Taking COSATU Today Forward, 1 June 2026 #YouthMonth
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY COSATU Call Center Contacts: 010 002 2590 #COSATU is participating at the #ILO International Labour Conference underway in Geneva #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
1 June 2026
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- SAMWU condemns Minister Godongwana’s reckless and insulting attack on Ditsobotla municipal workers
- South Africa
- NEHAWU congratulates the SACP and other organisations of the working class for a successful Conference of the Left
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- United States added to Watchlist as attacks on workers’ freedoms accelerate the erosion of democracy: ITUC Global Rights Index 2026
- Young workers find their voice at IndustriALL
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics #ClassWar
SAMWU condemns Minister Godongwana’s reckless and insulting attack on Ditsobotla municipal workers
Vincent Diphoko, SAMWU North West Provincial Secretary, 30 May 2026
The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) notes with disgust and outright condemnation the reckless, insulting and anti-worker remarks attributed to the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, during the handover of the Financial Recovery Plan at Ditsobotla Local Municipality in the North West, on 29 May 2026.
According to media reports, Minister Godongwana alleged that workers at Ditsobotla Local Municipality only work ten days a month and are often seen drinking alcohol in parks during working hours. These remarks are not only irresponsible, they are a direct attack on the dignity, integrity and livelihoods of municipal workers who continue to render services under some of the most difficult and unbearable working conditions in the municipality.
What makes the Minister’s remarks even more callous is that workers at Ditsobotla have themselves been victims of the municipality’s collapse. These are workers who have gone for months without receiving their salaries on time. These are workers whose third-party deductions, including medical aid and pension fund contributions, have not been paid over for months, placing their healthcare, retirement security and family wellbeing at risk. It is therefore deeply offensive for the Minister to stand on a public platform and attack workers who have already been subjected to financial hardship, uncertainty and indignity by the very municipality that employs them.
SAMWU rejects with contempt the attempt by the Minister to reduce the deep-rooted crisis at Ditsobotla to a lazy and dangerous stereotype about workers. Municipal workers did not collapse Ditsobotla. Municipal workers did not pass unfunded budgets. Municipal workers did not preside over years of political infighting, instability, poor governance, financial mismanagement and the destruction of basic systems of administration. Municipal workers did not create the crisis that has rendered the municipality unable to meet its obligations to communities and workers.
The crisis at Ditsobotla is a political, governance and administrative crisis. It is a crisis born out of instability in leadership, factional battles, poor oversight, lack of consequence management, and years of failure to build a capable local state. For the Minister of Finance to stand before the public and single out workers as though they are the principal cause of the municipality’s collapse is dishonest, opportunistic and unacceptable.
As SAMWU, we are not opposed to accountability. Where there are allegations of misconduct against any employee, the employer must follow proper processes in terms of the law, collective agreements and disciplinary procedures. Workers cannot be tried and convicted through public statements by politicians. If the Minister has evidence against any employee, that evidence must be handed to the municipality and processed lawfully. What we will not accept is the public vilification of all workers on the basis of untested allegations and hearsay.
Minister Godongwana’s remarks do not come as a surprise. This is the same Minister who, through National Treasury, wrote to the City of Johannesburg in an attempt to reverse the Politically Facilitated Agreement, an agreement concluded to correct long-standing wage disparities affecting municipal workers. This confirms what SAMWU has been saying, that National Treasury has increasingly positioned itself as an anti-worker institution that seeks to interfere in collective bargaining, undermine negotiated agreements and dictate to municipalities how workers must be treated.
As SAMWU, we are convinced that National Treasury is run by people who are hostile to workers and their gains. Treasury cannot continue to behave as though it is a bargaining party when it is not. It cannot sit outside bargaining structures, wait for workers and employers to conclude agreements, and then emerge through letters, circulars and financial recovery plans to undermine those agreements. We do not negotiate with National Treasury, and we will not allow National Treasury to impose itself as a shadow employer over municipal workers.
Minister Godongwana must understand that workers are not the enemy of service delivery. Workers are the backbone of service delivery. It is municipal workers who collect refuse, repair burst pipes, attend to electricity faults, maintain roads, operate water infrastructure, clean public spaces and serve residents at the coalface of local government. These workers often do so without adequate tools of trade, under unsafe conditions, with collapsing infrastructure, political interference and uncertainty about whether their salaries, medical aid contributions, pension contributions and other benefits will be honoured.
