Union warns of big job losses if legislation takes effect

Picture: Supplied

Picture: Supplied

Published Feb 23, 2017

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The Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) has warned of a looming jobs bloodbath if a raft of proposed legislation is given the go-ahead by the ANC-run government.

South Africa is battling an unemployment rate of 26.7%.

The union said close to 8 000 jobs would be affected in the beverages industry and the sugar value-chain when the “ill-informed” sugar tax of 11% comes into effect on April 1.

A further 108 000 jobs could also be on the line if the government approves a bill compelling tobacco companies to sell their products in plain packages.

The Fawu leadership, including its president Atwell Nazo, general secretary Katishi Masemola and his deputy Moleko Phakedi, warned against passing of the bill, saying it would give cigarette counterfeiters “a blank cheque and so threaten thousands of farming, retail and manufacturing jobs”.

They said the liquor amendment, which, among other things, seeks to raise the age limit for legal drinking from 18 to 21, would have a “similar adverse impact on jobs” if approved.

The union leaders made the remarks during a media briefing in Joburg yesterday, before Fawu’s special extended meeting of its national executive committee, to be held in Boksburg from Monday to Wednesday.

Fawu also hit out at the 1 500 jobs lost in the volatile poultry sector because of “dumping” of cheap imports from the EU into the local economy.

Phakedi said the looming jobs bloodbath was an “urgent crisis that requires government attention to ensure that no more jobs are lost. Instead, we are faced with inadequate public consultation and half-hearted engagement by a government that is clearly not listening”.

He said they would continue with rolling mass protests until the government listened, “as they did with poultry dumping”.

Last month, poultry producer RCL Foods sold 15 of its 25 poultry farms to mitigate the negative impact caused by “dumping”.

This spurred ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe to call on the government to buy the poultry farms being closed down as a going concern and save jobs.

Masemola said: “If there is no radical package of intervention by June to save this industry, by essentially blocking the cheap chicken coming from the EU, these (poultry) companies will significantly shrink. And they would (only) service the local fast-food outlets like Chicken Licken and Nando’s.”

If jobs continued to be lost in the sector, “we are going to have a problem of food security because we can’t rely on foreign sources of food security”.

Nazo said the 39 cents fuel levy announced by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Wednesday would also contribute to job losses because “the petrol price in this country is just going haywire, and when they reduce it, they reduce it by a cent, two cents, whereas it had increased by 50 cents”.

@luyolomkentane

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