Over the last few decades, the unions have been getting weaker in Mauritius, but in very different ways. The private sector unions have been disappearing as an economic force whereas the public sector unions have been able to retain some political clout. This is for a number of different reasons: First, the state is the largest employer in the country, so the sheer number of civil servants gives public sector unions some heft. Secondly, political hiring in the public sector has blurred the lines within public sector unions, meaning that no political party would go out of its way to offend the public unions since many of their members can turn out to be political appointees who would simply switch their political allegiance – a luxury that’s absent in the private sector. Thirdly, the Mauritian state has always cracked down on private unions but looked to coopt the public ones through a complex administrative, bureaucratic machinery that includes a tripartite negotiating system, parastatal nominations and the Pay Research Bureau system that guarantees a review of public sector salaries and wages every three to five years in return for the public unions keeping quiet.

And so the public sector unions continue to be tolerated because they seem to be interested exclusively in PRB reports, when there is a lot of frantic activity and manoeuvring, and then lying low the rest of the time. Both the politicians as well as the public unions seem to be quite comfortable with this entente cordiale. At times, they also seem to be mutually reinforcing.

Take the latest PRB report as an example. There was already one in 2016, but the MSM heading into an election wants to further tilt the scales in its favour by making civil servants happy through doling out the goodies in yet another PRB exercise. That, even though according to the prime minister himself, the next such exercise was supposed to be concluded by August 2020 and its recommendations to come into effect as from January 2021. Too late to use it for the election. But the government cannot simply decide to push forward the PRB without facing accusations that it’s using the PRB as an electoral ploy. But then up jumps the Federation of Public Sector and Other Unions demanding a new PRB as quickly as possible. The union, for its part, wants another PRB to show its members that it’s succeeding in extracting the maximum possible from the employer-state.

Here is where things get interesting: in March this year, the government decides to make Rashid Imrith, the head of the public sector union, a commander of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean. In return, the union simply plays along with the government. Lo and behold, this week, the prime minister announces that he has received a formal request from Imrith’s union to push ahead the implementation of the PRB from 2021 to between September and October this year. So it’s not the government that wants to use the PRB as an electoral bribe for civil servants, you see; it’s a reasonable gesture on the part of the employer-state in response to a union demand. The union gets what it wants (more money), the government gets what it wants (civil servants happy) and the opposition, no more willing to offend civil servants than the government is, instead asks whether civil servants retiring before the PRB is implemented will get that counted on their pension. So everyone wins, and what is more, everyone is willing to continue playing this game until the last rupee of somebody else’s (the taxpayer, of course) money.

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