Taking COSATU Today Forward, 7 October 2026 #WDDW2026
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY COSATU Call Center Contacts: 010 002 2590 #COSATU acknowledges all workers who participated in the nationwide pickets, marches and demonstrations on the occasion of the #WorldDay4DecentWork #Organise or Starve “Building a Militant, Revolutionary Labour Movement and Strengthening Anti-Imperialist Working-Class Unity to Deepen Jobs and Advance Socialism” #WorkerControl #NationaActionAgainstCostOfLiving Campaign continues… #ClassWar #Cosatu40 #SACTU70 #ClassStruggle #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness |
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‘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
7 October 2026
Organize at every workplace and demand respect for labour rights Now!
Defend Jobs Now!
Join COSATU NOW!
Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU Western Cape welcomes unprecedented Competition Commission Action: Premier Group Must Answer
- South Africa
- COSATU Mpumalanga to join SACCAWU picket at Boxer, Nelspruit for Decent Work
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Sub-Saharan Africa: Can a young worker say no?
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics #ClassWar
Department of Employment and Labour through the UIF to host Employer Seminar in Bethlehem
06 October 2026
The Department of Employment and Labour, through its entity, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), will host an Employer Seminar in Bethlehem, Free State, aimed at empowering employers, businesses, organisational representatives and SMMEs with information on employment and labour programmes, compliance requirements and services available to stakeholders.
The Seminar, to be held in the Dihlabeng Local Municipality, seeks to provide employers and other relevant stakeholders with practical information to enhance their understanding on their obligations towards employees as well as the services and programmes offered by the Department and its entities.
The engagement will also provide a platform for stakeholders to raise workplace-related challenges, engage with Department officials and participate in open discussion on matters affecting employers and employees. It will further seek to strengthen collaboration with the stakeholder through on-going dialogue and information-sharing.
Key areas to be covered during the seminar include:
- UIF Compliance
- Labour Activation Programme (LAP)
- Public Employment Services (PES)
- Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA)
- Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES)
Members of the media are invited to attend and cover the event.
Details are as follows:
Date: Thursday, 08 October 2026
Registration: 08:30 – 09:00
Programme: 09:00 – 14:00
Venue: The Loft Guesthouse, Bethlehem
For media RSVP's, please contact: Tshegofatso Mogapi at 072 971 3314 / Tshegofat...@Labour.gov.za
For media inquiries, please contact:
Teboho Thejane
Departmental Spokesperson
082 697 0694/ teboho....@labour.gov.za
-ENDS-
Issued by: Department of Employment and Labour
South Africa #ClassSolidarity
COSATU Western Cape welcomes unprecedented Competition Commission Action: Premier Group Must Answer
Malvern De Bruyn, COSATU Western Cape Provincial Secretary, 7 October 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) warmly welcomes the Competition Commission's application to the Competition Tribunal for revocation of the conditional approval of the merger between Premier Group Limited and RFG Holdings Limited.
We commend the Commission for acting swiftly and decisively to defend the integrity of South Africa's regulatory system.
The application follows the Commission's completion of its investigation into Premier's decision to close its canning operation in Tulbagh, retrench its factory workers, and destroy the livelihoods of farmers, farm workers, other suppliers, dependent businesses, and the rural communities that have relied on this factory for their survival.
During the merger proceedings, Premier represented to the Competition Commission and the Competition Tribunal that it did not contemplate closing any manufacturing facilities. This was despite being asked directly by the Commission whether such a prospect was under consideration, and despite being asked by COSATU's affiliate, the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU), to commit formally to keeping those facilities open.
The Commission's investigation has now found that those representations were not true.
The Competition Commission is right to act. The Competition Act gives our regulators the power to revoke a merger approval where a transaction was approved on the basis of misleading or incomplete information.
Revocation is a major and rare milestone in South African competition policy. We now await the Tribunal's decision. Should the Tribunal agree to revoke the merger, we believe this scandal will be regarded in the same light as Steinhoff and similar corporate disasters. Company shareholders and investors should be asking serious questions.
The Commission has demonstrated that the merger-control process, when properly resourced and enforced, can be a genuine instrument of economic justice.
As COSATU, we remain committed to defending the workers of Tulbagh, Saron, Gouda, Wolseley, Ceres and Hermon and the surrounding communities who have depended on this canning factory for decades.
COSATU salutes our determined and quick-acting affiliate, SACTWU, which lodged the complaint that triggered this investigation.
For more than two decades, SACTWU has been at the leading edge of organised labour's engagement with mergers and acquisitions - identifying risks for workers and securing meaningful protections across nearly 100 transactions involving its members.
