Durban - The Congress of South African Trade Unions in KwaZulu-Natal is going ahead with its fight against the recently enacted tax law which regulates how pension funds should be paid out.
This is despite the ANC on Thursday announcing that it had met Cosatu’s national leaders and facilitated a meeting with national Treasury amid threats of a nationwide strike by the labour federation.
ANC national spokesman, Zizi Kodwa, later said the ruling party had set up discussions between Cosatu and the Treasury on the new law and the federation’s concerns.
“The discussions are already ongoing and the ANC urges all stakeholders to support this process as a step to resolving the current impasse,” Kodwa said, adding that the ruling party understood Cosatu’s opposition to the new law stemmed mainly from a lack of adequate consultation on the amendments.
Despite the facilitation of a meeting with Treasury, KZN Cosatu said it was going ahead with its planned protest today outside the provincial Treasury offices in Pietermaritzburg.
The picket would be preceded by a shop steward’s council, where the Cosatu-aligned members would be mobilised against the law.
Cosatu provincial secretary, Edwin Mkhize, said workers had never agreed to the new law. “We have said holding meetings does not mean reaching an agreement. Meetings are meant to engage, discuss and enable parties to put their positions,” he said.
His comments were in reaction to claims by the presidency that a number of meetings were held with stakeholders over the new law.
The presidency had also said the new law would be up for review in the next two years.
But Mkhize insisted that those who claimed there were meetings should not claim there was an agreement.
“You can’t sign the law, which affects the workers, without their mandate. We put our position that we were not happy with the law in its current form,” he said.
He said the pensions law reform did not take into account other issues affecting all workers.
He said the new law also did not say how pension should be invested for the benefit of workers and how they should contribute to job creation.
Daily News
* Use IOL’s Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories. See links below.