FAWU PRESS STATEMENT ON SUPPORT TO NUMSA STRIKE ACTION ON YOUTH WAGE SUBSIDY AND THE ROLE FAWU WILL PLAY

(18th March 2014)

Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) received a Legal Advice on participating in the NUMSA Strike and there seems to be a grey area on how far we can be involved as we were not applicants, co-applicants or joiners to the application.

It must be stated that as FAWU, we are in FULL support to the class battle against Youth Wage Subsidy romanticized as Employment Tax Incentives and other neoliberal government policies.

However, because of this ‘grey area' as advised by our lawyers, we will not go on strike action but we do encourage those of our members, who are available at their own time like those working night or afternoon shifts, to be part of the protest marches and we will assist them in getting to the picketing line and protest marches.

We will meanwhile be taking legal advice on how to be a joiner to the NUMSA application such that we become part of a protected strike action and other activities in this rolling mass action against government's neoliberal attack and capital's class terror on the working class.

While there may have been social progress, as in extended social services like water and electricity as well as expanded provision of social grants, we bemoan the rising income inequality as evidenced by a declining share of Labour to the National Income and our deteriorating to become the most unequal society in the world.

Therefore, in addition to the above, the struggle against Labour Brokers and E-tolls as well as the neoliberal masterpiece in the National Development Plan (NDP), especially its economic policy and labour market chapters, will have to continue.   

Statement issued by Katishi Masemola, FAWU General Secretary, March 18 2014

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