SACTWU has repeatedly demonstrated that by rigorously using the powers and tools of competition law, ordinary trade unionists can hold their own against high-flying corporate lawyers and powerful companies and achieve real justice.
We also salute our affiliate AFADWU, which sought an interdict in the Labour Court in an effort to prevent the loss of jobs at the Tulbagh factory.
Issued by COSATU.
Internationalism-Solidarity
Sub-Saharan Africa: Can a young worker say no?
6 October, 2026
Can a 22-year-old contract worker stop a dangerous job when production is behind, without fearing for their next contract? Young mining and energy workers
meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on 29 September said too often the answer is no, and set out what needs to change.
The global youth in mining and energy conference, organized by IndustriALL Global Union, brought young trade unionists together to agree priorities on decent work, health and safety, skills and ending gender-based violence and harassment.
Across every session, one theme kept returning: young workers are the least able to speak up, and the most likely to pay the price.
The reality test
Dr Vincent Kouamé, a medical doctor, put the question to participants directly. His scenario: a young contract worker on their third day, working beside a crusher in intense heat, with no check on their skills or protective equipment. They feel dizzy, but production
is behind. Their family depends on them.
Young workers aged 15 to 24 are 40 per cent more likely to suffer non-fatal accidents than workers over 25. But Kouamé said the problem is not youth. It is a system that puts newcomers in danger and leaves them afraid to refuse.
“A right that a worker is afraid to use is not an effective right,” he said.
He called for non-retaliation clauses, safe reporting channels and a 90-day passport for new workers, so no young worker carries out critical tasks unsupervised until they have shown they can do so safely.
“No young worker should gain experience at the cost of an injury.”
Insecure contracts, silent workers
Other speakers showed how insecure work takes away young workers’ voice.
IndustriALL mining and energy director Emmanuel Adjei Danso said fixed-term contracts and subcontracting have become “the new normal”, making it increasingly difficult to organize and bargain collectively along supply chains.
IndustriALL assistant general secretary Christina Olivier warned that apprenticeships too often become a source of cheap labour, with young people doing full jobs without training and with nothing waiting for them at the end.
“Success should be measured by how many secure, decent jobs are provided. The proof is in the pudding,” she said.
No safety net, no choice
For many young people, Dr Mbuso Moyo of the University of the Witwatersrand said, refusing dangerous work is simply not an option.
Africa has around 304 million working young people, but 90 per cent are in informal, unregulated jobs. Without social safety nets, unemployment is a luxury they cannot afford, so they accept dangerous, low-paid work just to survive.
Moyo described how multinational companies use labour brokers as a buffer, capturing the profits while young workers at the bottom carry the risk. In artisanal mining, young people are trapped in debt to middlemen. On digital platforms, workers can be cut off
by an algorithm with no right of appeal.
Even in formal mining, he said, management-controlled “yellow unions” can shut independent young voices out.
With Africa supplying much of the world’s critical minerals for the energy transition, he asked why so many of its young workers remain in poverty: “Why do we allow this to happen?”
When power cancels consent
In the afternoon, Amanda Odoi of Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies explained ILO Convention 190 (C190) on violence and harassment in the world of work.
Amanda Odoi SPeaks on C190 at youth inmining conference in Abidjan 29 september
She showed how power based on age, status and position can cancel out consent, leaving young workers and apprentices particularly exposed to sexual harassment. Fear of retaliation, stigma and self-doubt stop many from reporting.
Odoi called on unions to use C190 to negotiate protections in collective agreements, train representatives to support survivors and defend anyone who faces backlash for speaking out.
In group work, participants shared examples of sexual harassment in their workplaces and called for policies on gender-based violence and harassment in every workplace.
Breaking the silence
Young delegates did not hold back in the discussions.
They spoke openly about mental health and the stigma attached to it, noting that workers who use support services are often looked down upon. They called for mental health to be treated as a health and safety issue like any other.
Delegates said risk assessments exist on paper, but unions must make sure companies carry them out properly and that workers are involved. One delegate pointed out that black work uniforms worsen heat stress, a simple problem with a simple fix, if workers are
heard.
Participants also turned the spotlight on their own organizations. Unions are employers too, they said, and must lead by example. Odoi made the same point, urging unions to tackle masculinity culture within their own ranks to gain the moral authority to demand
change from employers.
Dr Kouamé speaks on Health and Safety at the youth in mining conference in Abidjan
Kouamé summed up what success would look like:
“The day the youngest worker in a team can stop work because of an obvious danger and management congratulates them instead of threatening them, we will have changed our safety culture.”
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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