whether or not any damage was done to the Authority's reputation, whether or not the Authority is named in the post, and whether or not the post was made from Authority premises or on the employee's own device.

The code also imports a broad definition of violence and harassment, covering conduct in the workplace, during rest breaks, on work trips and training, through work-related communications, in employer-provided accommodation, and while commuting in employer transport.

On procedure, an employee can be summarily suspended with or without pay, but never for a Category A offence, and suspension without pay cannot exceed fourteen working days. Penalties run verbal warning, written warning, final written warning, dismissal — and none is mandatory. A first written warning is disregarded after six months and a final written warning after twelve, though both stay on file. Dismissal cannot be arbitrary, cannot rest solely on a pending criminal charge or police detention, and must follow the full procedure, with the employee allowed to mitigate before any penalty.

Appeals go to a Works Council Disciplinary Committee that must be evenly balanced between management and workers' committee representatives, then to the National Employment Council — where representations are due within five working days and a determination follows within fourteen — and then to the Labour Court.

The appendices setting out the penalty grid and the written warning form were not in the retrieved text, so the specific penalty attached to each individual offence cannot be stated here.