Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 22 July 2026
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
22 July 2026
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- NEHAWU Free State statement on the collapse of health institutions in the province
- 2026 National Employment Equity roadshows debuts in Kimberley and Polokwane this week
- South Africa-#ClassSolidarity!
- COSATU supports SACCAWU interdict of Pick n Pay retrenchment
- NEHAWU stands in solidarity with striking workers at Parktonian Hotel
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- At UN: UNI joins call for full recognition of migrant workers’ right to organize
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics #ClassWar
NEHAWU Free State statement on the collapse of health institutions in the province
Khauhelo Mnqibisa, NEHAWU Free State Provincial Secretary, July 22, 2026
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] the Free State is outraged by the continued collapse of health institutions in the Free State Province, which reflects nothing less than the provincial government’s gross negligence and contempt for the lives of workers and communities.
On 15 July 2026, the Department of Labour once again issued a prohibition notice against the Provincial Government Mortuary due to blatant non-compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act. This mortuary has become a repeat offender, having been closed in 2024 and late last year for violations of OHS regulations. The prohibition was lifted to give the employer a chance to comply, yet the Department of Health squandered that opportunity.
The failure to ensure a functional HVAC system which is essential for ventilation in the dissection area and the absence of water supply are not minor oversights. They are reckless acts that compromise workers’ safety and deny grieving families the dignity of timely burials. The department has allowed corpses to pile up, forcing limited operations in Botshabelo and
causing unnecessary delays for families. This is a disgrace. The mortuary is only the tip of the iceberg. The rot runs deep.
The Masilo Clinic in Theunissen has become a tragic symbol of the department’s failure in that, on the 10 June 2026, it was closed due to lack
of water. The prohibition was lifted on the 06th July 2026 and the clinic was closed again on the 17th July 2026 as a result of lack of water and no
electricity at all in a clinic and this is hardly after just two weeks of operation.
This clinic serves nearly a 30,000 population of both Masilo and Theunissen, who are now left without healthcare services since another
clinic in the Lusaka area was closed in 2024. The repeated closures show a government incapable of sustaining even the most basic services. The department of labour has officially closed PAX Clinic following the issuance of a prohibition notice due to serious OHS regulations none compliance and dilapidated facility.
The Meloding Clinic in Virginia has been closed as due to a severe water crisis and electricity that rendered the health facility unsafe and unsuitable for continued operation.
The rot extends further. The District Office in Welkom- Kopano CHC has been without electricity for almost five months now. The Department of Labour has now closed that facility due to non-compliance with OHS standards. This is a shocking indictment of a department that cannot even keep the lights on in its own offices.
The Medical Depot in Bloemfontein, other sections remain closed due to non-compliance with OHS standards, disrupting the supply of medicines
and equipment. These closures are not isolated incidents but part of a systemic collapse of health infrastructure in the province.
NEHAWU condemns the department of health for its repeated failures that has demonstrated a shocking disregard for the law, for workers’ safety,
and for the basic rights of communities. This is not incompetence alone, it is a betrayal of public trust.
The government’s inability to maintain even the most basic services like water, electricity, and ventilation systems exposes its lack of political will and accountability. It is unacceptable that in 2026, communities are denied healthcare because of government negligence and corruption.
We believe that this decisive action by the department of Labour was taken to safeguard workers, patients and the broader community from
unacceptable risks identified during inspections.
As NEHAWU, we demand the immediate restoration of services at the mortuary, Masilo Clinic, Lejweleputswa District office and the Medical Depot. Furthermore, an urgent compliance with OHS regulations across all
health facilities and a comprehensive, long-term plan to prevent repeated closures and ensure uninterrupted healthcare.
Failure to act will leave NEHAWU with no choice but to escalate matters. The union will take the Department of Health to task to ensure compliance in all health institutions. We will not allow workers and communities to suffer under a government that refuses to meet its obligations.
The state of health in the Free State Province is a ticking time bomb. NEHAWU warns the provincial government: enough is enough. The people
cannot continue to pay the price for your incompetence. Respect the law, respect the workers, and respect the communities or face the consequences.
