Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 16 May 2024
Norman Mampane
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Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin
‘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
16 May 2024
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU celebrates Parliament's historic passage of the Pension Funds Amendment Bill (Two Pot Pension Reforms)
- South Africa
- COSATU welcomes Parliament's passage of the BELA Bill
- COSATU welcomes Parliament's passage of the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill
- COSATU welcomes Parliament's adoption of the long awaited Public Procurement Bill
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- ITUC statement: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia 2024
- ILO Training on "Reporting Obligations on Ratified ILO Conventions"
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
COSATU celebrates Parliament's historic passage of the Pension Funds Amendment Bill (Two Pot Pension Reforms)
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 16 May 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) celebrates Parliament’s historic passage of the Pension Funds Amendment (PFA) Bill, one of two critical amendment bills that will enable the long sought Two Pot Pension Reforms to take place on 1 September 2024. The PFA Bill which was amended by the NCOP, will now go to the President, Cyril Ramaphosa for assent.
The other Bill, the Revenue Laws Amendment Bill, has already been adopted by both Houses of Parliament.
COSATU has been engaging on the Two Pot Pension Reforms with Treasury and Parliament since May 2020. We are pleased that whilst we may not have achieved everything we proposed, that not only have we reached consensus on the key matters but legislation providing for the reforms has been adopted by Parliament and there is agreement between government, Parliament, COSATU and the pension funds for implementation on 1 September 2024.
We welcome the continuous support we have received from Members of Parliament, in particular from the African National Congress and the Chairpersons of the Parliamentary Committees on Finance, Joe Maswangayi and Yunus Carrim as well as the Minister and Deputy Minister for Finance, Enoch Godongwana and David Masondo. Without a doubt, workers have an firm and reliable ally in the ANC.
Workers are highly indebted due to slow economic growth, the rising costs of living and having to support relatives in an economy battling a 41% unemployment rate. The current pension laws are excessively inflexible only allowing workers access to their pension funds upon retirement, losing their job or resignation. Consequently, many workers opt to resign to cash out their entire pension funds leaving them unemployed and with no savings left.
The Two Pot Reforms provide a progressive compromise and fair balance where workers will have access to a portion of their pension funds whilst remaining employed. This will allow workers to access 10% up to R30 000 of their existing savings when the law comes into effect on 1 September 2024 and from then on once a year, access to a third of future savings.
Workers will retain access to existing savings. These will enable workers to remain employed, receive the equivalent of a thirteenth cheque on 1 September and once a year going forward and have more savings when they retire.
COSATU welcomes amendments made to the Bill by Parliament to ensure the Government Employees, Transnet, Post and Telecommunications Pension Funds are included in the Two Pot Reforms and their members as well as other important amendments dealing with divorce and separation of assets. These were critical to ensure all workers are included in the Two Pot Reforms.
What is critical now is for Parliament to ensure the President receives the Bills as a matter of priority enabling him to assent to them shortly. This will then allow Treasury to promulgate, SARS to adjust its tax systems and the pension funds to amend their rules and put in place the necessary education and administrative measures for workers seeking this relief.
We are confident we are on track and all deadlines will be met to ensure implementation on 1 September 2024. Workers have been waiting for this relief since 2020. We will not disappoint them.
Issued by COSATU
COSATU welcomes Parliament's passage of the BELA Bill
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 16 May 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes Parliament’s passage of the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill. The BELA Bill contains many common sense and progressive provisions that will help to protect the rights of learners to dignity and protection. It is a tragedy that in the course of the public debate some have chosen to deliberately distort some of its provisions and others have simply decided to fabricate things which are actually not in the Bill.
The BELA Bill contains several progressive and some long overdue provisions, including:
- Establishing Grade R as a required part of schooling for all learners. This will help lay a stronger foundation for learners entering Grade 1.
- Strengthening provisions requiring learners to attend school and holding parents accountable for their children’s attendance.
- Clear guidelines for school admission and diversity and inclusivity policies to prevent unfair discrimination and exclusion of learners.
- Clear guidelines as well checks and balances for school language of instruction policies to ensure that learners’ needs, diversity and all South Africans’ linguistic rights are accommodated.
- Recognition of South African Sign Language as a language of instruction and learning.
