SAFTU calls for maximum unity of the Working Class to fight job loss blood bath and worsening unemployment

17 January 2020

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU), condemns in the strongest terms the decisions of Massmart to curl 1400 jobs and close 13 stores. In the same vein, we condemned the Telkom decision to bludgeon 3000 workers.

These workers join a long queue of workers sentenced to join the 10.3 million unemployed South Africans and 63% of the population living in grinding and dehumanizing poverty. SAFTU is sick in the stomach that this trend continues unabated. These latest statements add to other notices already announced in 2019 which includes:

- Dunkin Donuts & Baskin Robbins - 120 jobs;
- Standard Bank - maximum 1,200 jobs;
- Absa - 827 jobs;
- Tongaat Hulett - 5,000 jobs;
- Hulamin Extrusions - 200 jobs;
- Sibanye-Stillwater - 3,450 jobs;
- Multichoice - 2,000 jobs;
- Alexkor - 238 jobs;
- Continental Tyre - 170 jobs

Many more jobs are under threat, including at SAA, MultiChoice, Tiso Blackstar, Pick ‘n Pay, Shoprite, Arcelor Mittal, and, most worrying of all, at Eskom, as a result of unbundling a precursor to its privatisation.

SAFTU reiterates its call to all working-class formations and the organisations of the poor to forge maximum unity and fight this scourge together. The year 2020 must be the year that will go down the history of our country as the year that the poorest and the broadest front of the working class buried fragmentation and reach out to one another to fight to say – one is enough! We are glad that more and more organisations are embracing this imperative. In the next few days, we shall announce a programme for mass mobilisation , factory and mines occupations.

Issued by Zwelenzima Vavi, General Secretary, SAFTU, 17 January 2020