END
Issued by NEHAWU Free State Provincial Secretariat
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2026
National Employment Equity roadshows debuts in Kimberley and Polokwane this week
20
July 2026
The
joint national employment equity roadshows/workshops by the Department of Employment and Labour, Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) and the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to deal with equity issues, ending workplace discrimination,
and enforcing the Employment Equity Act begins this week.
The first 2026 Employment Equity (EE) workshops/roadshows will be held on Tuesday (21 July 2026) in Kimberley, Northern Cape at Horseshoe Inn 101 Memorial Road, Royldene. The second workshop will be held on Thursday (23 July 2026) in Polokwane, Limpopo Province
at – Meropa Casino 59 Prov Roodepoort Street, Ivy Park X14.
Held under the theme: “Bridging the Equity Gap Through Diversity & Inclusion” – the national workshops will end in September 2026.
The 2026 workshops will focus on:
• Presentation on the Draft Amended Code of Good Practice on the preparation, implementation and monitoring of the EE Plan;
• Presentation on practical demonstration of how to utilise the EE System online facilities to capture EE Reports and request EE Certificate of Compliance;
• Presentation on sharing of all types of unfair discrimination cases by the CCMA; and
• Presentation on labour law amendments – Labour Relations Act (LRA), Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), Employment Equity Act (EEA), National Minimum Wage Act (NMWA)
This year’s national EE workshops/roadshows come a year following the implementation of the Employment Equity Amendment Act, No 4 of 2022 which came into force on 1 January 2025. The new amendments and regulations introduced the setting of five-year sector
EE targets, the enhancement of EE System, how to request EE Certificate of Compliance to be able to conduct business with the State.
The rest of the schedule of 2026 national workshops is as follows:
Mpumalanga
• Mbombela Khayalami Hotel 29 Van Wijk Street (28 July 2026)
North West
• Rustenburg – Orion Safari Hotel, 1 Donkerhoek Road (30 July 2026)
KwaZulu-Natal
• Durban (04 August 2026)
• Pietermaritzburg (06 August 2026)
Western Cape
• Cape Town (11 August 2026)
Eastern Cape
• KuGompo (18 August 2026)
• Gqeberha (20 August 2026)
Gauteng
• Pretoria (25 August 2026)
• Johannesburg (27 August 2026)
Free State
• Bloemfontein (01 September 2026)
The EE workshops are targeted at Employers or Heads of organisations, employees and trade unions, Assigned Senior EE Managers, Consultative EE forum members, Human Resource Managers and Practitioners, Academics, Civil society, and interested stakeholders.
NB: All the workshops will be held from 09:00 to 16:00 and members of the media are invited.
More information on the EE workshops, including updates on the venues to be used, will be available on department’s and the CCMA's social media platform as well as the Department’s website:
www.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 supports SACCAWU interdict of Pick n Pay retrenchment
Zanele Sabela, COSATU Spokesperson, 22 July 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) resolutely supports its affiliate, the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU), as it heads to the Labour Court today, to seek an urgent interdict to halt Pick n Pay's planned retrenchment of approximately 22 000 workers.
The matter will be heard virtually at 10am today, 22 July.
SACCAWU approached the Labour Court after it made every effort to engage Pick n Pay to stop the retrenchments. Despite commitments to engage meaningfully following the intervention by Minister of Employment and Labour, Nomakhosazana Meth, Pick n Pay insists on continuing with the retrenchments that will devastate the livelihoods of thousands of workers and their families.
From the start, SACCAWU made it clear that it would not allow the retailer to rollback workers conditions of employment won over decades of collective bargaining. The union remains steadfast in defending workers against attempts to erode guaranteed working hours, take away their 13th cheque, do away with Sunday premiums, withdraw transport for late-shift workers and cancel longstanding collective agreements.
COSATU believes the Labour Court application is necessary to protect workers' hard-won rights and uphold collective bargaining. Pick n Pay should not be allowed to use the threat of retrenchment to force workers to accept inferior conditions of employment. At a time when South Africa's unemployment rate is staggering at 43.7%, we cannot afford to send another 22 000 workers to the unemployment line.
COSATU stands 100% behind SACCAWU as it takes this battle to court. The Federation calls on Pick n Pay to engage SACCAWU in good faith and work towards a solution that safeguards jobs while addressing the company's operational challenges. Workers must not be made to sacrifice their livelihoods at the altar of restructuring the retailer.
