In 2021 hundreds of Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) members in Cape Town heeded the call to take part in a national strike. Picture: Ayanda Ndamane/ African News Agency (ANA) Archives
Cosatu has called for a strike this week, saying the government is oblivious to the many challenges facing workers, the poor, and the unemployed.
It said the economy was ailing, businesses were shutting down in small towns, corruption was rife, and the infrastructure was collapsing.
But independent economic analyst Professor Bonke Dumisa said he did not believe this was a correct move by the union. He said the country was “battling to keep the economy above technical recession levels.”
The trade union federation said many people lived in poor conditions, and the government had to act.
President Cyril Ramaphosa told the ANC Youth League conference that youth unemployment was sitting at 62% and that this was a ticking time bomb.
Cosatu said the strike will take place on Thursday across the country, and it is a protected strike.
It said government cannot fold its arms while there are many problems facing the people.
The government has to intervene to alleviate the situation in many areas.
“We are embarking on this nationwide strike in protest of the rising levels of unemployment, wage cuts, poverty, and inequality affecting the workers and the working class in general.
“It is in defence of workers’ hard-won rights to bargain and attempts by employers in both the public and private sectors to undermine this constitutional right.
“It is a demonstration by workers that government needs to do more to end the current levels of load shedding, cable theft, crime and corruption, wasteful expenditure, and austerity cuts crippling the state, suffocating the economy, and further plunging workers into high levels of indebtedness and misery.
“This is also a signal to the government, the Reserve Bank, and the commercial banks, that the working class can no longer afford to bear the burden of rising levels of inflation, electricity tariff hikes, and relentless and reckless increases in the repo rate,” said Cosatu.
It said the government could intervene in these areas by “extending the presidential stimulus to accommodate one million active participants in October 2023 and two million in 2024.”
The government can fill vacant posts by the end of the year. It can also increase the social distress relief grant.
It can pump more money into the National Prosecuting Authority, the Special Investigating Unit, the police, the Hawks, and the judiciary to fight crime and corruption.
Dumisa said this was not the time for the strike as the economy was struggling.
It narrowly avoided recession when it grew by 0.4% in the first quarter.
“Any one day or time workers spend outside work worsens the situation. It is worse for public servants because ‘the real effectiveness of public servants strikes or other forms of industrial action is calculated based on how significantly they inconvenienced the general public’,” said Dumisa.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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