By Simon Nare
The SA Federation of Trade Unions has called for workers to unite and fight anti-labour laws, austerity measures and proposed Draft Code Amendments, which it argues will lead to workers being dismissed at the whim of employers.
As the country celebrated Workers’ Day, Saftu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi pleaded with the working class to rise up and defend their rights, saying employees were under siege.
Vavi said workers were facing brutal austerity measures, which were ripping apart communities while corporate profiteering was driving hunger and homelessness.
“The bosses and their government are not stopping at VAT. They are unleashing a direct assault on worker rights through vicious Labour Law Amendments and a Draft Code of Good Practice on Dismissal. These are not ‘technical changes’, they are rather a blatant declaration of war on the working classs,” he warned on Thursday.
Vavi warned if these proposals were implemented, workers would be dismissed without hearings from small employers.
“Comrades, these proposals must be crushed,” he said.
Vavi acknowledged workers who protested against the value-added tax hike in Cape Town, saying their courage, sacrifice and defiance have lit a beacon of hope.
While acknowledging the Economic Freedom Fighters bid that successfully challenged the hike, Vavi denounced the Democratic Alliance, saying while the party “pretended” to oppose the tax increase, behind closed doors it was plotting to oppose progressive gains.
These included the progressive National Health Insurance, which he said the party was sabotaging to keep healthcare a luxury for the few, and the Basic Education Law Amendment Act to deny black children quality education.
And it was opposed to the Expropriation Act to maintain the status quo on land, the general secretary said.
“The DA’s game was not to defend the poor — but to protect the interests of big business, defend apartheid-era privileges and cement neoliberal capitalism. We call on workers to reject these false friends of the poor and build our own power.”
Vavi said the country was on the precipice with a broken system for a few and 63% of workers trapped below the poverty line, 23.7% starving below the food poverty line, 41.9% falling in the expanded unemployment category.
“Youth unemployment stands at 59% and black women face the highest rate of all — over 40%. In rural areas, services are collapsing and job opportunities have vanished entirely.
“Unemployment continues to reproduce the same apartheid patterns of racial, gendered and spatial inequality — hitting the poor, black, working-class majority the hardest,” he said.
Further, public services were collapsing and communities dying of hunger, crime, and diseases while corruption ran like blood through both private boardrooms and public offices.
“South Africa is not a democracy for the working class — it is an open-air prison of austerity and stolen dreams. We must tear it down and rebuild a society for the many, not the few,” Vavi said.
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