Johannesburg - Cosatu has expressed concern over the Quarterly Employment Statistics for the first quarter of 2021, which shows that employment decreased by (-0.1%) quarter-on-quarter.
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said the results also showed a decrease in employment by (-5.4%) year-on-year, between March 2020 and March 2021. The grim statistics are released as the country battles Covid-19 and businesses are struggling to operate under level 4 of the lockdown.
“The unemployment numbers reflect not just the devastating impact of Covid-19 but also of the government’s ‘misguided austerity strategy’, that is geared towards containing public-debt and reducing budget deficit, instead of achieving structural economic transformation, through diversifying and building the productive capacity of the economy,” Pamla said.
He said the unemployment statistics show that there was no real commitment to accelerating shared economic growth, and in transforming the structures of production and ownership by government.
“The government continues to hand over generous and unconditional tax breaks and employment subsidies, like the Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) and the Youth Employment Scheme (YES) programme to the private sector, and they use that money to accelerate automation and mechanisation, in some situations, to replace older workers. In an era of mechanisation and automation, we cannot overly rely on big corporations to help us with employment creation,” said Pamla.
Pamla said, to make a dent in unemployment and close the growing inequality, the country needs an activist government and a democratic developmental state, that is capable of intervening effectively to transform economic relations.
“This is impossible in an environment where state-owned entities (SOEs) and development finance institutions have been weakened and have become ineffectual. The current privatisation and fragmentation of SOEs will only worsen unemployment.”
Spokesperson for the SA Federation of Trade Unions Trevor Shaku said the federation was also concerned about the job crisis in the country, especially amid the pandemic. “Even though there seems to be a consistency in the creation of new jobs – in this quarter, it did not come even close to what it was in the first quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2019,” Shaku said.
The Star