The Minister’s remarks are even more offensive coming from National Treasury, an institution that has consistently imposed austerity measures on municipalities while pretending that service delivery can be improved by weakening the very workers who deliver those services. Treasury cannot starve municipalities of resources, impose rigid financial recovery plans, interfere in collective bargaining, and then blame workers for the collapse of services. This anti-worker posture must be rejected.
SAMWU notes that the Minister’s remarks were made during the handover of the Financial Recovery Plan for Ditsobotla Local Municipality. As a Union, we will study the contents of that plan once it is made available to organised labour and workers. However, we state upfront that no recovery plan can succeed if it is built on scapegoating workers, cutting jobs, undermining collective agreements or reversing hard-won gains. A municipality cannot be rescued by declaring war on its workforce. Any genuine turnaround process must be rooted in stabilising governance, ensuring the consistent payment of salaries, immediately settling outstanding third-party deductions, filling critical funded vacancies, strengthening revenue collection, improving infrastructure, ending political interference, enforcing consequence management and meaningfully engaging organised labour.
Workers are not flat tyres to be changed at the convenience of politicians, as the Minister appears to have insinuated. They are human beings, breadwinners, parents and members of the very communities that Ditsobotla Municipality is meant to serve. SAMWU rejects any language that dehumanises workers and presents them as disposable objects to be discarded whenever politicians seek to escape accountability for their own failures.
SAMWU therefore calls on Minister Godongwana to publicly withdraw his reckless remarks and apologise to the workers of Ditsobotla Local Municipality. We further call on the Minister and National Treasury to stop using workers as scapegoats for failures created by political and administrative leadership.
We also call on Ditsobotla Local Municipality, the North West Provincial Government and National Treasury to engage SAMWU and organised labour meaningfully on the Financial Recovery Plan. Workers must not be spoken about in their absence. They must be part of the solution because they understand the municipality, its challenges and the practical interventions required to restore services to communities.
We will not allow any Minister, political party, administrator or Treasury official to use municipal workers as punching bags for failures they did not create. The road to rebuilding Ditsobotla does not lie in insulting workers. It lies in fixing governance, ending corruption, restoring stability, respecting collective bargaining, paying workers on time, settling statutory and third-party obligations, and placing workers and communities at the centre of the municipality’s recovery.
Issued by SAMWU North West Province
South Africa #ClassSolidarity
NEHAWU congratulates the SACP and other organisations of the working class for a successful Conference of the Left
Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, June 01, 2026
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] congratulates South African Communist Party [SACP] and other organisations of the working class for hosting a historic and successful Conference of the Left which ended yesterday 31st May 2026.
The conference was held under the theme "Building a Left Movement for Working-Class and Popular Power”.
Indeed, the conference was characterised by robust and frank discussions on how to rebuild the organised power of the working class and the poor. As NEHAWU, we are inspired by the qualitative outcomes of the conference as enshrined in the Declaration for Working-Class and Popular Power.
We proudly declare that the conference has indeed invigorated the Socialist-Axis to fight against imperialism and the barbaric system of capitalist exploitation and oppression. The Socialist-Axis emerges from the conference more determined and resolute to provide an alternative system to capitalism.
NEHAWU as a union that follows the line of a militant class-oriented trade union movement rooted in struggles of the working people of the world, we welcome the conference’s affirmation of progressive internationalism, radical Pan-Africanism and the struggle for peace as strategic principles of the Left.
We welcome the conference’s stand against war, militarism, occupation, sanctions, regime-change operations and imperialist aggression.
Furthermore, we welcome the solidarity expressed by the conference with the oppressed masses of the world, including the peoples of Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Western Sahara and the Sahel. The Conference expressed unwavering solidarity with Cuba and called for a South African Cuba Solidarity and Anti-Blockade Bill.
The conference was convened at a time when our National Democratic Revolution is at a point of derailment. Hence, as NEHAWU, we fully agree with the conference’s analysis that South Africa is in a deep structural crisis rooted in capitalism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, monopoly power, patriarchy, racism, austerity, unemployment, hunger, inequality, social violence, ecological destruction and the unfinished transformation of society after 1994. This, therefore requires the Socialist-Axis to provide strategic and tactical working class leadership to help the class to map the way out of this disconcerting socio-economic and political conjuncture.
