Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 2 May 2024 #ElijahBarayiBrigades
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #COSATU acknowledges workers and their families for coming in great numbers 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 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
2 May 2024
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- NEHAWU Statement on International Workers’ Day
- SADTU Statement on International Workers’ Day, 1 May
- COSATU General Secretary Solly Phetoe – Address SATAWU National Policy Conference
- South Africa
- Nedlac Social Partners call on employers to enable workers to vote
- The DA's pledge to scrap the National Minimum Wage is a brutal reminder that it cannot be trusted with the lives of workers
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Solidarity statement to the Brazilian public workers’ national strike
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
NEHAWU Statement on International Workers’ Day
Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary,1 April, 2024
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] conveys its militant salute to workers across the World on the occasion of International Workers’ Day.
As NEHAWU, we pay homage and honour the great struggle of workers in Chicago in May 1886, who fought and achieved the establishment of the 8-hour working day.
We join our militant, class-orientated international federation of trade unions, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and its sectoral Trade Union International of Public Service and Allied (TUI PS&A) in saluting all workers of the world who continues to wage a relentless struggle against the barbaric and exploitative system of capitalism. Hence, we join this world clarion call: “Against their Profit, We Rise Up for Our Lives”.
Indeed, the WFTU slogan for this year's International Workers’ Day is a clarion call to galvanise workers in order to venture into a real revolution against capitalist exploitation, all in the name of profit maximisation. Workers have endured misery and suffocation as a result of this barbaric and inhuman system of capitalism.
There is no doubt that the world is currently confronted by complex and difficult challenges that affirms the inability of capitalism to respond to the same crisis it perpetually creates. The complete failure of the barbaric global capitalist system has caused unprecedented destruction to the livelihoods of millions of the working class with extreme poverty, inequality, unemployment and misery for the working-class. The system has been unable to respond to workers’ contemporary needs, against the exploitation!
Workers all over the world are therefore encouraged to intensify the working class struggle to end of all forms of exploitation, privatisation and unbearable working conditions.
The class oriented trade union movement, through the ranks of the World Federation of Trade Unions, must continue and intensify the struggles of the working-class. Workers must rise up against the ongoing attack against collective bargaining and trade union rights, and the attack on the historic gains of workers taking place in the name of profits.
In our domestic context, there is a concerning further deepening of the already crisis levels of unemployment, poverty and inequalities in our country. The working-class bears the worst brunt of the crisis of social reproduction. The root of the crisis confronting our country is amongst others the implementation of neoliberal policies centred on austerity measures and the stagnant and monopoly-dominated structure of our economy, which has reproduced the inequalities.
As NEHAWU, we recognise the challenges that confront workers which amongst others include; jobless, retrenchments, and victimisation at the workplace, budget cuts, wage freezes, unemployment, inequality and poverty. As such, this requires more than ever before that as workers, we stand united and wage a serious struggle.
Our message for this year’s International Workers’ Day is along the WFTU line of march in that workers must rise up, unite and intensify the struggles of the working class and poor for the protection of their historic gains, jobs, social security, housing, water, sanitation, basic income grant and the general service delivery struggles.
As an affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), as NEHAWU, we will be joining in numbers all May Day rallies organised by the federation across the country inspired by the call to build a strong united and fighting COSATU committed to intensify its campaigns against austerity measures, against privatisation of the state and its apparatus, for the introduction of a universal basic income grant and for full implementation of the national health insurance awaiting for the President’s signature.
Lastly, on the occasion of the International Workers’ Day, we say categorically that “Against their Profit, We Rise Up for Our Lives! The system of capitalism prioritises profits over people at the expense of the working class and the poor.
We call on all South African workers to join these celebrations born-out of their sweat, toil and sacrifices made in their struggle for workers’ rights and dignity as well as for the liberation of all South Africans from the apartheid system.
END
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat
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SADTU Statement on International Workers’ Day, 1 May
Mugwena Maluleke, SADTU General Secretary, 01 May 2024
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) joins workers in South Africa and globally in celebrating International Workers’ Day, 1 May. The day serves, among others, to unite workers, renew the struggle against the exploitation of workers and to celebrate the milestones made by unions in the struggle for better conditions of workers.