- Strengthening rules prohibiting drugs, alcohol and weapons from schools and empowering schools to search for and confiscate such items as needed.
- Banning corporal punishment and initiation practices from schools.
- Centralised procurement of key materials, e.g. textbooks, which can help save costs and reduce corruption.
- Making it easier for single parents to register their children at school when their ex-partners are absent.
- Measures to ensure financial accountability and prohibit officials from doing business with schools.
Whilst welcoming these progressive provisions, COSATU believes several provisions in the Bill that need to be reviewed by the 7th Parliament.
COSATU remains concerned about the Bill’s provisions allowing alcohol to be sold on school premises for fundraising. Whilst there is a place for the responsible consumption of liquor in society, school is not that place. South Africa has a serious problem with the over consumption and abuse of alcohol. The high rates of road accidents and fatalities, domestic and gender-based violence, and Foetal Alcohol Syndrome are evidence of society’s dangerously unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
Young people are particularly susceptible to alcohol and binge drinking. As part of tackling alcohol abuse, the 7th Parliament must reconsider the provisions allowing alcohol sales at schools.
The Federation remains concerned about the Department of Basic Education’s over reliance on learner numbers as the criteria for closing or merging schools. This places learners in farming and remote rural areas who live far from schools at a serious disadvantage. Additional criteria need to be included, in particular the distance learners must travel to school and the availability of learner transport.
COSATU urges the 7th Parliament to be bold and extend the compulsory school years from Grade 9 to 12.
An unaffordably high number of learners exit schools at age 15 or Grade 9 as currently allowed. This is sending an army of youth into the economy without the necessary education, skills and qualifications needed to find work and to take care of the families. Learners should be required to remain in school until completing Grade 12 or in a TVET or vocational college. If we are to ensure young people can find work, grow the economy and create jobs, then we need to increase, not decrease the number of learners in schools and colleges.
Issued by COSATU
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COSATU
welcomes Parliament's passage of the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 16 May 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes Parliament’s passage of the General Intelligence Laws Amendment (GILA) Bill.
Intelligence and security services are part of any modern state, what is critical is to ensure there are sufficient checks and balances, transparency and oversight mechanism in place in law to prevent the all too often abuse of such agencies.
South Africa saw the real costs of such shenanigans during the decade of state capture when the State Security Agency and other intelligences organs were wantonly abused for personal, criminal, factional and political purposes.
The Bill provides a welcome response to these recent abuses and more specifically to the High-Level Panel appointed by the President and led by Dr. Sydney Mufamadi that made clear recommendations on overhauling the existing and clearly weak legislation providing oversight on the security and intelligence services.
Many parts of the Bill that are straight forward, e.g. establishing a National Intelligence Academy and separating domestic and foreign intelligence services and should thus be supported.
COSATU was deeply worried by several highly offensive clauses that were clearly unconstitutional in the initial draft of the Bill released in 2023. We are pleased that following objections from the Federation and others, the State Security Agency removed many of these deeply problematic clauses.
We welcome further critical and progressive amendments and improvements made to the Bill during the extensive Parliamentary hearings, including tightening definitions of threats to national and state security, judicial checks and balances for bulk monitoring of communications, clauses prohibiting any illegal instructions or acts by members of the security services as well as the separation of the budgets for the Office of the Inspector-General for Intelligence and the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee from that of the State Security Agency.
Whilst COSATU welcomes these positive amendments to the Bill, we believe the powers of the Inspector-General for Intelligence are prone to being undermined or ignored by the state intelligence organs it is constitutionally obliged to monitor. It is critical the 7th Parliament further strengthen the Act to ensure the findings of the Inspector-General are binding upon state intelligence organs it is constitutionally bound to monitor.
This is critical as part of government’s efforts to ensure the state’s security and intelligence agencies perform their constitutional mandates and are held accountable.
Issued by COSATU
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COSATU welcomes Parliament's adoption of the long awaited Public Procurement Bill
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 16 May 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the Parliament’s adoption of the long-awaited Public Procurement Bill. This critical Bill lays the foundation for a single public procurement system across the entire state, e.g. departments, municipalities, entities and State-Owned Enterprises.
