‘DA has proposed a phony solution’
THE Congress of South African Trade Unions is confident that no workers will be deceived by the arguments of the DA, whose programme is pro-business and antiworker, pro-rich and anti-poor.
If ever the DA were to come to power, they would cut wages and strip workers of their rights. Let us never forget Helen Zille’s warning to the government that they will never emulate the levels of growth shown by countries like China unless they stand up to Cosatu.
Of course, Cosatu is concerned about the intolerable levels of youth unemployment. It has done everything possible to bring to the attention of the country this unfolding tragedy.
We have called protest strikes, initiated jobs summits, called on workers to donate one day’s wages, collected more than R120 million and in the process created more than 40 000 jobs, and initiated policy initiatives such as the RDP, IPAP and the NGP.
If we do not create jobs for the young unemployed we are heading for a national catastrophe. We are sitting on a ticking bomb, which is already starting to explode in violent service-delivery protests. That is why we are working with the government and business on genuine policies to create decent jobs for young South Africans and give them hope for the future.
Cosatu has signed four accords with the government and business, on basic education, skills development, the green economy and local procurement, all of which relate to job creation. We are striving vigorously to reach the targets set in these accords to create jobs and improve the lives of workers and the poor. But these must be real new jobs for the youth, working to rebuild our infrastructure, providing basic services for our poor communities and developing their skills. That is why we welcome the government’s bold new infrastructure development plans which can create many new jobs in its roll-out and lay the foundations of a modern, manufacturing-based economy.
The DA has made no attempt to find real solutions to the problem, but proposes this completely bogus “solution” – a youth wage subsidy. They have made no attempt to find real solutions, but propose a phony “solution” which will do nothing to solve the problem of youth unemployment. It is based on the false premise that the cause of high unemployment is the high cost of labour and restrictive labour laws that make it too hard to fire workers.
They simplistically imagine that if the taxpayers provide employers with cheap labour, by handing out generous hand-outs, they will create thousands of new jobs for young workers while retaining all their current older workers.
The obvious reality is that employers will employ more young workers so they can line their pockets with the generous subsidy, while retrenching an equal or greater number of older workers and thus create no more jobs overall. Then, when these new young workers reach the age limit for the subsidy they can be thrown out and replaced by a new set of subsidised workers.
It is a bogus, knee-jerk “solution”, which pretends to be tackling the problem by waving a magic wand at it, but actually solves nothing and creates a two-tier labour market.
It is in line with all the DA’S other policies. In their 2009 election manifesto they warned what the workers would have to suffer if ever they came to power, when they promised their rich and big business constituency that they would: Reduce corporate taxes – that is, make the poor pay more, so the rich can pay less.
Reduce the labour laws to make it easy for employers to hire and fire workers – that is, take us back to apartheid super-exploitation. Introduce a six-month probation period in which employers can easily dismiss workers without any recourse.
The DA’S 2004 election manifesto called for a second tier of workers whose wages would be set at a level equivalent to the state old-age pension. The youth wage subsidy is a move in the same direction.
The illusion that structural problems of unemployment can be remedied by waving a magic wand to deregulate the labour market is justified by neither historical facts nor current experience.
Unemployment is not caused by the high cost of labour, nor trade unions, nor low labour productivity, nor inadequate skills of the workforce, but the nature of our economic structure, which is overdependent on the export of raw materials, and our failure to develop manufacturing industry.
It is also a consequence of the low level of demand for goods and services, reflecting the lack of spending power by the majority of South Africans, as a result of high unemployment and low wages.
A new growth path for SA cannot be based on a race to the bottom by reducing demand even further by cutting wages, nor by an attack on workers’ rights, as is being advocated by the DA. A new growth path must be based on decent work, as agreed in Polokwane, and this is what workers expect from the ANCled government.
The bases for these differences are rooted in the fact that while Cosatu represents the working class and the poor, the DA speaks for big business, the wealthy and the privileged. That is why we can see no benefit in discussing these matters with them.