NUMSA RESPONSE TO CAPE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) refutes the spurious utterances made by the Cape Chamber of Commerce that the ongoing industrial action by engineering workers as led by NUMSA has no impact in the industry.

These utterances by the Cape Chamber of Commerce are a hoax and they are littered with lies. The ongoing industrial action by our more than 120 000 members across the country has brought the engineering and other related sectors to a standstill and the sector is losing billions of Rands a day in revenue.

Our industrial action will go on until the malodorous arrogant and big-headed engineering profiteers concede to all our demands as encapsulated in the Memorandum of Demands we delivered to them on the 4 July 2011, Johannesburg, Gauteng province.

The cheap Nazi propaganda as propagated by the Cape Chamber of Commerce will not deter our members from staying away from work. This is a battle we are prepared to fight until the end. It should be understood clearly that our industrial action forms part of the COSATU-led Living Wage campaign geared towards improving the socio-economic conditions of workers and their families.

This industrial action has demonstrated high levels of unity amongst the workers in their fight for a living wage and total ban of labour brokers in the industry. We call on the Cape Chamber of Commerce to stop being a barking poodle of the engineering oligarchy, and force the employers as represented by SEIFSA to come back to the negotiating table with an intention of settling the dispute and meet workers demands.

We call on our members to remain vigilant and focus on the strike as we push the engineering profiteers to meet our demands.

Forward ever, backward never!

Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, NUMSA National Spokesperson, July 6 2011

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