Currently there is not a single public procurement legislative framework and consequently the situation in many state institutions is open to abuse and corruption.
The existing legislative gaps were brought to a fore in 2022 when the Constitutional Court declared that Treasury lacked the legislative powers to set local content and Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment public procurement criteria.
The Zondo Commission heard countless evidence of how our leaky public procurement systems enable widespread corruption and wasteful expenditure.
COSATU engaged extensively with Treasury and Organised Business on the Bill at Nedlac and in Parliament. We reached consensus on the majority of the Bill’s provisions. We welcome the Bill’s:
- Establishing a single public procurement framework for the entire state. This will enable common standards to be established across often-fragmented government institutions.
- Requiring public procurement processes take into account and support local content and BBBEE. This is key to supporting and creating local jobs and transforming our still racially skewed economy.
- Establishing a single online site where all tender information will be available to the public. This will shine a massive spotlight on the murky world of tenders and help expose and discourage corruption.
- Enabling the centralised procurement of certain key items to help the state save badly needed revenue.
- Empowering the Chief Procurement Office in Treasury to intervene and halt public procurement that falls foul of the law. This will be a powerful tool to tackle often openly corrupt tenders.
We are pleased with the National Council of Provinces’ amendments to the Bill strengthening its anti-corruption provisions as well as:
- Requiring the public disclosure and recording of any relatives of politically influential persons who receive tenders as a way of preventing the abuse of public procurement by persons in senior office.
- Elevating local content into a requirement for public procurement. This is key to protecting and growing local industries and badly needed jobs.
We remain concerned that the Bill is not sufficiently binding upon local government where many municipalities struggle with procurement corruption.
We, however welcome the agreement with Parliament that this is a foundation Bill, and that government must revert back to Nedlac and Parliament within 24 months with regulations and a supplementary Bill to further strengthen and enhance the Bill’s provisions.
We look forward to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assenting to this progressive Bill. It will play a key role in tackling corruption and supporting local procurement and jobs. This is a massive step forward by the African National Congress led government to cleanse and renew the state and spur the economy.
Issued by COSATU
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COSATU notes the National Council of Provinces' adoption of the National Water Resources Infrastructure Agency SOC Limited Bill
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 16 May 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) notes the National Council’s adoption of the National Water Resources Infrastructure Agency SOC Limited Bill.
South Africa is a water scarce country. Water is the lifeline for the entire nation. It is critical it be managed effectively and efficiently and the constitutional right to water is upheld. We are concerned about the condition of our water infrastructure, the large amounts of water lost to leaks and the backlog in infrastructure investments. We need to equally change how we consume water as households, industries, agriculture and mining. A shift towards conservation and recycling is long overdue.
The Bill provides for a single national government institution to manage our water infrastructure and resources. This is important to help ensure a coordinated approach to this matter.
COSATU remains concerned by this single national government organ being a public entity and not located within the public service, in particular the Department of Water and Sanitation. The Federation is opposed to the creating agencies when we should be strengthening the public service. Issues that undermine service delivery within the public service, e.g. vacancies, budget cuts, mismanagement, unreliable internet connection, dilapidated public works properties, corruption etc. must be dealt with.
Creating an entity or agency fragments the state, duplicates mandates, creates additional layers of management and weakens executive authority. Workers are opposed to the agencification of the state as these entities fall outside of the state’s collective bargaining processes and important undermine collective bargaining processes.
The Presidency and National Treasury have understood COSATU’s concerns about creating these agencies. The Minister of Finance disclosed to Parliament recently that there are now 5303 entities and agencies within the state.
The Federation will be engaging government on a framework to ensure public service regulations and conditions of services as well as collective bargaining processes are extended to include its entities and agencies and a roadmap to ensure their integration into the public service framework is set.
Issued by COSATU
International-Solidarity
ITUC statement: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia 2024UT Brazil
16 May 2024
The global trade union movement pledges to fight back against the anti-democratic forces working against gender equality, sexual and reproductive rights, and LGBTQI+ rights.
This 17 May, to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), trade unions pledge to organise, advocate and educate to counter the far-right, misogynist and anti-LGBTQI+ backlash at work, in society and globally.
ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle said: “Amidst rising global challenges characterised by anti-democratic, socially divisive narratives that are being backed by a well-funded, well-coordinated, far-right movement, the ITUC and trade unions must push back. As the world’s biggest social movement built on values of democracy, equality and solidarity, we must mobilise our collective strength in defence of hard-won advances in LGBTQI+ rights.”
To counteract anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric, the ITUC advocates for:
A robust, inclusive and feminist trade union movement.
Strengthened representation and leadership of LGBTQI+ workers within trade unions.
Global strategies against the backlash on the very rights that enable inclusive societies and participatory democracies.
Luc Triangle concluded: "This means organising at every level, as set out in the For Democracy campaign: in the workplace, in society and globally. The same populist forces undermining democracies and workers’ rights are fuelling misogynistic, anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQI+ ideas. Our commitment on IDAHOBIT is more than symbolic; it is a call to action against the forces that seek to divide us and thus dismantle democracy and equality. An injury to one is indeed an injury to all."
The Council of Global Unions have released this statement to mark 17 May – IDAHOBIT: No comrade left behind.
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ILO Training on "Reporting Obligations on Ratified ILO Conventions"
10 May 2024
Public institutions and workers' and employers' organizations were informed about the obligation to report to the ILO supervisory bodies of the member states.
Representatives from organizations participated at meeting on "Reporting Obligations on Ratified ILO Conventions"
ANKARA - The International Labour Organization (ILO) Office for Türkiye organized a training on "Reporting Obligations on Ratified ILO Conventions."
With the training held in Ankara from May 7 to May 9, 2024, under the "Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work Project" of the ILO, public institutions along with worker and employer organizations were informed about the obligation to report to the ILO supervisory bodies of the member states. Representatives from relevant departments of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of National Education, Ministry of Family and Social Services, Human Rights and Equality Institution of Türkiye, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, TİSK, TÜRK-İŞ, HAK-İŞ, DİSK, MEMUR-SEN, KAMU-SEN, and KESK attended the training. Additionally, Program Managers Chiara Piazza and Mehmet Caner Demir from the European Union Delegation to Türkiye, which funds the project, also participated in the event.
The program, which began with opening speeches by Yasser Hassan, Director of the ILO Office for Türkiye, and Oğuz Tuncay, Director-General of the European Union and External Relations of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, continued with presentations by Oksana Wolfson, Coordinator of the ILO Freedom of Association Unit, and Irini Proios Torras, Legal Specialist, providing information about the program. The first session provided information about International Labour Standards and Fundamental Labour Principles and Rights, while presentations on child labour, forced labour, and occupational health and safety were conducted by ILO Legal Specialists Rima Moussaoui and M. V. Cabrera Ormaza, and Legal and Labour Law Specialist Xaaofan Liu.
Reporting Obligations on Ratified ILO Conventions
The training continued with an examination of fundamental conventions on the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, equal remuneration, and discrimination. The aim of the training was to strengthen the capacity of both public institutions and worker and employer organizations to prepare and submit reports to the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) regarding the implementation of ILO conventions ratified by Türkiye. Participants were extensively informed about the legal framework of member states' obligation to report to the ILO supervisory bodies and the functioning of the ILO supervisory mechanism and effective reporting practices.
At the end of the training, participants conducted group work on reports expected from Türkiye to the CEACR regarding ILO Conventions No. 98 and No. 111.
Participants expressed that they gained significant insights from the interactive design of the training, highlighting the mutual benefits achieved through knowledge exchange and effective communication.
Reporting Obligations on Ratified ILO Conventions
About the Project
Supported by the European Union Delegation to Türkiye and officially named the "Strengthening Social Partners and Civil Society Capacities on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work" the project aims to contribute to strengthening the fundamental labour principles and rights specified in ILO's Fundamental Conventions in Türkiye and enhancing the capacities of the government, worker and employer organizations, and CSOs. In this context, the project outlines the recognition of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour, effective eradication of child labour, elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation, and the establishment of a safe and healthy working environment as the headings covered by ILO Fundamental Conventions.
Activities under the project include understanding the advocacy capacities of the target audience for fundamental labour rights through a needs analysis study, preparing thematic research reports, establishing an electronic library on fundamental labour rights, organizing training sessions and workshops for target groups, and providing micro-grants.
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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