10/06/2026
FEDERATION STATEMENT 📌
RETRENCHMENTS AT CHOPPIES EXPOSE THE MINIMUM WAGE PRETENCE AND
BETRAYAL OF WORKERS
10 June 2026. We write to express our solidarity with Choppies Botswana employees who currently face retrenchment. As the labour movement we not only find this as malicious, but an appalling betrayal of trust by the company. This presents a clandestine retrieval from the P4000. 00 minimum wage promise, hardly a year since it was launched. As we note, the firm officials are touring the country announcing their plans to lay off staff. Clearly, Choppies utilized the wage announcement as a public relations stunt to patronize the new regime instead of a genuine commitment to workers’ welfare. The firm also deceived workers and scammed members of the public by pretending to lead
government’s minimum wage urge.
During the launch, we criticked as we still do, the fundamental flaws of the cost-to-company
approach, where employees are paid in bags of food rather than in decent cash wages. Whereas this concept lacked any intellectual foundation, it is surprising that government assimilated the approach into the public service, where the minimum wage is paid in other means than real wages. For this course, Choppies Botswana and the government of Botswana are yet to bring the public into confidence on how a minimum wage may be applied partially in kind. To this duo, this absurdity is not even shameful.
We refuse the urge to believe that Choppies took liberty to lead the P4000.00 minimum wage
campaign without a year’s foresight of cost – benefit. This was merely a patronizing strategy by the firm to conceal its reputation for union busting, exploitation and precarious contracts which government fell for out of excitement. It does not come as a shock that a company of its magnitude does not have a single recognized union. We also observe this as a calculated move ahead of the commencement of the Employment and Labour Relations Act, to escape and circumvent its ends, as it demands greater employer accountability during retrenchments by employers.
BOFEPUSU demands decent work, based on entrenchment of rights at work, social security, more robust employment creation and enhanced social dialogue institutions in the public and private sectors. Our activism has never been premised on condoning rhetoric and hollow promises. We are mandated to continually stoke authorities out of their comfort zones and to demand greater accountability of the government towards its promises.