This international day is, since the dawn of democracy in South Africa, celebrated as a paid public holiday; thanks to labour union federation COSATU. When COSATU was launched in December 1985, it made it one of its priorities to campaign for International Workers’ Day to be declared a public holiday. COSATU galvanised all South Africans to embark on stay-aways and rallies for the recognition of May Day. The day was finally enacted as a public holiday after the first democratic elections in 1994.
As we celebrate May Day this year, we also celebrate 30 years of a free and democratic South Africa. The two go together because the struggle for a free South Africa is also a struggle for workers and the working class. This democratic South Africa, for the first time in the country’s history, has a constitution that recognises the right to fair labour practices, join a trade union, join activities and programmes of a trade union and to strike.
The thirty years of a democratic South Africa has improved the lot for workers and the working class through various laws that have been passed to protect and guarantee their rights. As a union in the education sector, SADTU can attest to this as strides have been made for workers in sector. Education workers have a right to establish and join unions of their choice. Moreover, they have a right to strike.
Educators now receive equal salaries irrespective of gender and race. Women educators enjoy four months of paid maternity leave. In the apartheid era, being pregnant put many women teachers’ jobs at risk as taking time off for accouchement meant the termination of employment for many. Women in the education sector are contesting and appointed to management positions at schools and within the Department of education.
Today we have bargaining councils where workers and employers can sit across the table and negotiate conditions of service. This was unheard of before the 1994 breakthrough. The lot for workers has improved in general; they now have rights to equal pay for equal work, safer workplaces, paid leave including maternity and parental leave.
Whilst we commend the gains achieved for workers through various legislations, they are still subjected to unfavourable working conditions, low wages, casualisation and retrenchments. Employers are at times, deliberately ignoring legislation and undermine the gains workers have made.
As we celebrate this day, we are painfully aware of the millions of unemployed workers and the numbers continue to rise. In the basic education sector, we have thousands of vacant posts that have not been filled due to budget cuts. Teachers suffer the consequences of budget cuts as they teach overcrowded classrooms while unemployed teacher graduates languish at home. We want to see an end to austerity measures as they exacerbate unemployment levels.
The accusations by the likes of the DA that COSATU is the enemy of the unemployed as it is in an alliance with the ruling party which enacted laws such as the minimum wage that have trapped millions in unemployment and poverty, are disingenuous.
Enacting laws that recognise the rights of workers does not lead to poverty but the capitalist system the country is under. Our economy is still in the hands of the white minority.
We therefore call on COSATU and the Alliance partners to redouble their efforts to end the colonial, apartheid economic structure. We cannot allow a minority to continue to own our economy while the poor Black majority languish in poverty and unemployment.
We call on our members to turn up in their large numbers in rallies under the COSATU banner in all nine provinces to celebrate this day to unite and recommit to defending workers’ rights, fight against retrenchments, fight for a living wage and the scrapping austerity measures.
ISSUED BY: SADTU Secretariat
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COSATU General Secretary Solly Phetoe – Address SATAWU National Policy Conference
24 April 2024
Programme Director,
Leadership and delegates of SATAWU,
Thank you for inviting COSATU to join you in this important policy conference for our tried and tested Affiliate, SATAWU. We look forward to hearing from you about the challenges facing cleaning, security and transport workers.
Most importantly, we need to emerge from this conference with a clear programme of action that defends the rights of our members, improves the working conditions of workers and uplifts working class communities.
The challenges facing the workers are immense.
Whilst we welcome a 5% reduction in unemployment over the past year, we cannot be complacent with a 41% unemployment rate and 59% youth unemployment. We continue to battle with entrenched levels of poverty and inequality.
COSATU is continuing to engage government at Nedlac and Parliament on measures to alleviate unemployment, from removing the obstacles to growing the economy, to expanding the Presidential Employment Stimulus to provide more young people the opportunity to earn a salary and acquire the skills, experience and confidence necessary to find permanent employment.
We are pleased that the foundation for a Basic Income Grant has been laid with the SRD Grant that was recently increased and is providing a life line for 8 million unemployed persons. It is critical a road map be set to raise it to the food poverty line and link its recipients to skills and employment opportunities so that we can reverse the current 2 to 1 ratio of persons on social grants versus those who are working.
Collective bargaining remains under threat with many workers being denied their rights to a living wage and to protect their wages from inflationary erosion.
The economy has been hamstrung by years of loadshedding. We welcome progress in rebuilding Eskom and reducing loadshedding, but we are not out of the woods yet as Eskom continues to bleed money to corruption and urgently needs to invest in not only maintenance but also in new generation capacity to ensure loadshedding becomes a thing of the past.
