Survival Strategies of Retrenched/Redundant Employees in State Owned Companies in Africa: A Case of Former Mansa Batteries in Mansa District, Zambia

Job retrenchment has negative consequences for workers experiencing the process. Even though there has been a great deal of work on retrenchment in other sectors like mining and general business in Zambia, there is insufficient documentation from the affected ex-workers in terms of what they are still doing up to now, to survive. The study adopted a qualitative case study methodology to investigate the survival strategies that former Mansa Batteries employees have employed to sustain their livelihood economically since losing employment. The study employed semistructured in-depth interviews in which 35 retrenched Mansa Batteries workers in Luapula Provinces of Zambia were used. Further, the research uses focus group discussion, field observations and secondary data to examine the objectives of the study. The data was collected using snowball sampling for the former workers of Mansa Batteries; Community based organizations while key informants were selected using purposive sampling. The information collected was analysed using descriptive analysis with pie charts, bar charts, thematic and content analysis was also used. The research findings revealed that sudden redundancy of exMansa Batteries employees has resulted in serious negative socio-economic impacts that include psychological trauma, high poverty levels, social breakdowns, family distortions. The findings further revealed that ex-Mansa Batteries workers and their families have adopted different survival strategies to cope with socio-economic impact of job loss. From the social perspective the affected individuals found that support from spouses, children and extended family members was invaluable in process of coping. Others found it easy to cope with job loss by engaging in religious activity, seeking re-employment or retraining, whilst others developed negative coping strategies such as excessive beer drinking and drug abuse. On the positive side some of the affected individuals opted to use sports and other hobbies as ways to escape their predicament. Furthermore, the study revealed that these individuals developed ways to cope with the economic impact of job loss by aligning themselves with Ex-employees committee due to high sense of security and representation. Others have embarked in self-employment in various home-based and market businesses due to limited skills, while others are involved in farming and home gardening because of availability of land and governments offer of resettlement schemes for the affected individuals. In addition, the findings discovered that others have leased out their houses and other additional structures to tenants as they have become permanent owners of company houses while others have received help from churches, well-wishers, families and spouses. Furthermore, the research results show that others have joined village Banking (Silk), while others have been retrained and re-employed. This study concludes that that although the retrenched employees of former Mansa Batteries were not equipped with the skills to enable them face unforeseen social-economic challenges after retrenchment; they have developed important survival approaches. Thus, this study recommends that policy makers learn and integrates these survival strategies and employ them to who would be affected. Further, the Government through the Ministry of Labour to come up with deliberate policy that may spearhead skills and training to workers that should economically prepare them before they are retrenched.