We welcome the Conference declaration that the Left must move from critique to the construction of a credible alternative economic plan for South Africa. This plan must include fiscal policy, monetary policy, industrial policy, trade policy, public investment, ownership and control of strategic sectors, developmental finance, democratic planning, and the allocation of resources towards employment, production, public services and social ownership.
We also welcome the pronouncement for the nationalisation of the South African Reserve Bank and a fundamental review of its mandate, ownership, governance and accountability. Monetary policy must serve employment, industrialisation, developmental finance, public investment, transformation and the needs of the working class and poor.
As a health union, we fully support the declaration to defend a fully funded National Health Insurance system against private capitalist capture. NHI must not become a mechanism for funding the privatisation of healthcare or subsidising private providers at public expense. It must form part of the wider struggle for redistribution, public provision, equality, social rights and the decommodification of healthcare.
We welcome the adopted first-phase Programme of Action organised around eight clusters which include; Economic transformation, work and livelihoods, Cost of living, public services and social protection, Land, restitution, redistribution and local democratic economies, Public health, NHI and social reproduction, Social violence, community safety and working-class unity, Climate justice, energy sovereignty and the just transition, Internationalism, Pan-Africanism, peace and anti-imperialist solidarity and Review of the 1996 Constitution, state power and democratic transformation.
This conference must serve as a turning moment for the Socialist Axis to rebuild a powerful left movement for our class and popular power.
Lastly, our 13th National Congress on the 26 - 29 June 2026 will take an advantage of receiving a detailed report about the conference of the left for proper analysis so as to draw a deliberate role and program NEHAWU must play and develop in the practical implementation of critical core of the declaration as its responsibility of the political tasks, as part of the most organised contingent of the working class, for itself and the preparations of COSATU 15th National Congress scheduled in September 2026 and in a broader working class revolution.
END
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.
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International-Solidarity
United States added to Watchlist as attacks on workers’ freedoms accelerate the erosion of democracy: ITUC Global Rights Index 2026
1 June 2026
The United States placed on the Watchlist.
France downgraded from 2 to 3.
Argentina and Panama enter the 10 Worst Countries list for the first time.
Europe and the Americas record their worst average ratings since the Index began in 2014.
Half of all countries arrest or detain workers for exercising their union rights, with a sharp rise in violence worldwide.
Workers’ rights are deteriorating worldwide, with leading democracies now driving a deepening global crisis, according to the 2026 ITUC Global Rights Index. Europe and the Americas have both hit their worst average country ratings since the Index began in 2014, signalling that the crisis has become systemic.
Once considered stable, countries such as the United States and France are now contributing to a global surge in repression, exposing a systemic assault on democracy and labour rights. Argentina is now one of the worst countries in the world for working people, following a dramatic rating drop from 3 to 5 in just two years - one of the steepest declines ever recorded.
A record 72% of countries deny workers access to justice, while half have arrested or detained workers. Violence against workers is rising, with a 6% increase in attacks documented in 2026. Attacks on free speech and assembly have risen by 5% and are now reported in 50% of countries - also a record high. Civil liberties violations have increased by 3%, with trade union leaders increasingly targeted through arrests, persecution and, in some countries, killing.
Three structural trends are shaping the global crisis:
The targeting of prominent trade union leaders through arrests, violence and criminalisation.
The use of digital surveillance to monitor, discipline and silence workers and union organising.
Governments are sidelining unions, consulting them less frequently before introducing or amending labour laws.
Key findings include:
The United States has been placed on the Watchlist, amid mounting concerns over restrictions on collective bargaining and the use of force against workers.
France’s rating has deteriorated from 2 to 3, its lowest-ever score, reflecting a sustained decline in workers’ rights, including repression of trade unionists and restrictions on protests.
Argentina’s rating collapsed from 3 to 5 in just two years, one of the steepest declines ever recorded.
Three out of four countries deny workers the right to organise, with restrictions including union busting and interference in Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, and Spain.
Fifty per cent of countries arrested or detained workers, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Indonesia and Albania.
Violent attacks on workers increased by 6%, including in India, Palestine, Ukraine and South Africa. Workers suffered violence in 32% of countries, up from 26% in 2025. Israeli forces raided the offices of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Nablus. The rise of the far right in Europe has increasingly translated into hostility directed at trade unions and their members.
