COSATU is fully behind the planned massive NUM march against privatisation, retrenchments, and corporate welfare policies
14 November 2018
The Congress of South African Trade Unions is calling on all its members to rally behind the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in its upcoming inter-sectoral march to the Unions Building in Pretoria on the 17th of November 2018.
This march is about pushing back against the decimation of jobs by the mining, energy and construction sectors. Government interventions have been marginal at best and what we continue to see is continuation of policies that perpetuate the corporate welfare of the last two decades.
Over the past two decades, the Neoliberal regime of accumulation has failed to resolve the systemic crisis of capitalism. In an attempt at restoring profitability, we are starting to see the destruction of the state, urge to privatise state entities and massive retrenchments that add to our already high unemployment ,particularly among the women and young workers.
The cost of living is going through the roof and workers are being forced to pay for the mistake of others. There is no appetite to deal with rampant corruption, wasteful expenditure and gross mismanagement of public resources. Instead, we see more and more attacks against our labour rights, as evidenced by naked attempts to eradicate our right to bargain collectively and to strike.
Workers are tired of hearing excuses from the apologists for the capitalist system that is plunging more and more people into poverty. Government cannot continue to explain away poverty as a thing unconnected with the normal workings of capitalism; the system that they so warmly embrace.
COSATU is urging workers to unite and push back against the reckless introduction of automation, and reject the introduction of technological 'solutions' that are imposed with no regard for local economies and the people of this country. The uncontrolled mechanisation and automation, accompanied by ill thought out and rushed policy interventions are bringing colossal misery to millions of workers and their families.
Let us unite and support each other on the picket lines to avoid meeting each other on the unemployment line.
Issued by Sizwe Pamla, National Spokesperson, COSATU, 14 November 2018
