Taking COSATU Today Forward, 11 June 2026 #CosatuNationalActionAgainstCostofLiving
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY COSATU Call Center Contacts: 010 002 2590 #COSATU mourns the passing on of Comrade James Mhlabane, Mpumalanga Prov. Educator/Organiser #HambaKahleComradeJames #COSATU set to launch the Cost of Living Campaign this month, on the 19th June… #NationaActionAgainstCostOfLiving #ILC2026 #ClassWar #Cosatu40 #SACTU70 #ClassStruggle “Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism” #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness |
Taking COSATU Today Forward
‘Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense’-Maoo
Our side of the story
11 June 2026
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- NEHAWU to convene its 13th National Congress
- South Africa
- SACP statement on the President’s address on migration
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
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Argentina’s UOM fights back against judicial intervention
WFTU Panel discussion titled “35 Hour Workweek: A Necessary, Mature, and Feasible Demand”.
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics #ClassWar
NEHAWU to convene its 13th National Congress
Lwazi Nkolonzi, NEHAWU National Spokesperson, June 08, 2026
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] will hold its 13th National Congress at the Birchwood Hotel & Conference Centre in Boksburg from the 26th to 29th of June 2026.
The congress is convened under the theme “Advance Workplace Organisation to Defend Collective Bargaining, Heighten Class Consciousness and Advance Internationalism".
The congress will serve as a critical platform to deliberate and develop concrete responses to key international, national political and socio-economic matters as well as organisational matters affecting our members and the working class in general.
The congress will receive addresses from the African National Congress [ANC], South African Communist Party [SACP], Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU], World Federation of Trade Unions [WFTU] and Trade Union International Public Service & Allied [TUI – PS&A].
The congress will be attended by more than 750 delegates drawn from all structures of the union and other fraternal organizations from South Africa and Internationally.
Members of the media are hereby invited to apply for accreditation to cover the 13th National Congress.
The following information should be included in the application: Full name, Media House, and contact details.
The deadline for accreditation applications is Friday 19th June 2026.
The application for accreditation should be sent to the following email: lwa...@nehawu.org.za
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat
For further information, please contact: Lwazi Nkolonzi (National Spokesperson) at 081 558 2335 or email: lwa...@nehawu.org.za
Visit NEHAWU website: www.nehawu.org.za
South Africa #ClassSolidarity
SACP statement on the President’s address on migration
Mbulelo Mandlana, SACP Head of Media, Communications and Information, 10 June 2026
The South African Communist Party (SACP) welcomes the address by President Cyril Ramaphosa on migration and illegal immigration, in which he acknowledged growing public concerns about border management, unemployment, pressure on public services, safety, informal trading, labour exploitation and the rule of law.
The President recognised that these concerns are real and deserve to be addressed, while also warning against xenophobia, racism, Afrophobia, vigilantism and lawlessness.
We also welcome the affirmation that immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the state, and the state alone. No group, organisation, political formation or individual has the right to stop people in the streets, demand identity documents, intimidate foreign nationals, or incite violence under the cover of “community concern”. Such conduct weakens the rule of law, endangers communities, and diverts attention from the real structural causes of poverty, unemployment and social insecurity.
The SACP also agrees that South Africa cannot tolerate illegal immigration, corruption in immigration systems, the sale of documents, the abuse of asylum and refugee processes, or the exploitation of undocumented workers by employers. A democratic state must know who enters the country, for what purpose, and under what legal conditions. The enforcement of immigration laws is not xenophobia. However, enforcement must always be constitutional, humane, lawful and directed by the state.
The emphasis on employers who exploit undocumented migrants by paying them below the minimum wage, forcing them to work longer hours, and using their vulnerable status to undermine labour rights is critical to the resolution of this crisis. This is a crucial class question. The problem is not simply the presence of migrant workers; it is the capitalist exploitation of vulnerable labour, whether South African or foreign. Employers who break immigration and labour laws must face serious penalties, including criminal prosecution where appropriate.
The Party therefore supports the announced labour inspections, workplace enforcement, border management reforms, anti-corruption measures and immigration law reforms to be implemented decisively, transparently and without selective targeting. The recruitment of labour inspectors must strengthen real enforcement in farms, factories, construction sites, hospitality, logistics, domestic work, retail, informal trading and all sectors where vulnerable workers are exploited. However, the SACP cautions against reducing the migration question to a narrow security problem.
The President correctly stated that illegal immigration is not the cause of all South Africa’s economic challenges. The deeper roots of the crisis lie in unemployment, poverty, inequality, uneven development, deindustrialisation, weak local production, poor spatial planning, criminality, corruption and the continued domination of the economy by monopoly capital. The SACP therefore insists that the migration question must be located within a broader programme of social and economic transformation. South Africa needs jobs, industrial expansion, public employment, land and agrarian transformation, township and village economic development, co-operative ownership, food production, community-owned stores, local manufacturing, and stronger public services. Without such a programme, the anger of poor communities will continue to be misdirected towards other poor and vulnerable people.
The state must act against illegal trading, counterfeit goods, health and safety violations and criminal networks, but it must also support the people to own and control economic activity in their own communities. Many South Africans feel excluded from economic opportunities in their own communities. But the answer is not xenophobic mobilisation. The answer is to build democratic, community-owned and worker-controlled alternatives: consumer co-operatives, buying clubs, co-operative banking, local procurement systems, community-owned retail outlets, and support for local producers and informal traders.
