The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Friday, October 20, 1967 — The African Trade Union Congress of the Rhodesia yesterday supported Rhodesian trade union leaders who are opposed to job reservation.

Mr Phineas Sithole , the ATUC vice president, said any attempt by the Minister of Labour to introduce racial legislation would be strongly opposed by the country’s African labour movement.

He was supporting recent remarks on job reservation by Mr H Bloomfield, president of the Trade Union Congress of Rhodesia, and Mr Pat Lennon, general secretary of the Rhodesia Railway Workers’ Union.

Mr Sithole said: “Job reservation has always been considered an adequate shield to protect workers from others who are prepared to work at lower rates of pay.

“The clamour for separate racial industrial councils in Rhodesia is an attempt to achieve this very objective”.

Mr Sithole said comparative figures for manufacturing industries in South Africa showed that, whereas in 1960, 33 percent of the economic workforce was white, the figure had dropped to 25 percent in 1966.

Figures for the construction industry had dropped from 25 percent to 20 percent.

In the field of transportation, 56 percent of the labour force was white in 1960.

Today in the South African Railways and Harbours, it has dropped to 51 percent, he said.

Mr Sithole said the rate for the job was the only safeguard against falling wages in industrial sectors where competition at lower rates could become a factor on management’s decisions on employment.