The Congress of South Africa Trade Unions is horrified that unemployment is still surging upwards even when we are supposed to be emerging from a recession.
Statistics SA have announced that the official jobless rate rose from 24.3% of the labour force in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 25.2% in the first quarter of 2010.
But the situation is even worse if we look at the more realistic, expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, a number which has swelled by 153 000 in the quarter. This has taken the unemployment rate up from 34.2% to 35.4% over the first three months of 2010.
The number of employed people has fallen by 171,000 - to 12.803 million, which means that 4.31 million workers are now unemployed. Each of those has an average of 4-5 dependents, which means that around 20 million people are living in poverty. It condemns them to a life of misery and a daily struggle to survive.
Such levels of unemployment also mean that all these potentially economically active workers who could be creating wealth and delivering services to the community are left idle and demoralised.
What further proof is needed that we are in the midst of a national catastrophe! It was bad enough that we lost nearly a million jobs when the economy was in the depths of a recession, a recession that as certainly not ended for the workers.
These statistics will make COSATU more determined than ever to campaign for new economic and monetary policies to tackle this national crisis. It is it even more urgent now that the Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP2) is implemented without delay, to prevent further loss of productive capacity in our economy, and to create decent jobs on a massive scale.
COSATU is reaching out to all patriotic South Africans to join a mass campaign to save, revive and expand our manufacturing industries, which is the only sustainable basis on which to create jobs on the scale needed and create a stable, prosperous country. In particular the federation will intensify its campaign for:
- A competitive and stable currency, which will allow manufacturing and other sectors of the economy, to compete on a similar footing to other developing countries;
- A major reduction in real interest rates, to bring down the currently exorbitant cost of borrowing money to set up businesses;
- A preferential procurement framework that promotes local industries and locally produced products to create country competitiveness - not to promote protectionism, but to protect and nurture our domestic industry;
- A boost to the Proudly South African campaign to persuade people to buy local;
- a reconceptualised public works programme to support sustainable low skill employment and to boost domestic demand.
These measures are critical if we are to stem the huge job losses, the threat of deindustrialisation, and to revive and expand the productive capacity which has been seriously eroded by the economic crisis.
Today's statistics make it clear beyond any doubt that saving and creating jobs is South Africa's number one priority. Government, business, labour and the community must come together to mobilise the nation to save us from a catastrophic collapse into deindustrialisation, economic decline and deepening unemployment and poverty.
Statement issued by Patrick Craven, COSATU national spokesperson, May 4 2010
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
