Rustenburg - The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) is mobilising its members to join the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ national strike this week, the union said on Monday.
“As an affiliate, we have a duty to support programmes and campaigns that seek to better the lives of South African workers. This is a protected strike and as such workers who participate in this action will be protected,” said general secretary Simon Mathe.
Cosatu would lead a one-day national strike on October 7, during the International Day of Action.
The federation demands an outright ban on labour brokers, the scrapping of the e-tolling system and a concerted drive in defence of jobs and against retrenchments.
Mathe said Samwu would be demanding the end of casualisation of work, particularly in local government.
“Casualisation and privatising municipal services has resulted in exploitation of workers through the use of tenders and the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP).
“Samwu is of the view that EPWP workers are rendering municipal services and as such they should be employed directly and permanently by municipalities with all the benefits that municipal workers are currently enjoying.”
He said they would also be demanding an end to alleged plans by the Democratic Alliance to retrench workers in municipalities without proper consultation, particularly in Tshwane.
“We take this as an attack on collective bargaining and the gains that workers have made in this regard. We will therefore be defending our constitutional right to collective bargaining which is currently under attack.”
He said some municipalities continually employ workers on a temporary basis, with some workers having worked for municipalities for decades as permanent casuals.
“This despite the recently amended Labour Relations Act (LRA) which clearly stipulates that any worker employed for a period longer than three months on a contract basis should automatically be employed on a permanent basis. We will therefore be using this day to campaign and demand the immediate and full implementation of the LRA by all municipalities.”
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY