TRAFFIC AND TRAFFICKERS
Trade union federation to fight labour broking and tolls
Zwelinzima Vavi says Cosatu’s protest against e-tolls and labour brokers is gearing up
WEDNESDAY’S general strike against labour brokers, casualisation of labour, attempts to restrict the right to strike and the imposition of e-tolling had overwhelming support from all affiliates and provinces, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said yesterday.
“It’s all systems go for the biggest mass protest in years,” he said.
Vavi said members of the labour federation were determined to put an end to labour broking, a practice he said was nothing less than human trafficking, reducing workers to commodities hired out to companies like sacks of potatoes, usually with no benefits, and being paid poverty wages and with no job security.
“These workers can easily be intimidated into not joining a union and exercising their constitutional right to organise, bargain and strike.
“That is why the (Cosatu) central executive committee (CEC) insisted that every effort must be made to mobilise workers employed by labour brokers to join the action on March 7,” he said at a press conference.
He said Cosatu was not opposed to agencies recruiting people with scarce skills but once they had found an employee a job, they must be paid and bid good bye.
“One day under a labour broker is one day too many.”
He said workers were also determined to stop the commodification of public services through the imposition of e-tolling on Gauteng highways.
Vavi said: “These roads are national assets for the use of the people of South Africa, not a commodity which can be used to make profits at our great expense. We utterly condemn the attempts by a government spokesperson to try to intimidate motorists into buying e-tags, and Sanral’s (the SA National Roads Agency Limited’s) threat to gain access to bank accounts and credit ratings to force people to pay.”
The government spokesman he referred to is Jimmy Manyi, who told a postcabinet press briefing last week that e-tolling was a “fact of life” and “people must get used to it”. He also warned that legal action would be taken against those who refused to pay.
Vavi said the government’s proposals for making amendments to the Labour Relations Act were regrettable.
These would make unions liable for damage caused during a demonstration.
Vavi said Cosatu acknowledged that violence and intimidation had no place in strikes and society in general and had instructed all affiliates and provincial structures to develop education programmes and campaigns to educate members on their responsibility to keep all strikes and demonstrations violence free.
“But the CEC insisted that the blame for violence during strikes cannot simply be apportioned to the workers on strike because violence is a social problem, extending beyond the labour market, which will not be solved by a quick knee-jerk reaction,” he said.
He said Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant had listened to Cosatu’s arguments and had promised to respond.