Response to economy not working

Cosatu slams government

COSATU believes the government is not doing enough to boost the country’s economy and create jobs, and has cited this as a reason for the ANC performing poorly during the elections.

Even though the state has adopted a nine-point plan and has held high-level meetings with the country’s CEOs, the economy continues to limp along with growth expected to be below 1% this year. More than half a million jobs have already been lost this year.

After a meeting of its central executive committee (CEC) this week, the federation’s general secretary, Bheki Nthshalintshali, said the government’s “pedestrian response” to the economic crisis was not working.

“The CEC wants to remind government and big business that behind the job statistics are families and communities whose lives are being ravaged by these massive retrenchments,” he said.

“These are the same people and voters, who have demonstrated their anger and frustrations at the ballot box….”

A jobs summit arranged by the National Economic, Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) is expected to be held later this year after a push from Cosatu for the meeting.

Ntshalintshali said the federation expected the meeting to address the ongoing investment strike by big business and also policies that had resulted in the economic stagnation and job losses.

He said Cosatu was aware the jobs summit alone would not address the crisis, and the federation was working on a number of projects to help the situation.

These included setting up teams to interrogate obstacles to growth.

Ntshalintshali said there would also be another Nedlac summit next month where social partners had asked people from other countries to do a critique on South Africa’s socioeconomic policies and the reasons why they were not being implemented properly.

The federation would also take its fight for decent work to the streets.

It plans on marking International Decent Work Day on October 7 with a number of mass action campaigns. They will focus on the banning of labour brokers, the scrapping of e-tolls including toll gates, the implementation of a national minimum wage and the National Health Insurance, the scrapping of the Taxation Laws Amendment Act.

Cosatu deputy general secretary, Solly Phetoe, said the federation was also looking at ways of amending laws so that employers were stopped from easily giving workers the boot.

He told reporters that despite massive retrenchments, Cosatu’s recruitment drive was paying off because it had managed to keep its membership numbers stable.