South Africa’s two largest workers’ union federations have put their differences aside in a bid to tackle the country’s worsening economic crisis and rising unemployment.
Thousands of workers affiliated to the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) will on Wednesday down their tools and join the national strike against what they believe is impending economic collapse.
Giving an update on their readiness yesterday, Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi said their socio-economic strike represented a push back and a response by the workers to the ongoing class warfare directed at them by both public and private sector employers.
Losi said the growing frustration in the country was mainly being fuelled by policies that favour the elite at the expense of the poor, especially the austerity budgets within the government.
“The intention of the strike is to demand urgent action from policymakers and decision makers to take drastic steps to avoid an economic collapse that is threatening the lives of millions of workers and the poor,” Losi said
“This is a legally protected strike that is meant to pile pressure on both government and the private sector to fix the economic mess that the country finds itself.”
Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) will tomorrow publish the employment figures for the second quarter after the economy created about 370 000 jobs in the first quarter.
Though the unemployment rate dropped to 34.5 percent from 35.3 percent, the rate of joblessness continues to reflect the persistent slack in the labour market worsened by rotational loadshedding.
Consumers have also been impacted by the escalating prices of fuel, with petrol prices rising by over R13 per litre since the hard lockdown and peaked at R26.74 per litre last month.
Saftu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi yesterday said they expected all workers to participate in the stayaway, except essential workers, as the strike was protected under the Section 77 of the Labour Relations Act.
Vavi said they have six demands on a variety of issues, including escalating standard of living as the food basket has increased by 14 percent this year, and 49 percent from a year ago.
He said other issues included loadshedding, which was putting companies out of business, the price of fuel was becoming unaffordable, while workers were also having their properties repossessed due to rising interest rates, pushing the rate of unemployment even higher.
“Saftu and many other workers’ formations, including Cosatu, are saying this is totally unsustainable and we cannot allow them to just twiddle our fingers and do nothing,” he said.
Vavi said those who accuse them of exacerbating the crisis by embarking on a shutdown when the economy required full productivity, do not understand the plight of workers.
“We have always been attacked by neoliberals and the people who are very comfortable with the status quo. But the figures do not support their argument,” Vavi said.
“The recent figures from Stats SA tell us that there was a boom in the financial sector. The banks improved their wealth by 1.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, and yet 72 000 jobs were lost in the very same period.
“So the issue that we will lose growth and investment opportunities is neither here nor there because ours is that even where we see growth in the sectors of the economy, the numbers are not covered by the growth we are speaking about.”
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