South African workers and migrant workers must not be turned against each other. The real enemy is the employer who exploits undocumented labour, the corrupt official who sells documents, the criminal syndicate that profits from desperation, and the capitalist system that produces unemployment and poverty. Immigration laws must be enforced by authorised state institutions, not by mobs, vigilante groups or opportunistic political actors. The anger of communities must be answered through jobs, services, safety, local enterprise development and people-owned economic institutions.
Migration pressures are linked to war, poverty, underdevelopment, imperialist extraction, climate stress and uneven development. South Africa must work with SADC, the African Union and neighbouring countries to address the causes of forced migration. The SACP further calls on government to ensure that the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration works with organised labour, progressive civil society, community organisations and legitimate local structures. Migration management cannot be left only to security institutions. It must include labour, trade and industry, small business development, social development, international relations, policing, local government, health, education and community safety. The Party will continue to oppose xenophobia and Afrophobia wherever they appear. We will equally oppose the liberal denial of real problems faced by working-class communities.
The correct position is neither silence nor hatred. It is a principled, working-class, constitutional and socialist approach: defend the rule of law, protect all workers, punish exploitative employers, rebuild state capacity, support community-owned economic development, and strengthen African solidarity. The SACP calls on all South Africans to reject fear, anger and hatred as instruments of politics. The migration question must not be used to divide the working class. It must be addressed through unity, discipline, solidarity and a programme of transformation that gives communities real power over the conditions of their lives.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY,
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Media, Communications & Information Department | MCID
International-Solidarity
Argentina’s UOM fights back against judicial intervention
10 June, 2026
The National Labour Appeals Court of the Argentine Republic has ordered a judicial intervention in the UOM metalworkers' union. IndustriALL Global Union expresses its deep concern and its
total condemnation of this decision.
Víctor Pesino and María Dora González, the same labour court judges who endorsed the labour reform introduced by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, issued a ruling against IndustriALL affiliate UOM on 22 May. The judges declared the election held at the Zárate-Campana
branch to be invalid, annulled the national re-election of the general secretary, Abel Furlán, and ordered a 180-day period of intervention.
“This judicial intervention did not happen overnight. It is the culmination of a political, judicial and corporate operation that we have been denouncing for months and that has always had a sole objective: to bring the UOM to heel, weaken our ability to fight
for our rights, ensure that employers are able to pay starvation wages and that workers are unable to organize,”
UOM said in an official statement.
The court ruling came as UOM was engaged in collective bargaining with the sector’s main employers to defend metalworkers’ wages. Workers have suffered two years of falling pay.
UOM has vowed to fight back against this attack and will defeat
“this attempt at political intervention disguised as a court ruling. (…) We will respond with trade union democracy, participation, organization and struggle. We will overturn this intervention just as the Argentine labour movement has overturned every historical
attempt to subjugate it.”
On 26 May, UOM’s executive board rejected the intervention. The union has launched a process to restore statutory compliance and declared a state of alert and mobilization. In line with its statutes, the union appointed officials to ensure normal operations
pending full normalization.
On 26 May, unions, including IndustriALL affiliates, staged a “hug-in” in front of UOM headquarters. The action was a direct protest against the court ruling that removed Furlán and placed the union under judicial intervention.
In a letter to Furlán, IndustriALL’s general secretary Atle Høie expressed his solidarity with Argentina’s workers. It condemned the court’s decision and urged authorities to ensure full respect for union freedom and to comply with international conventions.
“This decision constitutes serious interference in trade union autonomy and sets a dangerous precedent for trade union freedom and democracy in Argentina.
“IndustriALL notes with concern that the use of legal proceedings to oust legitimately elected trade union leaders constitutes a way of cracking down on organizations that defend wages, collective bargaining, domestic production and labour rights. We express
our full solidarity with Argentina’s metalworkers, with our colleague Abel Furlán, and with the legitimately elected leadership of the UOMRA.”
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WFTU Panel discussion titled “35 Hour Workweek: A Necessary, Mature, and Feasible Demand”.
10 June 2026
The WFTU held a Panel Discussion under the title “35 Hour Workweek: A Necessary, Mature, and Feasible Demand” on June 9th, 2026 in Geneva, as the second side-event in the framework of the 114th International Labour Conference.
The Panel Discussion kicked off with the introductory interventions of three keynote speakers: Pambis Kyritsis, WFTU General Secretary; Estaban Munoz, Information Technology Engineer on behalf of IWI; and Isido Esnaolaz, economist.
The discussion focused on the firm, timely, and just demand for a 35-hour work week with no wage reduction and with improved security, social rights, and working conditions.
All the participants who took the floor underlined that 35-hour work week is a realistic demand that corresponds to the growth of productivity and technological development, while at the same time being a necessary condition for the reproduction of labour power and the satisfaction of the contemporary needs of the peoples and today’s working-class families.
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Norman Mampane (Shopsteward Editor)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Street, Braamfontein, 2017
P.O.Box 1019, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa
Tel: +27 11 339-4911 Direct line: 010 219-1348