SACTWU conference debates worker living wage

05 Mar '13

7 min read

The details of our consolidated demands will now first be reported to our members, after which we will submit it to employers in our industry. It will only be released publicly thereafter.

SACTWU’s President, Themba Khumalo opened the Conference by reminding delegates that workers join unions for particularly one main reason: to improve their lives, the lives of their families and that of the communities from which they come. To realise these aims he reminded delegates that workers and their leaders need to be united and militant.

Friday, 1 March was a day of action for the Bargaining Conference with delegates staging three different protest marches in support of jobs and a living wage. The Conference marched to:

-SA Revenue Services (SARS) to protest against the continued flow of illegal imports into South Africa, which undermines local jobs and leads to de-industrialisation. We recognised the work being done by SARS to deal with this severe form of private sector corruption, but urged it to do much more, including by prosecuting high profile individuals and companies involved in under-invoicing, smuggling and transhipment

-Capitec Bank to protest against the involvement of its chairperson, Michiel le Roux, in financing efforts to attack workers’ basic rights. This includes funding the campaign by Newcastle sweatshops to stop vulnerable workers being covered by minimum wages. We demanded that Capitec publicly distances itself from this brutal attack on the living standards of clothing, textile, leather and footwear workers; andissues a public statement within one week, in support of decent work in South Africa

-The University of Cape Town’s Centre for Social Science Research (CSSR), to protest against the blatant propaganda and employer agenda-driven research it produced recently in support of the same campaign being funded by Capitec’s Chairman.

SACTWU delegates expressed their outrage on this issue, and challenged the main architects of this propaganda to live off the illegally low wages which they are prescribing for Newcastle workers. In this regard, we handed them R278 in cash, which is the typical take-home wage which many Newcastle qualified machinists’ earn for a 45 hour week. This is lower than the current prescribed minimum wage for farm and domestic workers.

-The Conference received a report from SACTWU’s Worker Health Programme, which outlined its hugely successful efforts in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS through education, voluntary, testing and counselling and voluntary male medical circumcision (MMC).

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