Johannesburg - The thousands of desperate workers facing retrenchment and the unemployed who attended Cosatu’s May Day rally hoping for solutions to their plight will have to wait another day.
President Jacob Zuma missed the opportunity to address burning issues at Monday’s gathering in Mamelodi, near Pretoria, opting instead to warn workers about anarchist political parties seeking to destabilise South Africa.
He also did not address many of Cosatu’s long-standing demands, which seek to improve the lives of workers.
The federation has been badgering the government and the ANC about the devastating impact of labour brokers and e-tolls and the lack of social security for the working class.
Workers listened on as, once more, an impassioned Cosatupresident S’dumo Dlamini belted out their demands.
“Our fight is for the national minimum wage, our fight is for defending the jobs that we have. The 60 000 jobs that are threatened in the mining industry; it is our task to fight to defend those jobs.
“Let us stand together with the workers in the mines, let us stand together with the workers on the farms, in the retail and fisheries industry, and fight to defend those jobs.”
This was the same script Dlamini read from when he addressed workers at Curries Fountain at last year’s May Day rally in Durban.
Zuma urged the workers to keep fighting for their rights like the heroes of yesteryear, who had pushed for the recognition of May 1 as a day dedicated solely to them. In the face of all these challenges and demands, he insisted that labour laws brought about by the ANC-led government had emancipated workers.
“Workers’ rights are en-shrined in the constitution. These include the right to fair labour practice, the right to form and join trade unions and the right to collective bargaining, among others.
“Would these laws be there without the ANC government? No. And without the ANC in power, this country would be in big trouble,” said Zuma.
His sentiments struck a chord with many of the ANC T-shirt-wearing attendees of the rally, who cheered as he rubbished political parties that promoted “thuggery and chaos”, without mentioning any by name.
It was his announcement that the government had resolved to limit the use of outsourcing as a source of labour that got rousing applause.
Violent protests led by university workers against outsourcing across the country in the past year seemed to have had the kind of push that workers and Cosatu had been calling for over the years.
Zuma said his government had realised outsourcing added to the problem of unemployment, though this was the sole worker issue he singled out on a day dedicated to them.
“We have also heard complaints of workers about outsourcing. That is why the ANC will address this issue because it has become very clear that outsourcing actually reduces the possibility of employment in a proper way,” he explained.
An intervention to some of the challenges faced by workers came from an unlikely source in the form of community organisation Sanco (SA National Civic Organisation).
Sanco president Richard Mdakane wants the government, labour and business to revisit their strategies around how to best assist workers and the unemployed.
SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said workers were in desperate need of reprieve as many were facing high levels of indebtedness.
He appealed to the government to consider implementing another credit amnesty, while warning them it was not a licence to acquire more .
Labour Bureau