Transnet has now become the biggest threat to the economy, workers’ jobs and the fiscus. The deterioration in the performance of Transnet Freight Rail and Ports has resulted in the mining sector missing out on two commodity booms leaving thousands of mining workers at risk of retrenchments.
Agricultural jobs have been in danger as farms struggle to get their exports to their markets. Clothing factories have been at risk when fabric they need to manufacture clothes are stuck at ports.
Roads are being destroyed by trucks transporting coal and other products.
The fiscus which depends upon company taxes from these industries faced a R55 billion shortfall in the November 2023 MTBPS placing pressure on public services the working-class communities depend upon and public servants salaries.
We are hopeful that the recent improvement in performance at Transnet is a sign of better times to come.
It is critical that as Transnet is rebuilt that labour is united and ensures that the voice of workers is heard, that jobs are saved and rights of workers are protected.
Metro Rail has not escaped the challenges facing Transnet. It has been decimated by rampant cable theft, arson, vandalism, corruption and crime. Like Transnet, it transports a fraction of what it used to. This collapse in customers threatens it survival.
We need to leave this conference with clear proposals on how to rebuild Metro Rail.
COSATU is working closely with Parliament, Treasury, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and the pension funds to ensure the Two Pot Pension Reforms take place from 1 September 2024.
We have made positive progress. We have consensus on the reforms between stakeholders. The first Bill has been passed by Parliament. The second Bill will be passed in approximately two weeks. We will ensure the President signs them before the elections to ensure 1 September remains on track.
It is critical SATAWU engage with its pension funds to ensure they amend their rules and put in place the necessary administrative and consumer education in time.
SATAWU should undertake its own education campaigns and use this as an opportunity to recruit members.
We have been alarmed at reports by the FSCA that 4 000 employers are owing pension fund contributions to thousands of workers across the economy. What is most alarming is that many of these companies are in the security and cleaning industries.
It’s fine for us to condemn the employers but what is our plan to deal with this crisis? Have we met the employers to put in place a payment plan including interest owed to workers? Have we laid charges with the police and FSCA for those who fail to pay?
What is our plan for our worker trustees on those pension fund boards? They have failed workers. Those who have not acted in the interests of workers must be removed and replaced with those who will defend the interests of workers and not themselves.
We need a plan for COSATU’s June CEC that we can help SATAWU roll out. What we cannot afford to do is nothing.
COSATU has made progress on several fronts at Nedlac and Parliament in strengthening our labour laws and advancing working class struggles.
Key victories include Parliament’s passage of the National Health Insurance Bill that will soon be signed by the President and lay the foundation for universal health care.
Other critical victories for workers include:
· Above inflation increases in the minimum wage from R20 in 2019 to R27.58 today and nearly doubling for domestic workers who started off at R15 and farm workers at R18. Today they have equalised with the minimum wage.
· Companies doing business with the state must now have a compliance certificate from the Department of Employment and Labour confirming they are abiding by the National Minimum Wage and Employment Equity Acts.
· Inclusion of over 900 000 domestic workers under the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Fund.
· Extending coverage for injuries and diseases for workers across the workplace.
· Extending maternity leave and introducing paid parental and adoption leave.
Whilst we welcome these victories, we are concerned that Affiliates do not ensure their implementation in their workplaces.
We need to ensure that we educate and empower our shop stewards, members and workers to understand and exercise their hard-won rights.
We need to audit our workplaces to ensure full compliance with our labour laws and to tackle those who break them. It requires that we develop joint inspection programmes with the Department of Employment and Labour.
Again we need a concrete of plan of action.
In 6 weeks workers will be heading to the voting stations. Elections are about choices. We have a choice. We can support the ANC or sit quietly and allow workers to vote for opposition parties.
The ANC like any organisation makes mistakes. At times criminals have infiltrated it to enrich themselves. But it has consistently remained the only party biased towards the working class, that is able to win the confidence of workers, that has a track record of delivering to working class communities and defending the rights of workers.
Yes, we are not shy to tell the ANC when it makes mistakes. We do so because the ANC is the product of working-class struggles. Workers, SACTU and later COSATU built the ANC.
We did not do so because we were bored. We did so and continue to do so not because we want to go to Parliament, we do so because we want the ANC and government to advance working class demands, to invest in the lives of the poor, to improve the working conditions of our members, to build that better life for all.
We do not expect miracles overnight, but continuous progress. And we have seen that progress. We have put in place progressive labour laws that affirm the rights of workers to decent working conditions, to a safe work place, to equal pay for equal work, to protection from sexual harassment and gender-based violence, to paid maternity and parental leave, to paid time off and overtime pay, to a minimum wage, to the right to unionise and collective bargaining and to strike.
Only one party has been in the trenches with COSATU in these struggles, the ANC. Only one party has put in its Manifesto, the demand for a National Health Insurance and our call to anchor the state’s economic policy on local jobs and industrialisation.
That is why we must go all out to campaign for a decisive victory for the ANC on election day.
We cannot support Action SA, which wants to destroy unions. We cannot support the DA which wants to end the minimum wage and collective bargaining.
We cannot support the EFF which has brought violence to Parliament and chaos to municipalities. We cannot support the MK Party which is inciting people to break the law and is led by the very people who gave us state capture and corruption.
We must ensure that on election day, our members, workers and their families vote for the ANC. We need an outright majority nationally and provincially.
We cannot afford the chaos of coalitions we have seen in municipalities extend to national and provincial government. We do not have the luxury with our many challenges, to experiment with anarchy when our people need jobs, electricity, water and a growing economy.
Lenin asked what is to be done? What are our tasks over the next seven weeks?
We must ensure our shop stewards, leaders and organizers are trained and ready to campaign. We must prepare them to defend the ANC and persuade voters.
We must ensure that we have a detailed day by day programme that ensures we will reach every member, every worker, every relative, every voter across the country and the membership of SATAWU.
This must include workplace meetings, shop steward councils, visits to each workplace, and door to door.
We need to be fully integrated in the ANC’s Branch Election Teams and ensure our members join them in their door-to-door campaigns.
Our support can be for rallies, but most be on the ground, visiting mines, factories, power stations, shopping centres, taxi ranks and townships.
We must work flat out to ensure that the May Day rallies in Cape Town and across the country next week Wednesday are full. There must not be an empty chair in sight.
We must have in place a plan for election day that will enable us to contact every member, worker and their family, to ask if they have voted, to help transport them and to ensure when stations close not one of our members has not voted.
Do not think the danger of losing here in Gauteng, KZN, the Northern Cape, Free State and the North West is not a possibility. If we stay at home, complain about life and do nothing, then we may lose. The opposition is not resting, they are campaigning. They are telling voters to come out and defeat the ANC and the Alliance.
Comrades allow me to conclude here, by thanking you for coming here today and more importantly, to urge you to work like you have never worked before in your life. We must forget about sleeping for the next six weeks.
Our task is to defend the ANC and the Alliance, to campaign to ensure the ANC wins an outright majority, and to hold the ANC accountable for delivering a better life for all.
We dare not risk the gains of 1994 to an opposition that has never supported them, we dare not risk our demands for the next administration to those who have always opposed us.
Comrades all of these tasks we set ourselves depend upon a united SATAWU, from the NOBs to the POBs, from Staff to Shop stewards. If you are divided, absent from work, not servicing members, then we will achieve nothing.
When you are struggling, do not hesitate to ask COSATU for help. We will be there to support you. You need to focus on building SATAWU, servicing members, recruiting workers, supporting COSATU, driving working class struggles, defending the ANC.
That is all we ask of you.
Thank you.
Matla!
COSATU President Zingiswa Losi – Workers’ Day Address 2024
1 May 2024
Programme Director, comrade Nkosana Dolopi,
President of the African National Congress and incoming President of the Republic, comrade Cyril Ramaphosa,
General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, comrade Solly Mapaila,
President of SANCO, comrade Richard Mkhungo,
Leadership of the Federation and Alliance Partners at all levels,
Most importantly, the workers here at Athlone Stadium and across our nation,
We are gathered here today to celebrate you the workers. It is the farm workers of Caledon who produce the food we eat, the clothing workers of Epping who keep us warm, the police officers who keep us safe.
Workers’ Day is a moment to remember those who came before us, who struggled in the darkest days of colonialism and apartheid, who fought to improve the working and living conditions of our parents, who delivered this democratic South Africa.
We will forever be indebted to the generations of Ray Alexander and Oscar Mpetha.
