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7 March, 2012
Some 100,000 union workers in South Africa will march today, 7 March, for two causes – an outright ban on labour brokers and scrapping the planed e-tolling, or pay-to-drive on Gauteng freeways. Some 32 manifestations will occur today across the country today in actions sponsored by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
The strike is against a government recommendation that failed to get consensus in year-long discussions before the national Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) that would allow employers to use workers provided by labour brokers for up to six months.
COSATU is also protesting turning the country’s first motorways into toll roads, something that clearly turns public services into commodities. “These roads are national assets for the use of the people of South Africa,” said COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, “not a commodity which can be used to make profits at our great expense.”
Zwelinzima Vavi
COSATU is intent at ending the practice of labour brokering, which it compares to human trafficking. Statistics now show that one-third of all South African workers are temporary employees without social benefits. COSATU wants the responsibility of labour brokers to be limited to matching employees for employers, and that responsibility must end at the door to the workplace.
COSATU believes precarious workers can easily be intimidated into not joining a union and Vavi said that’s why the organisation’s Central Executive Committee is insisting “that every effort is made to mobilise workers employed by labour brokers to join actions on 7 March.”
In Johannesburg, Vavi, who will stand for re-election at COSATU come the union confederation’s congress in September, will lead marchers starting at the Library Gardens to the Gauteng premier’s office, and then past the offices of the Chamber of Mines and the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation. Multiple marches will be held in various cities in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and other provinces.