COSATU+speakers+notes,+Jobs+and+Poverty+Campaign,+May+Day



=COSATU Speakers notes for Jobs and Poverty Campaign and May Day=


 * May is always an important month for the trade union movement. For COSATU, May 2006 is especially important. As well as celebrating May Day itself, with rallies across the country, we are using the month to take our Jobs and Poverty campaign to new heights, with strikes and marches in all the sectors of the economy.**

COSATU launched its Jobs and Poverty Campaign in 1999 in response to rising levels of unemployment and poverty we were experiencing.

Do we still need that campaign today? We keep reading that the economy is booming and we are all getting richer. But no, it is not booming for millions of working people, their families and poor communities. That’s why we need more than ever to mobilise around this campaign, because for us the hard times continue even when the economy is ‘booming’. This is why:


 * Job creation is not going fast enough to dent unemployment. Millions of our people still can’t find paid jobs.
 * More and more jobs are poorly paid and insecure.
 * Union members face huge job losses in manufacturing and mining.
 * Public servants still suffer poor working conditions, often with very heavy workloads and responsibilities.
 * In the parastatals, privatisation of ‘non-core’ businesses continues to eat away at service delivery, employment conditions and public assets.

Already, since 1999, through strikes and other protest actions, we have been able to make all South Africans aware of the crisis of unemployment. It is now regarded by all as the principal challenge our country is facing. Our campaign has forced the government and the employers into two jobs and poverty summits, the last one the 2003 Growth and Development Summit.

These summits, with others held at provincial level, did agree on a number of important interventions to try and address the crisis at hand. Recently the government announced the “Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative” (ASGISA), which also contained a number of interventions, which we support.

But these interventions have failed to resolve the principal challenges workers face - unemployment, casualisation and growing inequalities. And ASGISA too will not adequately address the challenge at hand, to the point at when we can say the problem has been resolved.

In 2005 COSATU assessed the first decade of democracy and concluded that it is big business that has mostly benefited from those ten years. Their profits have increased consistently and the chief executive officers of companies rake millions for themselves. ABSA’s CEO, Steve Booysen, received R11.03 million in the nine months to December 2005!

Workers on the other hand have seen deepening unemployment, widening inequality and grinding poverty. Far too many are still unemployed, too many are being casualised and too many remain victims of racism and other forms of discrimination in the workplace.

Unemployment is particularly harsh for young people. Almost two out of three Africans under 30 years old can’t find a paying job if they want one. That dooms our young people to lives of dependency and hardship. Most union members must support young people who can’t find work.

We keep being told that economic growth has now taken off. But the economy is still growing much more slowly than in other countries – only about half as fast as China and India, for instance.

And it is not creating enough jobs even to reach the government’s modest target of cutting unemployment in half by 2014. In the past four years, the economy has generated only just over half the number of decent jobs needed to reach that goal. Each year, 350 000 jobs earning over R1000 a month were created. But 600 000 jobs a year were needed to reach government’s target.

And remember: even if joblessness fell by half, in line with government’s goals, one in five working people would be unable to find paid work. Unemployment and poverty would still be a huge problem.

In addition, the current growth spurt seems unsustainable and does not create quality jobs. Growth in South Africa today results largely from high prices for mineral exports. As a result, a lot of foreign funds have come into the country.

That in turn fuels the overvaluation of the rand. As a result, a lot of manufacturing and parts of mining are in deep trouble, with massive lay-offs. Imports have risen to record highs, undermining our own jobs. And if international mineral prices fall, the economy could crash, throwing even more people onto the streets.

This type of growth means that good jobs are under threat. Work is being created mostly in retail and construction, where many workers are poorly paid and casual. These jobs don’t pay enough to raise a family, and they won’t support long-term development and prosperity. Now we face a new threat – the proposed WTO agreements on non-agricultural market access and on services – which if not drastically amended will lead to a catastrophe for workers and the poor in South Africa and the rest of the poor Southern half of the world.

It will make it virtually impossible for poor countries to compete with the rich and powerful Northern nations and lead to even more retrenchments, deindustrialisation and poverty.

The crisis of joblessness and poverty affects public-sector workers, too. They still face overwork, crumbling buildings, a lack of materials like medicine and textbooks. Their managers often seem to think they shouldn’t have any rights. Then our nurses, teachers and police get blamed for every problem in service delivery.

In the parastatals, workers face the continuous threat of restructuring. Government still wants to privatise ‘non-core’ businesses. It plans to sell off our national assets piecemeal, without public accountability or consultation with the unions. That is why SATAWU had to launch a massive strike to protect the public’s interests in Transnet.

In short, the boom of recent years has benefited mostly the rich, leaving workers to face high unemployment and low pay.

The security guards who are currently on strike are a typical example of workers who are underpaid and ruthlessly exploited every working day. Their demands are fully justified and we are 100% behind SATAWU. We have made an urgent call on the Minister of Labour, the CCMA and the employers to bring this bitter dispute to a speedy end, through a settlement that improves the lives of these workers.

We have declared that the second decade of democracy must belong to workers. It is easy to make declarations, but far more challenging to pursue a consistent and principled struggle to try and tilt the balance of forces in favour of the working class. To solve all these problems we need a comprehensive and coherent industrial strategy.

That is why we are taking our campaign to new heights, starting this May, because we know all too well that what we have not won in the streets we will not win in the boardrooms. This is a political campaign of the working class to ensure that they too benefit from democracy.

The organised workers are the leading detachment of the working class, who must lead the rest of the working class in this struggle, and COSATU is doing just that. Already since January 2006 COSATU locals have been compiling black lists of companies they are targeting through pickets and demonstrations. These include employers who retrench, casualise or use racism and other forms of discrimination against workers.

We have also called on public sector workers to compile lists of departments, like education, health and others, that either continue to casualise workers or fail to employ new staff and invest in the infrastructure.

We need to mobilise for decent work and an end to poverty. We need to ensure that shared growth becomes a reality. That requires the following:

1. The creation of decent, well-paid and secure jobs on a mass scale, 2. Our young people and workers must have equal access to education and skills 3. Every community, not just the leafy suburbs, must get decent government services like education, health and policing 4. The government must fulfil its promises to provide public works on a massive scale, so that unemployed people have a chance to contribute to their communities and earn a living.

The only way to ensure policies in favour of workers and the poor is to use our solidarity and our power. Only if we mobilise in support of our demands for decent work and an end to poverty can we win. That is why we have to make the Jobs and Poverty Campaign is a success.

We are taking forward this campaign during May, using May Day to mobilise for the strikes that are taking place in May. Each sector, with the unions specified, will have a strike:


 * Manufacturing: 9 May** (CEPPWAWU, FAWU, NUMSA and SACTWU)


 * Public sector: 11 May** (DENOSA, NEHAWU, PAWUSA, POPCRU, SADNU, SADTU, SAMA, SAMWU and SASAWU)


 * Mining and construction:** 16 May (NUM)


 * Services: 18 May** (CWU, PAWE, MUSA, SACCAWU, SAFPU, SATAWU, SASBO and parts of NUM and NUMSA which are organising parastatals).

I urge all workers, their families and communities to get involved in this campaign to fight the biggest social evils of our time mass unemployment, gross inequality and terrible levels of poverty.


 * Patrick Craven (Editor, Shopsteward Journal)**
 * Congress of South African Trade Unions**
 * 1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets**
 * Braamfontein, 2017**


 * P.O.Box 1019**
 * Johannesburg, 2000**
 * South Africa**


 * Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24**
 * Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940**
 * E-Mail: patrick@cosatu.org.za**

1573 words