NUMSA's Response to SAIRR on Decent Work agenda!
The NATIONAL UNION OF METALWORKERS OF SOUTH AFRICA (Numsa) notes with utter disgust the bile that continues to be spewed by the extreme right-wing and conservative South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) on the pertinent question in South Africa of creating decent jobs and sustainable livelihoods.
Anthea Jeffrey, SAIRR Head of Research argues that the outright ban on labour brokering is unconstitutional since it would prevent labour brokers from pursuing their chosen trade or occupation, a right protected under section 22 of the constitution.
Jeffrey proclaims: "In fact, under the current law, an individual who works for a company as an employee of a labour broker has significant protection. Both the labour broker and the company are jointly and severally liable for any breach of the BCEA, a Bargaining Council agreement, or a sectoral determination issued by the Minister of Labour to lay down wages and working conditions".
In the world-view of Jeffrey workers under the labour brokering system are better off, than permanently employed workers! These views surprisingly are held high by some of our modern capitalists. They have lust for slavery - finish and klaar - in which workers are poorly paid, working extreme long hours, do not enjoy benefits and they are de-unionised.
The apartheid system did not subject white workers to atypical and precarious work as envied by Jeffrey! It is only reserved for the mass Black reserve army of labour in the modern day South African capitalist ‘opium of the masses'.
We repeat what we have said before: At the core of South Africa's social crisis is the fact, historically, of the condemnation of millions of Blacks and African workers in particular to inferior jobs, inferior wages and of course the unemployment and casualisation of labour. This is what informs our call for decent work for decent pay. This is what the SAIRR and its masters in the DA want to conceal in its reactionary calls for labour market liberalisation in order to reap huge profits from extremely cheap Black and African labour.
Why is Jeffrey not telling us that the majority JSE-listed companies are led by Whites males? Why is Jeffrey not telling us that the most paid South Africans are whites males? Why Jeffrey is not telling us that the wealth of our country still resides in the hands of few Whites? Why is Jeffrey not telling us that the chances of a white young graduate from Stellenbosch University getting employment are bigger than a Black graduate from University of Zululand? Why is Jeffrey not telling us that labour broker employees do not receive skills training? Why is Jeffrey silent on the fact that labour broker employees are replaced in an instant when they produce a legitimate doctor's certificate?
The decent work agenda is a shared economic transformation programme by the ANC and its Alliance partners, SACP and COSATU. This decent work agenda featured prominently in the ANC's 2009 elections manifesto, which identified five priority areas for the next five years, the first of which was "the creation of decent work and sustainable livelihoods". To many workers decent work means the following simple and fundamental pillars:
- An income which allows the working individual a good life;
- Everybody having an equal chance to develop themselves at work, and no discrimination;
- Proper and safe working conditions;
- Trade unions allowed, and a real say in work-related matters in place; and
- A state-supported social safety net for the sick, weak, elderly and
expecting women.
The propaganda fomented by Jeffrey and the DA that labour brokers are creating employment is a pinch in the wound.
Statement issued by Karl Cloete, NUMSA Deputy General Secretary, February 9 2011
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