SACP message of solidarity with Transnet workers
14 October 2022
The South African Communist Party (SACP) stands in solidarity with Transnet workers in the exercise of their collective bargaining process rights. A Congress of South African Trade Unions affiliate, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), is among the trade unions leading the workers, which include the United National Transport Union.
The SACP denounces the threat of retrenchments by the Transnet management, which amounts to intimidation. The strike at Transnet is part of its collective bargaining process, a key component of our labour law. The workers put forward their bargaining demands seeking an acceptable settlement to take care of their needs and dependents amid the rising cost of living and the South African Reserve Bank worsening matters by hiking interest rates.
Solly Mapaila, SACP General Secretary, said: “The SACP applauds SATAWU and the other trade unions it has forged solidarity with for including the demands against privatisation and retrenchments in the bargaining process”.
The SACP supports the united front forged by the trade unions at Transnet and urges them to build and take their unity to greater heights, to advance and defend the common interests of the workers. The trade union movement at Transnet needs to expand its activity to tackle the entire neoliberal policy agenda, which seeks to insinuate private profit-driven competition against Transnet in its rail infrastructure network. The neoliberal agenda will impact negatively on the Transnet workers who will be affected.
South Africa needs a capable democratic developmental state, a state with its own productive capacity. In contradiction, neoliberal policy reforms seek to convert the network infrastructure of state-owned enterprises and the state at large into a field of private capital accumulation. The agenda to shift the state from being a productive force to a procurer also takes place through tenderisation, converting the functions of the state and those of its entities into private enterprise in favour of profit-driven interests. This served the interests of state capture during its height, crippling many public entities.
At its 15th National Congress held in mid-July, the SACP resolved to build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor as a pillar to deepen the struggle to achieve the immediate interests and aims of the workers and poor and to take care of the future of the working-class in the here and now. The SACP urges the trade unions and workers individually to join this effort to build wider working-class unity.
Issued by Solly Mapaila, the SACP General Secretary, 14 October 2022
