NUMSA TO STRIKE FOR YOUTH JOBS ON MARCH 19, 2014
24 February 2014
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa's (Numsa) representing 341 150 members will come out on a protected socio-economic strike on Wednesday 19 March 2014 to demand jobs for South Africa's youth. This is the first of a series of rolling socio-economic strikes that the union decided on at its Special National Congress in December 2013. Since November 2013, Numsa has been involved in negotiations with government at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) where the union objected to the Employment Tax Incentive Bill that government had tabled in parliament. Contrary to the NEDLAC Act of 1994 that requires that socio-economic policies be discussed with labour, business and community constituencies within the social dialogue body before they are tabled before the legislature, government took the Bill to parliament.
With the promulgation of the Bill in December 2013, Numsa decided to go on strike on Wednesday 26 February and filed notice for such action in terms Section 77 of Labour Relations Act (LRA). Realising that the proposed strike was to coincide with Minister Pravin Gordhan's Budget Speech, government's representative did everything in their power to stall so that the union does not meet the 14-day notice period required by NEDLAC protocols. Government's bureaucrats and Ministers realised that a national strike on Budget Day had the potential to blow away the ideological fog of "we have a good story to tell", that is being spread even though our people, especially the workers and the poor, live in scandalous conditions as they were under apartheid.
Why Numsa sees the tax incentive scheme as a false solution to youth unemployment?
Since the publication of the proposed legislation, Numsa has been against the tax incentive scheme arguing that the scheme was a false solution to the burning crisis of youth unemployment. Through the scheme, government will simply hand over billions of Rands to employers, in the form of a tax rebates, while making no dent on high levels of youth unemployment. The union consistently argued that the tax incentive scheme will lead to the following negative consequences;