Trade union federation Cosatu is deeply perturbed and enraged at the declaration by the Treasury that it will implement the anti-worker Taxation Laws Amendment Act, despite widespread worker rejection of this legislation.
The recent Cosatu national congress resolved that we must oppose this arrogant unilateral Treasury action. We call on President Jacob Zuma not to sign the new provisions into law.
This act is meant to coerce and force workers to save. No government or department should be allowed to pass laws that dictate to its citizens and workers, how and when they should spend their hard-earned money. Workers must save even when they are retrenched or face other difficulties.
Treasury is doing this in the absence of their long-promised comprehensive social security and retirement reform discussion paper. The government has promised and failed to deliver this for more than 10 years. Cosatu supports encouraging workers to save for retirement, however, this must be encouraged and not forced against their will by legislative fiat as being pushed by Treasury.
Nedlac (National Economic Development and Labour Council) established a task team to engage on this matter but the government has failed to table the discussion paper for engagements to take place.
By not tabling it, the Treasury has in effect abandoned these engagements to pursue its planned retirement reforms unilaterally. Attempts by Parliament’s standing committee on finance to intervene in this very sensitive issue for workers failed, simply because the Treasury is hell-bent on bulldozing its reforms through.
About 85 000 civil servants resigned from their jobs between July 2014 and June 2015, fearing that they would lose access to their hard-earned retirement savings because of this legislation. It comes at a time when there are high levels of sensitivity about scandal after scandal involving millions of rand of workers’ retirement funds.
Cosatu views these forced retirement reforms as a direct attack on workers and their retirement funds.
The workers’ savings are part of their hard-earned salaries and should be accessible to the workers when they want them.
Provocation
The Treasury is appropriating too much power for itself and our government should immediately rein it in. We find it regrettable that this provocation of workers happens just months before local government elections next year.
Cosatu is also irritated by the fact that, while the Treasury is pushing for the implementation of this legislation at all costs, it is also directly and indirectly supporting the integration of many retirement funds into industry-owned, managed funds that will be controlled by service providers. This will undermine union established funds, and erode the social responsibility role of trade unions.
These funds were established under hostile conditions during apartheid and we won’t allow them to be taken away and be handed over to business to profit from. Retirement funds are the only savings most workers have and they are not for sale, nor are they the private property of the Treasury. Cosatu’s congress completely rejected the legislation and announced a battle plan to oppose it. We want to remind the government that one of the causes of the 1973 Durban strikes was an attack on workers’ pension funds.
We call on all our members and workers in general to join Cosatu in stopping the Treasury from destroying our only savings, our hard-earned provident funds.
We are going to take the fight straight to the Treasury and its supporters to defend our retirement funds. We demand that the Ministry of Finance should postpone the implementation of this law until a comprehensive social security and retirement reform discussion paper is tabled at Nedlac.
We demand that the government should release the long outstanding inter-department task team and table it at Nedlac for engagements without any further delay. The Department of Social Development cannot keep quiet and be neutral while this is their responsibility and competency.
The Treasury’s attempts to cloud issues with its tax harmonisation proposals are merely an attempt to coat its neo-liberal policies with sugar. If the government is not prepared to listen, we are going to meet them in the streets.
* Bheki Ntshalintshali is Cosatu general secretary.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
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