Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi explains what the nationwide strike is about.
"I have been asked to answer a question – why we are marching? We are marching against the labour brokering system and the scrapping of the e-toll system. Our campaign against both labour brokering and e-tolls is part and parcel of the war to salvage the working class from an assault on its living standards.
Despite the gains since 1994, the working class continues to reel under the pressure of neoliberalism and the legacy of apartheid/colonialism. Poverty, unemployment and inequality are the three challenges facing the working class.
We recognise the major advances our country has registered under the ANC. This includes delivery of basic needs, which has meant millions having access to housing, water, electricity etc.
Most of these gains have been undermined by the slow pace of transformation and the rampant commodification pursued by privatisation and other neoliberal programmes including the user-pay principle.
The richest decile is earning about 94 times more than the poorest decile. Africans, who constitute 79.4 percent of the population, account for 41.2 percent of the household income from work and social grants, whereas whites, who account only for 9.2 percent of the population, receive 45.3 percent of income. The poorest 10 percent of the population share R1.1 billion whilst the riches 10 percent share R381bn. Our country is trapped in a developmental paradigm that has simply reproduced these conditions for 18 years now.
In terms of the expanded definition, unemployment is at 35.4 percent. Income inequality is the highest globally and half of our population survives on 8 percent of the national income while the other half enjoys 92 percent. In 2007 about 71 percent of African female-headed households earned less than R800 a month and 59 percent of these had no income, while 58 percent of African male-headed households earned less than R800, 48 percent having no income. Over 60 percent of the unemployed have not completed matric.
One of the foremost indicators of the inequality characterising our society is unemployment, it discriminates according to race, gender and geography. Almost 25 percent of households experience hunger on a daily basis. An average member of a working-class household lives on R18 a day, but many actually live on less; 6 million workers live on less than R10 a day.
No less than 30 percent of the work force has been casualised. Their practices are the absolute contradiction to the principle of decent work. They have driven down workers’ wages and conditions of employment. They do not create any jobs but sponge off the labour of others and replace secure jobs with temporary and casual forms of employment.
The National Association of Bargaining Councils suggests that there are 979 539 labour broker workers in the country, significantly larger than suggested thus far. While workers under labour brokers take home a pittance, their bosses reward themselves with millions.
Whitey Basson, the chief executive of Shoprite, earned the highest-ever monthly earnings recorded in a single year in 2010 – R627.53 million in salary, perks and share options. This contrasts sharply with the situation of many Shoprite workers.
Shoprite and Checkers have a staff complement of about 73 000, of which 35 percent are full-time workers, 5 percent are 40-hour full-timers or flexitimers, and 60 percent are variable time employees or casuals. Expansion or growth does not translate into employment growth but increases the intake of labour brokers.
At Pick n Pay there are 36 538 workers, 16 000 are full-time with almost 20 000 in categories of variable time employees or casuals supplied by the labour brokers. At Woolworths it is estimated that there is a ratio of 70 percent casuals to only 30 percent permanent workers. In smaller retail companies, the situation is more dire.
The face of casualisation is predominantly the black working class youth that is employed by labour brokers. The industry is an exploitative businesses designed to circumvent labour laws and regulations.
We demand a total ban of the labour brokers, a system we have described as human trafficking and modern-day slavery.
Labour brokers do not create jobs but merely act as intermediaries to access jobs that already exist, and which in many cases would have existed previously as permanent full-time jobs. Labour brokers destroy permanent jobs as they lead to contractual relations and the downgrading of wages and employment terms.
Labour brokers are anti-trade unions because “their” workers are being moved around, often with no access to union officials or the possibility of stop-order deductions for union subscriptions.
We wish to convey also our total opposition to the introduction of open road tolling in Gauteng and the planned introduction of the same in other parts of the country including Durban and Cape Town.
First and foremost, the tolls will add to the burden of the poor, who will be forced to pay for travelling on the tolled roads.
It adds to the cost of transporting goods and will have an immediate effect on food inflation. It is quite clear that if the tolling goes ahead, it will be extended to other urban areas, spreading the pressures.
Many low-income earners use private cars to travel to work, precisely because our public transport system is unreliable. Public transport is also unavailable outside of peak commuter hours, including weekends, when Gauteng residents travel distances across the province to visit friends and attend funerals.
The logic of those who say that the poor do not use our motorways, except by public transport, is that they should be permanently excluded from access to the best roads. They must find the potholed side-roads to get from A to B, while the rich glide along in their fancy cars.
The toll roads are therefore a reminder of the divisions that still exist in access to basic services. Good health and education services currently belong to the wealthier sections of society, who can afford to pay.
We do not want yet another addition to the list, especially in the context where good progress is being made in the health sector, to bring about one universal service.
We acknowledge that government has now exempted registered public transport vehicles from the tolls. However, the fact is that public transport remains woefully inadequate both in quality and in the numbers of people that it serves. A third of our people use private cars to get to and from work. This is not a free choice. It is because our public transport system is expensive, unsafe, and unreliable.
The promise of massive investment in our overcrowded, run-down commuter rail services is good news, but this will take years to come on stream. Apart from the BRTs in Joburg and Cape Town, no new subsidised bus route has been put in place for over 10 years. And the enforcement of safe conditions in the taxi industry?
The use of our motorways by private cars is therefore not a luxury for most users. If the users are forced off the motorways because of cost, they will not transfer to non-existent reliable public transport. They will take their cars onto the side roads and create levels of congestion that our municipalities will not be able to cope with. Traffic management will become a nightmare, and it is highly likely that our road fatality statistics will rise.
Finally, the tolls represent a form of privatisation, which we have always been opposed to. Cosatu has an unwavering record of being opposed to privatisation, and the introduction of a tolling system that brings in the private sector to operate the tolled roads is privatisation.
What makes it worse is that the contracts signed with the toll operators remain a secret. All the evidence indicates that the revenues from the tolls are going to be enormous and that the loans will be paid off quickly, leaving the private operator to milk the public.
This is why we have consistently argued that the fiscus must be directly involved in the funding of road infrastructure. If additional revenues have to be raised by government, then this must be done in a way where the burden is fairly shared through a progressive tax system. We pay taxes so that government can build and maintain roads, hospitals, schools, etc.
In the meantime, we are convinced that if more effort was put into stopping fraud and corruption, then the money would be easily available to cover the costs of road construction and maintenance.
For all of the above reasons, we demand the dismantling of the Gauteng motorway gantries, and the immediate halting, for good, of the Gauteng open tolls.
Zwelinzima Vavi is Cosatu’s general secretary. This is an edited version of his address to the National Press Club on Tuesday.