Business Unity South Africa (Busa) has raised concerns over the economic impact of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) nationwide strike scheduled for today Cosatu says the protest action seeks to highlight high unemployment, rampant corruption and the escalating cost of living.
The South African Communist Party (SACP), Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) and other labour federation affiliates will join the strike. Busa CEO Khulekani Mathe says another concern is the abuse of Section 77 which relates to the certificate issued to grant the Cosatu permission to strike.
Mathe says, Cosatu relies on a certificate that was offered to the four years to go on strike. What this does is that it deprives parties in Nedlac to engage and discuss each proposed strike because the union simply realised the one that was issued a long time ago under different economic conditions. We think that that needs to reform so that each proposed strike can be discussed by parties of Nedlac before authorisation is granted.
Cosatu’s Parliamentary Co-ordinator, Matthew Parks says the point of the strike is to get government and business to address the challenges that workers and society are facing. Parks says, usiness can bleater along all it likes about certificates because business and government have failed to respond to the issues for all these years, and in fact they’re getting worse. So we’ll continue to raise them until we see progress.
He says, The rights of workers to withdraw their labour, the right to strike is a fundamental constitutional right. We know businesses would love to see a right being taken away but this is the way of democracy and this is a way for workers to put pressure on government and employers to say, we’re sitting on an economic time bomb. We’ve got to address these issues. Cosatu has called on non-essential workers to turn out in their numbers to support its National Day of Action against the country’s crippling economic crisis.
It’s demanding a moratorium on retrenchment. This follows large-scale retrenchments at the SA Post Office and metals group Sibanye Stillwater this year.
The South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) will join Cosatu in its nationwide strike. In the Western Cape, the march is expected to proceed to the provincial Legislature and National Parliament. Saccawy spokesperson, Sithembele Tshwete, says the union is calling for decent work in the retail, hospitality, and food processing sectors. He says they are also demanding fair pay, an end to attacks on workers and retrenchments.
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