May Day is an opportunity to celebrate our many victories from our progressive Constitution to our laws affirming the right of all workers to be treated with dignity.
It is a chance to reflect on the many challenges we face and to say to government and employers, we must do better.
We are celebrating 30 years of democracy. Whilst at times we are frustrated by the pace of change and our mistakes, we are proud of how far we have come.
Gone are the days when workers had no rights, were paid a slave wage and dared not raise their voice less they be arrested.
Gone are the days when our fathers had to leave their families in Cofimvaba and Matatiele to live in hostels in Langa and Gugulethu, when our parents were removed from District Six and Claremont and dumped in Hanover Park and Kewtown.
Today we enjoy the protection of a Constitution admired the world over that compels the state to address the legacies of the past and the inequalities of today.
We are proud sitting amongst us today, is one of the key architects of that Constitution, the founding General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers and our President, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa. Indeed, COSATU lives, COSATU leads!
COSATU with our allies, the ANC, the SACP and the former United Democratic Front that was launched in Rocklands in 1983, fought for this democracy we celebrate today.
Today workers are reaping the fruits of these struggles. Our Constitution and the Labour Relations Act unashamedly protect the rights of all workers to form trade unions, to collective bargaining and when aggrieved, to strike.
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act provides workers the rights to paid maternity, parental and adoption leave, paid time off and overtime pay. In 2018 COSATU with the ANC extended these protections to cover mothers recovering from miscarriages and still born births, and fathers and same sex partners with new born children.
In 2023 900 000 domestic workers were included under the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Fund, bringing protection to our mothers in Delft.
The Employment Equity Act was amended to require employers doing business with the state to comply with the National Minimum Wage and the Employment Equity Acts.
The Employment Equity Act was broadened to recognise and to take into account the demographic diversity of our people, from the Shoprite Cashier in Eastridge to the petrol attendant in Phillipi, from the nurse from Ruyterwacht to the teacher in Rylands.
All we ask is that all South Africans are given a fair chance to fulfill their dreams and take care of their families. What we cannot afford to do is think it is fair that the overwhelming majority of management positions go to White men.
Critics say these are the victories of the Mandela and Mbeki Administrations. They are and it is President Ramaphosa who worked with COSATU to pass the National Minimum Wage Act in 2019, boosting the salaries of six million workers.
It has raised the wages of farm workers in De Doorns and domestic workers in Paarl who recently earned as little as R6 an hour. Today its R27.58 an hour.
In January, the Extension of Security of Tenure Act was amended to increase protections of farm workers and their families from evictions bringing hope to many across the West Coast, Winelands and Overberg.
Government will soon table the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment Bill at Parliament to protect the rights of workers to refuse dangerous work.
On the 1st of September after tireless campaigns led by COSATU and in particular, SACTWU, our clothing and textile workers’ union, the Two Pot Pension Reforms will be implemented providing relief to millions of indebted workers across the private and public sectors. Parliament will soon pass the remaining Bill and Mr. President, COSATU will be knocking on your door to sign the Bills before the 29th of May!
All of these victories were only possible because we have a strong COSATU and a partner in the ANC that has stood with us in the trenches.
We have left the shameful days of apartheid when the state spent a few cents on the education of the African and Coloured child for every Rand it spent on a White child.
Today, 60% of government’s budget is invested in working class communities from free schools and meals in Mfuleni to NSFAS funding students at the University of the Western Cape.
Pregnant mothers and infants enjoy free health care and recently Parliament passed the National Health Insurance Bill laying the ground for universal healthcare. It is no small feat that 27 million citizens now receive social grants from the state, including 8 million unemployed, giving relief to communities from Vredendal to Vhembe.
These are the foundations for a caring society and socialist state so many fought for.
Whilst we are proud of these victories, we dare not be complacent when 41% our people and 59% of our youth are unemployed. We cannot accept the gender-based violence and sexual harassment that brings trauma to our daughters when they walk to school in Elsies River or go to work in Masiphumelele.
We will not normalise two nations in one society, where a life of luxury exists in Constantia and a life of poverty and fear reigns in Manenberg and KTC.
COSATU is working with government at Nedlac to ensure Eskom provides reliable and affordable electricity, Transnet is able to ship our products and Metro Rail to transport our commuters, including here in Langa, Athlone, Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha.
