COSATU to intensify its campaign in support of  vulnerable workers, especially farm workers

10 August 2016

The Congress of South African Trade Unions is planning to intensify and heighten its campaign of visiting and exposing the exploitation of vulnerable workers in the various sectors of the economy. The federation currently has an ongoing campaign that seeks to push back against the exploitation of vulnerable workers, especially farm workers, most of whom are working in virtual slavery conditions.

The federation shall be extending this campaign to include such sectors such as catering, wholesale, hotel, cleaning and private security. We are continuing to follow up court cases that have been opened in Mpumalanga and North West against abusive farm owners, including those that threatened their employees and stopped them from participating in the Local Government Elections. The racist farmers in North West and Mpumalanga in particular are deliberately undermining our labour laws and are living according to their own laws. We are going on an offensive to stop this blatant arrogance.

We shall campaign to ensure that kids of farmer workers have access to schools and scholar transport. Farm workers have amongst the lowest levels of formal education and training and this means their children are often forced to work on the same farms to prevent them being evicted.

Amongst some of our demands will be an improvement in the enforcement of health and safety rights on the farms. Seasonal farm workers should have access to housing and basic services on farms , including access to UIF. We also shall demand that all farmers working with government should address the issue of poorly maintained, sub-standard houses ,with no basic services, like water, sanitation and electricity that are used by farm workers.

The federation has been deeply troubled to discover that most workers are afraid to speak out ,and expose the abuse they suffer at the hands of their employers because some labour inspectors are colluding with farmers. We shall intensify our work to expose all those labour inspectors and police officers , who are failing to do their work and are colluding with employers.

Most vulnerable workers have been let down badly by the system because the SAPS ,government departments including the Human Rights Commission have failed to adequately and timeously investigate discrimination, labour and human rights violations  that have been reported to them. We call on these institutions to investigate cases of collusion with employers by some of their workers.

Workers should understand that none other than themselves can advance and defend their interests and aspirations. It is unacceptable that more than half of all the workers, their wage and conditions of work are solely determined by the employers because they are unorganised. COSATU plans to coordinate all its affiliates to ensure that they work to organise and defend community health care workers, EPWP workers, domestic workers, including foreign nationals, who tend to make the bigger proportion of the vulnerable sections of the labour force. We shall work with them {affiliates} to develop and implement programmes targeting at these categories of workers.

We call on the IEC and the SAPS to help all those workers who ,were denied their rights to vote during the election day . We call on the minister of labour and the minister of home affairs to demand full detailed reports on the workplace inspections. These inspections should detail the conditions of workers ,including foreign workers We call workers themselves to report all cases of abusive ,including those of their children ,who are denied their rights to go to school .

The issue of workers being denied their rights to vote in Skeerpoort , is a worry factor for COSATU and  we are not going to allow it to be left unattended. There are  many of vulnerable workers in the  retail , domestic, security sectors that were refused the right  to vote by employers . We commit to fight to the bitter end for that which belongs to the workers and the working class as a whole

Issued by Sizwe Pamla, COSATU national spokesperson, 10 August 2016