SAFTU rejects and condemns the DA leader Mmusi Maimane for suggesting that the protection of workers rights causes unemployment
26 June 2019
The South African Federation of Trade Unions is not surprised by the latest misinformed and misdiagnosis of South Africa's economic crisis by the leader of the Democratic Alliance, Mr Mmusi Maimane.
It is a plain untruth and capitalist propaganda that keeps on being repeated, suggesting that the deepening crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequalities is caused by protection of workers through various pieces of labour legislation. Those pushing this propaganda always make a vague statement about "inflexible, rigid" labour laws without ever shedding light with South Africans and a world which areas of the labour laws that makes it impossible to hire workers or to get rid of them when they are not performing their duties to acceptable standards.
It is time to call out the DA and its employers the bosses of South African workers. Which aspects of the labour law create unemployment: is it the maternity and paternity leave provisions, is it regulating working hours, is it the provision of annual leave days, overtime, etc. Alternatively, they must the country scrap health and safety laws and or employment equity laws?
Every scientific survey conducted in our country amongst the employers never blames labour laws for South Africa economic woes. It is the structural deficiencies of the economy inherited from the apartheid and colonial era that reproduces poverty, inequalities and unemployment. It is the fact that the country has not changed its neo-colonial economic structure and its domination by the mining, finance and heavy chemicals complex with its heavy reliance on cheap labour that has created a massive crisis of unemployment.
Contrary to the repeated lie that has settled as the truth to the minds of Maimane, 63% of wages are set by employers without any negotiations and or consultations with workers in our country. Up to 10% of workers receive no regular increases. Only 23% of wages are set through bargaining, and only 9% of wages are set through centralised bargaining structures.
The phenomenal growth of atypical forms of employment, the slavery wages evidenced by the very low median salary for workers are all pointers that we need a tightening of labour legislation and the strengthening of trade unions to put an end to near-slave working conditions and wages.
It is not surprising that the Maimane acting like the house Nigga never ever raise a finger against runaway obscene wages and bonuses of the employers that is one of the critical factors why South Africa has become the most unequal society in the world.
SAFTU calls on workers to stop voting for their political butchers such as the DA and other bosses' parties
Issued by SAFTU, 26 June 2019