We are working with government and business in our industrial master plans to remove the obstacles to growing the economy. We are seeing green shoots from the retail sector committing to increase locally produced clothes on their shelves from 40% to 60% helping to save thousands of clothing jobs from Salt River to Atlantis.
We have seen new investments in the motor manufacturing plants from Pretoria to Uitenhage and a surge in locally manufactured vehicles from 300 000 a few years ago to nearly 400 000 today creating thousands of jobs.
The past decade and the betrayal of the nation by some in whom we had entrusted the state was painful. The damage to the economy and workers massive.
Yet step by step those who steal are being made to account. It is no small feat that a former President can be sentenced to prison for contempt of court, or the Speaker of the National Assembly can be charged and compelled to resign. That is accountability!
SARS is tackling tax evasion, the NPA is charging those who loot the state, and the SAPS is recruiting. These are key to winning the war against crime and corruption.
As we celebrate our victories and rededicate ourselves to tackling our challenges, we must remember those who are less fortunate than us from the children facing genocide in Gaza, Palestine, to union activists persecuted eSwatini, to those who cannot find work in Zimbabwe, to our comrades in Cuba struggling in the face of the blockade.
We are proud of how government has waived the flag of international solidarity and brought the Israeli apartheid regime to the International Court of Justice.
On May 29th we will be heading to our 7th democratic elections. Many have declared the end of the ANC and the Alliance. We are here to tell them to dream on.
When days were dark and friends were few, where were they? Where were these peacetime heroes when Imam Haron, Coline Williams, Robbie Waterwitch and Griffith Mxenge were killed? They were sitting in Parliament with nothing to say.
Today the DA has the audacity to tell us about non-racialism, democracy and workers’ rights. Yet when SACTU and the UDF were banned, they were silent.
The DA says the Western Cape is an island of prosperity, yet the people of Tafelsig and Nyanga cannot sleep at night without fearing a child may be hit by stray bullets.
The DA says it has delivered yet we see thousands of people living in shacks from Hout Bay to Wendy Houses in Bokmakkerie.
The DA and its friends in Action SA tell us workers are the problem, the minimum wage must go, the salaries of nurses, teachers, cleaners and police officers must be cut.
Let us not waste time on the scam that is the MK Party led by someone who lead the state for a decade, who betrayed the nation and today says he will deliver.
COSATU, our members and workers are clear. It is only the ANC that has stood with workers from when SACTU was banned and COSATU formed, from when we fought for a democratic South Africa to when we drafted our progressive Constitution.
The ANC will remain with us as we tackle unemployment, crime and corruption and continue to build a better life for all our people from the train driver in Muizenberg to the teacher in Mbombela, from traffic officer in Kleinvlei to the mine worker in Okiep.
We will stand by the ANC as we unleash our elections machinery crisscrossing workplaces from the farms of George to the shopping centres of Durban. We will go door to door from Mangaung to Rustenburg ensuring we mobilise every worker and voter to come out on election day and deliver an overwhelming majority for the ANC.
We dare not fail nor disappoint our people, we have come too far and much to do.
Thank you.
Baie dankie.
Enkosi.
Shukran.
Amandla!
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Nedlac Social Partners call on employers to enable workers to vote
29 April 2024
As the leadership of organised business, labour, community and government at the National Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) we call upon all employers to support and allow their employees to cast their votes in the upcoming general elections on May 29, 2024.
On April 27th 2024 we collectively celebrated 30 years since the achievement of our constitutional democracy. A month later, South Africans will be heading to the polls in our 7th democratic elections.
The social partners at Nedlac believe that it is important to enable all voters to exercise their fundamental constitutional right to participate in the election and cast their votes.
While election day is a public holiday, there are still workers who are required to work on this day including in essential services and the retail and agricultural sectors. Our democracy is only sustainable if every registered voter is allowed to vote on election day.
Firstly, we encourage all employers to observe election day as a paid public holiday and, where possible, give workers the day off. This will enable all eligible workers to cast their votes and reduce pressure on voting stations as people rush to vote at night. It will also avoid voters being at risk of crime at night.
Secondly, for those employers providing an essential service and/or needing to be at work on election day, we request they provide adequate time to facilitate for their staff to go to their voting stations, e.g. to have different shifts with staff working only half day so they have enough time to travel to their stations and queue.
