Taking COSATU Today Forward, 2 May 2024 #ElijahBarayiBrigades
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #COSATU acknowledges workers and their families for coming in great number at May Day rallies in nine provinces #Back2Basics #ElijahBarayiBrigades #VoteANC #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
2 May 2024
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
Organize at every workplace and demand Personal Protective Equipment Now!
Defend Jobs Now!
Join COSATU NOW!
Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU Message of Support: World Day of Safety and Health: The Impact of Climate Change on Occupational Health and Safety at Work
- South Africa
- COSATU urges the IEC and SAPS to investigate allegations of mass signature forgeries by the MK Party
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Solidarity statement to the Brazilian public workers’ national strike
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
COSATU Message of Support: World Day of Safety and Health: The Impact of Climate Change on Occupational Health and Safety at Work
29 April 2024
Programme Director,
Leadership of government, labour and business present,
Most importantly, the workers who keep all of us safe,
Colleagues, comrades and friends,
Thank you for inviting COSATU to join you in this important occasion today. We value every opportunity to highlight the importance of ensuring that all workers are able to work in a safe environment.
The health and safety of workers and working-class communities is under severe strain as climate change gathers momentum. Not only must we accelerate interventions to mitigate the effects of climate change and arrest the causes, we must also intensify our efforts to protect the health and lives of workers.
COSATU and the trade union movement across the world have struggled for many years to protect the right of workers to work in a safe environment. Today that right is codified under the Occupational Health and Safety Act which provides clear guidelines to assert this right.
Yet all too often employers choose to ignore and undermine it with few being held accountable. We have all too often see owners of clothing factories lock workers up with many tragically dying in fires and unable to escape.
Each week at least one mine worker dies at work and one police officer is killed in the line of duty.
The Department of Employment and Labour worked with COSATU and business to strengthen the OHSA in 2016 at Nedlac. 8 years later, the Department has still to table this important legislative amendment at Parliament that will guarantee workers the right to refuse dangerous work.
This is despite COSATU repeatedly reminding the Department to table this Bill at Parliament. This needs to happen as soon as the 7th Administration takes office.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy tabled progressive amendments to the Mine Health and Safety Act at Nedlac in 2016.
Again 8 years later, we are waiting for government to simply press send on their laptop for that progressive Bill that will enhance safety at our mines to Parliament. Again, COSATU has had to repeatedly remind government to do its work.
Parliament overhauled our criminal legislation in 2021 to help tackle the scourge of gender-based violence and sexual harassment at the work place.
It is critical that the Department of Employment and Labour put in place mechanisms to ensure that all workplaces train their staff on their rights and responsibilities under these progressive laws, including the prohibition of hiring convicted sex offenders in positions of authority and requiring any persons aware of instances of gender-based violence taking place to report these to law enforcement and persons in authority.
Climate change is a real threat to workers, their families, communities and the economy. Its effects are being felt with the pollution in the coal belt of Mpumalanga’s towns and communities claiming the lives of thousands of workers annually.
We see it with increasing frequency during devastating floods across Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal claiming the lives of many and leaving a destruction of destroyed homes, business and infrastructure.
The residents of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay and the Karoo have seen it as regions experience dwindling supplies of drinkable water.
Rising temperatures, the planting water intensive types of non-indigenous crops and rampant cutting of trees for firewood have seen increasing tracts of land become inarable, unable to sustain agricultural production and in many areas succumbing to desertification.
Research has shown a rise in global temperatures by as little as 2 degrees will leave large areas no longer be able to produce the food we need for life and livelihoods.
The key causes of climate change result from the unsustainable behaviour of humanity and capital’s relentless thirst for profits at the expense of workers and society’s needs and the sustainability of the planet.
Last week Thursday, Parliament passed the Climate Change Bill. This is a long overdue intervention that provides a balanced approach for South Africa to manage the many crises of climate change and ensure the transitions which are taking place, will be just and protect workers, their jobs and communities.
It is a welcome assertion by government led by the African National Congress that we will move collectively as a nation, irrespective of our political diversity, to manage climate change and do so in a manner that takes all of society with and leaves no person or community behind.
Vladimir Lenin asked “What is to be done?”
The challenges facing society are immense and cannot be solved by government on its nor by employers or workers. They require all of us in the spirit of social compacts and solidarity to work together to overcome our common problems.
Government must strengthen and implement our laws, including the hiring of more health and safety and labour inspectors. They need to ramp up workplace inspections and work with unions during these. They must not go and have coffee with management.
Employers must abide by our progressive laws, train staff on workplace safety, ensure their full compliance, invest in the safety and training of staff, treat unions as partners in ensuring a safe workplace. This will boost safety and productivity.
We as Organised Labour must help train and conscientize our members and workers, engage management on problems and propose solutions, hold employers accountable and report those who risk the health and safety of workers and customers.
All of must work together to address the effects and tackle the causes of climate change. Industries must move towards less pollutive means of production. We as consumers must help keep our environment clean.
Government must public works programmes to formalize informal sector workers and assist them to establish SMMEs to recycle waste. Municipalities and all spheres of government must do more to invest in infrastructure.
What we cannot afford to do is to continue with business as usual. The failure to adapt and change our behaviour as societies will see climate change accelerate, the environment devastated, jobs and industries lost, migration intensify, workplace health and safety compromised.
It is in our power to change and to ensure that change is a Just Transition that takes workers, communities and businesses with and leaves none behind.
COSATU is a committed partner in this journey.
Thank you.
Matla!
COSATU urges the IEC and SAPS to investigate allegations of mass signature forgeries by the MK Party
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 29 April 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) urges the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and South African Police Service (SAPS) to urgently investigate deeply worrying allegations by members of the MK Party that they facilitated mass forgeries of signatures to meet the legal requirements to be on the May 29th ballot papers.
All political parties and now independent candidates have been legally required by the Electoral Act for many years to submit signed nomination forms for them to contest national, provincial and local government elections.
It is extremely disconcerting to read reports by senior officials of the MK Party that they actively facilitated the mass forgery of these required signatures. This is not a matter that we can take lightly or indulge. South Africa struggled for many decades to achieve a constitutional democracy. We have painstakingly nourished it over the past thirty years. Free, fair and credible elections are the foundation of democracy.
Many parties and candidates have been disqualified from contesting elections because they did not meet the signature threshold. It will be a grotesque violation of our laws if these allegations are true.
The IEC and the SAPS need to swiftly investigate these reports and if true, then they need to action the necessary sanctions against the culprits as per our criminal laws, and the affected party as required by the Electoral Act.
They need to take the nation into their confidence as a matter of urgency with elections due to take place in four weeks.
What we cannot accept is for criminals to make a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law any further. Its bad enough they were allowed to desecrate the Constitution and run amok with public resources for the better part of a decade.
It is time they were told where to get off and to be held accountable for their behaviour.
Issued by COSATU
International-Solidarity
Solidarity statement to the Brazilian public workers’ national strike
30 Apr 2024
The World Trade Union Federation (WFTU), representing over 105 million workers, present in 134 countries on 5 continents of the world, expresses its support and solidarity with the major nationwide strike of the Brazilian federal public servants.
The Brazilian people and workers expect and demand, after the recent electoral success that removed Bolsonaro’s far-right from power and gave victory and governance to Lula da Silva, that there be restoration and strengthening of workers’ rights and respect for the demands and claims of the just workers’ mobilizations
______________________________
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