The 2026 10 worst countries for workers are Argentina, Belarus, Ecuador, Egypt, Eswatini, Myanmar, Nigeria, Panama, Tunisia, and Türkiye. Argentina and Panama are new entries on this list.
Three countries improved their ratings: Botswana and the United Kingdom from 4 to 3, and Uruguay from 2 to 1.
“The 2026 Global Rights Index shows that the crisis for workers’ rights is no longer confined to the margins - it is now at the heart of democracies. Governments are failing to protect working people, and in many cases are actively undermining them.” ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle
“This is the result of a coordinated attack on democracy – a billionaire coup, backed by political leaders, which is stripping away rights, silencing workers and rigging economies in favour of the powerful few.
“But workers and their unions are fighting back. The struggle for workers’ rights is the fight for democracy itself - for our rights, our safety, and our livelihoods. Without strong unions, there can be no real democracy.”
The United States is currently rated 4 - systematic violations of rights.
The ITUC Global Rights Index is the world’s only comprehensive database of workers’ rights, ranking 151 countries based on 97 indicators derived from ILO Conventions and jurisprudence. This is its 13th edition.
The rating system of the ITUC Global Rights Index:
5+ No guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law
5 No guarantee of rights
4 Systematic violations of rights
3 Regular violations of rights
2 Repeated violations of rights
1 Sporadic violations of rights
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Young workers find their voice at IndustriALL
29 May, 2026
IndustriALL Global Union held the first ever meeting of its global youth committee on 28 May 2026. The meeting brought together young worker representatives from different regions to elect their leadership and begin shaping the organization’s youth agenda.
The landmark meeting represents the culmination of years of work to give young workers a formal voice within IndustriALL structures. Faye Dagman from the Philippines was elected female co-chair for 2026-2027, with Tiara Amigorena from Argentina as her substitute. The two will switch roles for 2028-2029, when Tiara Amigorena takes over as co-chair and Faye Dagman becomes her substitute. Andrea Megazzini from Italy was elected male co-chair for the full 2026-2029 term, with Kelvin Ayemhenre from Nigeria as his substitute for the entire period. Isaac Vasquez from Nicaragua was elected secretary, with Lesedi Seboni from South Africa as his substitute.
Leadership: the time for youth is now
IndustriALL assistant general secretary, Christina Olivier, opened with a strong message of support, pointing to serious challenges facing young workers globally: high youth unemployment, particularly in the Global South, the spread of precarious work and short-term contracts and the rapid transformation of work through digitalization and automation.
“If we are unable to organize young workers, very soon we will talk about IndustriALL Global Union as an organization that existed a few years ago. That is why organizing young workers into our unions remains one of our key priorities,”
said Christina Olivier.
IndustriALL general secretary, Atle Høie, noted that youth work across all regions had made the breakthrough possible. “The Congress finally gave youth a formal place in this organization,” he said.
Two youth representatives will now sit permanently on the IndustriALL Executive Committee as official members, with the first meeting taking place on 11-12 June 2026 in Geneva.
“The whole point of trade unions is that we need to be representative. If we’re going to make the right decisions, we need to listen to all voices,”
said Atle Høie.
Regions report
Regions gave brief reports on their current work and future priorities.
Sub-Saharan Africa has had a youth committee since 2019 and is currently researching the impact of platform work on young workers in the mining and energy sectors.
The Middle East and North Africa are preparing for its first in-person meeting in Morocco, focusing on leadership development and youth participation, including amplifying the voices of workers in Palestine.
Latin America and the Caribbean held its founding meeting in Uruguay in April 2026, prioritizing new organizing strategies, mobilizing unionized workers and building capacity.
Europe has had a youth structure for several years, currently holding two non-voting seats on the IndustriALL Europe Executive Committee, with the goal of securing voting rights at the next Congress.
Asia Pacific recently merged two sub-regional working groups into a single regional youth committee, with a two-year transition period agreed to integrate the structures.
New co-chairs ready to act
Both Faye Dagman (PIGLAS, Philippines) and Tiara Amigorena (CNTI CTAA, Argentina) called for strong teamwork and expressed their commitment to securing better conditions for the next generation of workers.
What next?
The global youth committee will meet again on 9 July and 8 September 2026, with the primary task of reviewing and finalizing the IndustriALL draft youth policy for submission to the IndustriALL Executive Committee in November. The committee adopted its terms of reference, which sets out its working method. The global youth committee will meet in person every two years and at least once a year online.
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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