Thirdly, for workers where this may not be practically possible and where it is absolutely essential for them to be at work or on the road far from home, we encourage those workers to go to their nearest Independent Electoral Commission office at their municipality to register for a special vote.
Registration for special votes closes on Friday 3 May.
Voters can register for a special vote by:
· Using the IEC’s online application form at:
https://www.elections.org.za/pw/SpecialVotes/About-Special-Vote
· SMSing your Identity Number to 32249
· Or visiting the IEC at your local municipal office.
As the collective leadership of organised business, labour, community and government, we commit to supporting the important work of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
We are determined as the leadership of social partners and government to help nourish and honour our proud history as a nation of holding elections whose integrity is beyond reproach. We pledge to do all we can to help contribute to free, fair and credible elections.
Ends
Issued by Overall Convenors: Kaizer Moyane (Organised Business); Gerald Thwala (Organised Labour); Thulani Tshefuta (Organised Community); Thembinkosi Mkalipi (Government) and Nedlac Executive Director Lisa Seftel
Media Enquiries and interview requests can be directed to Farhana Ismail, in...@fbicommunications.com /0827876987 (on behalf of Nedlac)
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The DA's pledge to scrap the National Minimum Wage is a brutal reminder that it cannot be trusted with the lives of workers
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 28 April 2024
The Democratic Alliance (DA)’s election manifesto pledge to scrap the National Minimum Wage, that has raised the wages of six million impoverished workers across the economy, is a brutal reminder that it cannot be trusted with the lives of workers. The DA’s manifesto and pledge will condemn millions of workers to absolute poverty.
We hope the DA is telling the working class voters of Mitchell’s Plain and Bishop Lavis it believes they are paid too much and plans to impose a wage freeze on them for the foreseeable future. Just like it plans to cut the salaries of thousands of nurses, cleaners, teachers and police officers with its Responsible Spending Bill it tabled at Parliament recently.
COSATU will be reminding workers of this.
Not content with this naked proposal to pickpocket millions of already poorly paid workers, the DA is promising to cancel all other important labour rights that generations of workers struggled to achieve from the dark days of apartheid, when the DA’s predecessors sat meekly in Parliament, to post-1994 when the DA has voted against every single law improving the working conditions and rights of workers.
If the DA had done even the most elementary of desk top research and not merely relied upon abstract theories, it would have stumbled across extensive research by some of the most preeminent economists at the Universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch and overseas showing that a minimum wage is one of the most important tools to reducing poverty and inequality and stimulating the economy by increasing workers’ disposable income.
They would have come across ample evidence, not just the right-wing slogans that may tickle the fancy of inexperienced Members of Parliament desperate for a quick soundbite, that would have confirmed that the introduction of the National Minimum Wage in South Africa has not resulted in job losses just like it has not done in the United States, Brazil and Europe.
One could perhaps dismiss this as an act of naivety and the absence of any persons in the DA’s parliamentary caucus familiar with the struggles of working class communities, yet the very same DA caucus was vociferous in its defence of the rights of the captains of industry to earn obscene salaries ranging from R100 000 a day for the big five banks to the CEO of Lonmin making R300 million in a single year.
When the African National Congress led government tabled the Companies Amendment Bill merely asking for these pampered CEOs disclose to their shareholders in their company annual reports the gaps between the pittance they pay their cleaners and cashiers to the fat packages they pay themselves, the DA balked and said no, that would be unfair! The same DA MPs have quietly cheered on the increases for MPs, MPLs and Councillors.
The callousness of the DA’s economic illiteracy which pedals the myth that paying workers peanuts and denying them an increase to keep pace with inflation is a recipe for galloping economic growth rates and jobs galore is exposed by anyone who experienced the slave wages of the apartheid era.
Workers were paid so little they could not afford a bus to get to work, nor food to keep their children healthy, or a home to keep their family warm.
There was no full employment under Verwoed’s economic experimentation.
The crises of unemployment were inherited from an economy that sought fit to enrich a few and impoverish many.
The solution is to ensure reliable and affordable electricity, to modernise our railways and ports to unlock export industries, to fix our roads and infrastructure, to tackle crime and crime and corruption, to overhaul our skills regime to ensure workers meet the needs of the jobs of today and tomorrow, and to pay workers a living wage so they can buy the goods our companies produce. This is not rocket science.
It’s a pity that the DA still doesn’t get it. This is precisely why workers will never trust it with their lives.
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