COSATU statement on the unemployment figures
26 September 2018
COSATU has noted the latest disheartening Stats SA quarterly employment statistics showing that the economy lost a further 69 000 jobs in the second financial quarter. This will hopefully awaken the sleeping government mandarins entrusted with managing the economy. They need to realize that the inequities of their favoured system are condemning thousands of human beings to lives of brute survival and hopelessness.
There additional 69 000 workers that have lost their jobs represent about more than 300 000 people who have been condemned to absolute poverty, hunger and possible homelessness. That’s up to 300 000 people thrown to a world of despair while politicians pontificate and waste thousands of taxpayers’ money on their jet set lifestyles.
We look forward to another absurd attempt by apologists of the capitalist system, from the National Treasury and the Reserve Bank, to try and explain away unemployment and poverty as things unconnected with the normal workings of capitalism. We also wait to hear from them, when will they develop some testicular fortitude to confront the private sector that has enjoyed tax breaks for the last six years with no benefits for the country and its economy. The Company Income Tax was reduced in 2012/13 from 34% to 28% because we were told that jobs will be created by the “job creators” in the private sector but the opposite has happened.
COSATU has made numerous concrete proposals to help grow the economy and new industries from transport to energy, water, recycling, agriculture, auto-manufacturing, tourism, education, health and other sectors to the Presidential Jobs Summit preparatory task teams. We have yet to see business and government, the ones with capital, come to the party.
We reiterate our call for government to explore a sober immigration policy that will ensure that we do not have an immigration system that drives down wages of the poor, worsen unemployment and benefit only the rich. An incoherent immigration policy and open borders is bad for the economy and the poor workers are the ones who suffer.
COSATU also reiterates its call for a state bank and more regional and provincial banks, including not-for-profit banks. These small banks almost always focus on productive lending for productive purposes, helping small businesses to expand and create jobs.
Our big banks are not held accountable and they make decisions that are not in line with the country’s developmental agenda and they abuse their hegemony and monopoly. Large banks want to deal with large customers so that they can make large deals and in the process they sideline small businesses, which are the ones that will help us with unemployment reduction. We also want to Competition Commission to stop big banks from buying small banks as a way of killing competition.
We hope that this unemployment report will jolt government and business to awaken from their deep slumbers and realise what a crisis they have put ordinary South Africans in. We hope that they will now come with a serious plan to save workers and this stagnant economy. We hope that they will come with something more tangible than adjusting visa regulations and data charges.
Politicians must not make workers hope and wait in vain; otherwise they will join workers in the unemployment lines after the elections.
Issued by Sizwe Pamla, National Spokesperson, COSATU, 26 September 2018