Issued by COSATU
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NEHAWU stands in solidarity with striking workers at Parktonian Hotel
Zola Zaphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, July 22, 2026
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] stands in solidarity with striking workers at the Parktonian Hotel.
The strike comes after the issuing of a 48-hour notice of a protected strike action against Parktonian Hotel following the management's unilateral changes to employees' terms and conditions of employment. As NEHAWU, we fully support the decision by workers to withdraw their labour in defence of collective bargaining, improved and better working conditions.
The union supports the genuine demands by workers for improved working conditions. The union believes that the strike is a justifiable and reasonable against the background of scrapping of the long service award, the discontinuation of provident fund contributions, the non-payment of Safrican Funeral Insurance contributions, the failure to pay backdated salary adjustments due from February 2026, delays in salary payments, the unilateral change from a monthly salary structure to an hourly wage system, and the implementation of short-time working without consultation or agreement with workers.
The Parktonian Hotel Management has shown total disdain towards these workers, undermined collective bargaining and the rights of workers and this should be fought in all fronts by workers at the hotel. As NEHAWU, we call on the management of Parktonian Hotel to desist from undermining collective bargaining and rights of workers.
Lastly, we call on the management of Parktonian to immediately return to the negotiating table and engage workers in good faith to resolve the dispute. Equally, we call on the management of the hotel to respect collective bargaining and the rights of workers.
If the demands are not positively responded favourable to the interest of workers, the union will be left with no option but to take business elsewhere.
As NEHAWU, we stand in solidarity with workers at the Parktonian Hotel, in their struggle for the defence of collective bargaining and improved working conditions.
END
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.
International-Solidarity
At UN: UNI joins call for full recognition of migrant workers’ right to organize
21 July 2026
Migrant workers who try to form or join a union too often risk their jobs, their visas or their liberty for doing so. Four global union federations are now calling on the United Nations to change that, and to affirm that the right to organize belongs to every
worker, whatever their immigration status.
To make that case, UNI Global Union has joined Building and Woodworkers International (BWI), the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) and Public Services International (PSI) in a submission to the UN Human Rights Committee, endorsed by the International
Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network. The comments respond to the Committee’s Draft General Comment No. 38, which interprets article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the right to freedom of association.
The unions want the Committee to say two things clearly. First, that freedom of association applies to every migrant worker, whatever their immigration status. Second, that its interpretation should match the labour standards governments have already signed
up to at the International Labour Organization (ILO), specifically the conventions guaranteeing the right to organize and to bargain collectively (Conventions 87 and 98), along with the ILO’s conventions on migrant workers.
“Freedom of association means nothing if it disappears the moment a worker crosses a border,” said Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union. “Migrant workers must be able to organize and bargain collectively without fear that doing so will cost
them their job, their visa or their liberty. States cannot keep treating that as optional.”
The unions argue that the current draft focuses too narrowly on the right to join existing organizations, and is not explicit enough that migrant workers – including undocumented, domestic, informal, temporary and seasonal workers – must also be free to:
Engage fully in collective bargaining and exercise the right to strike;
Access effective grievance mechanisms without fear of retaliation;
Organize free from nationality-based restrictions, detention or deportation, including so-called workers’ committees that place migrants under the supervision of the state; and
Form and lead independent trade unions of their own choosing.
The submission highlights how visa sponsorship systems and employer-tied work permits leave migrant workers structurally dependent on employers, deterring them from organizing or raising grievances. It also calls for a strict firewall between labour law enforcement
and immigration enforcement, so that reporting workplace abuse does not put a worker’s immigration status at risk.
These are the same dynamics UNI documented earlier this year in its report Migrant Care Workers: Building Worker Power and Promoting Rights, which found that migrant care workers face high rates of pay dissatisfaction, discrimination and unsafe working conditions,
and that union organizing is central to improving both worker rights and the quality of care older persons and persons with disabilities receive. The General Comment offers a chance to anchor those protections in binding human rights law.
The UN Human Rights Committee is expected to finalize General Comment No. 38 following its review of submissions from unions, civil society and other stakeholders.
______________________________
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