Abstract
This article provides insights on tribulations of Lesotho textile industry workers and effectiveness-extent of national labor law in shielding labor rights. It is a qualitative and quantitative research premised on textile industrial areas of Thetsane and Railway Station area in Maseru city, Labor offices and workers/trade unions. It illuminates the prescriptions of the Labor Law in Lesotho pertaining to the textile industries and inquires whether such Labor Law is not nominally applied in protecting textile factory workers’ rights. It examines workers’ organizational capacity and bargaining, role of workers’ trade unions in addressing workers’ concerns and maintenance of labor law. Elucidation embraces efficacy of legal resolutions procedure followed whenever there are disputes between workers and management, reported by either the individual workers or workers’ trade unions/TUs. Outlook of the workers to examine their content concerning services rendered to them by labor offices forms part of this researched debated in-depth interviews. Dictates of the Law towards lowly esteemed workers and the extent to which their rights as workers in Lesotho are protected by the government mold chief innards. Findings reflect on benefits ought to be derived from this industrial sector but which are inconspicuous, thereby ensuing in destitution of workers whose majority are women with significant dependency ratios. Labor downsizing, layoffs, unfair dismissals, salary cuts and/or delayed labor earnings, toiling beyond normal working hours, chronic lung diseases from inhaled harmful chemicals, labor devalourization, vulnerability and others constitute quandary of Lesotho textile industry workers. The research question is, then, how far does the law work for them through pro-active and reactive (remedial) strategies for their emancipation, protection and recompense/welfare?
Highlights
This is a face-to-face in-depth interviews research study on the Lesotho’s Labour Law effectiveness in governing industrial relations of the textile industry local workers
Invited investors mostly come from countries villainous of bad labor practices which local exploited labor regard it to be the bad culture of such employers/foreign investors brought down from their countries
Workers even feel that replacing Chinese investors with a different group of investors from developed societies that value labor can result in improved working conditions and effective or truly working labor law
Summary
This is a face-to-face in-depth interviews research study on the Lesotho’s Labour Law effectiveness in governing industrial relations of the textile industry local workers. The gist is the degree of Lesotho’s labor law effectiveness in terms of its enforcement and protection over the masses of Lesotho textile industry workers. One’s assumption in this study is that laborers’ organizational capacity and effective participation at the ‘floor management level’ but inclusive of the policy formulation level are probably defunct in Lesotho, though textile industry is said to be the fastest growing sector largely possessed by infesting foreigners with a margin of more than 95%. Many authors state that women’s labor in many societies is undervalued monetarily and otherwise Could this be true as well for women working as textile industry workers in Lesotho especially within the existent labor law and their contracts? Women workers in these industries report that during such strikes their leaders just disappear and are found shot dead the day by the roadside (Lesotho’s Labour Law Effectiveness Interviews, January, 2014)
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