SAFTU’s response to Business Day

The South African Federation Trade Unions strongly objects to an article in Business Day, ‘Saftu owes us papers, says Nedlac’, which asserts SAFTU failed to answer questions on the matter.

In fact SAFTU did respond, and Business Day acknowledged receipt of it, yet proceeded to publish the article without that response, despite assurances that it would include it. The federation condemns this irresponsible journalism and demands an apology.

SAFTU’s response to the questions was as follows:

**Cosatu, Fedusa and Nactu have told Business Day that they are yet to consider the application by Saftu as a labour constituency at Nedlac - due to Saftu's failure to submit required documentation that includes audited financial statements, details of affiliated unions and audited membership details.

It is untrue that the three Federations are yet to consider the application; they have gone about tailoring unlawful admission requirements to deliberately exclude SAFTU, in a similar way that they did with CONSAWU.  By adopting an exclusionary requirement of a threshold of 400 000 members and in this case they have made a 2 years minimum existence of a Federation

There has never been a request for us to submit such documents. We in fact had been on the case of NEDLAC demanding information from them to ensure that we have a complete application and to cut unnecessary delays

**Nedlac says it received Saftu's application on 6 March - is this true?

Not true, we sent our application on 10 May last year to NEDLAC and we are aware that they have been trying to  mislead the public that we have not applied. NEDLAC’s CEO have confirmed to our General Secretary, that they have received our application and having had it in their system. the Federation will be free to make copies of the Application available.

**Has Saftu sent Nedlac communication through its lawyers challenging the requirements set to it by Nedlac?

Yes we have at least for now demanded records of where the decision was taken – and by who? And NEDLAC have failed dismally in this regard

**Has Saftu submitted audited financial statements to Nedlac as part of the required financial documents?

Firstly, it has never been put to us that we need to submit AFS as part of the requirements for admission as part of the labour constituency. And had it been so we would have complied and/or make a representation as to why we may not fulfil that requirement/s

**What is Saftu's audited membership as per the information submitted to the Department of Labour?"

We were only registered legally as a Federation during the first quarter of 2017. The founding unions that affiliated to the  Federation during its inaugural congress with full mandates from their structures were 24 with a total membership of 691 540 and this is our baseline membership. For purpose of our own internal records and accuracy of our membership we have embarked on a rigorous process of verifying this figure and by the next NEC in May we will have the exact verified total membership, save to say that we have now being joined by a further 06 Unions with a membership of just more than 33 000. We will be a year old soon – say on the 21 April 2018 and we will have the end of our financial year end. 

Statement issued by Moleko Phakedi, SAFTU Deputy General Secretary, 23 March 2018