VAT hike an attack on workers – Sactwu

THE government’s 1% VAT hike came under the spotlight during the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union’s (Sactwu) recent bargaining conference.

The union said the move by the National Treasury was a “serious attack” on the living standards of its members – tens of thousands of whom live in decentralised areas, and who are the lowest earners in the manufacturing industry and mainly single mothers.

The union’s conference in Durban at the weekend also discussed a wide range of issues affecting its members, including annual hours of work, the wage model for the industry, job grading and the closed shop, among others.

Hot on the agenda was also a ban on labour brokers. “The main purpose was to consolidate our union’s national wage demands for this year’s collective bargaining season,” Sactwu general Andre Kriel said.

About 425 delegates, representing more than 100 000 Sactwu members nationally, attended the conference.

“We are of the view that the burden of budget shortfall should have been borne by the rich, not by the poor. In this regard, we will demand from capital in our industry (the bosses), over and above our normal wage demands, an extra 1% wage increase in order to negate the regressive effects of the VAT increase on our members.

“We will demand that a ban on labour brokers in our industry be included in all our collective bargaining agreements. This is to strengthen the advances already made in the Labour Relations Act, but which we regard as insufficient to rid society of this unacceptable slave labour practice.

“We will now, as a next step, submit our 2018 wage demands to our employers.” secretary