Cape Town - Members of the Cosatu-affiliated Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) convened in Cape Town on Wednesday where the union held a protest to voice concerns about proposed labour law amendments recently tabled at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac).
The protest was held outside the Southern Sun Hotel where Sactwu’s National Bargaining Conference was also under way.
“As Cosatu, we are deeply angered that the Department of Employment and Labour has tabled a shopping list of proposed amendments to our labour laws at Nedlac. These laws will gut all the progressive laws that unions have struggled to win for workers over many decades,” said Cosatu deputy president Mike Shingange, who was at the protest.
Some of the government’s proposals included exempting SMMEs from collective bargaining, reducing retrenchment payments, extending probation periods for new workers and removing protections from dismissals and retrenchments rights from them, as well as allowing for dismissals to be expedited.
Shingange said these proposals would also remove and reduce the labour rights and protections of workers above a certain income and who were considered to be white collar workers, and increase national minimum wage exemption amounts from 10% to 30%.
“These proposals happen while the Ministry for Employment and Labour only increased the Basic Conditions of Employment Act annual income threshold twice since 2014,” he said.
At the picket, Sactwu national collective bargaining officer Fachmy Abrahams said they took time out of the conference to show their discontent with the proposed labour law amendments as they seemed to roll back the kind of protection workers currently had in the Labour Relations Act.
“We have come through hard fights and we are proud that as a country we protect and respect worker rights; what is happening now is that these proposals want to roll that back and that is not something that we as organised labour are going to stand for.”
At the conference, Western Cape Sactwu member Unathi Mlamla gave feedback to Cosatu and said they canvassed for the ANC all these years, believing that it had the working class’s interests at heart but now the same government and ANC they canvassed for was taking away their rights as the working class and the rights that they fought so hard for.
While it was still early days for the proposed labour law amendments, Abrahams said it was important to show their discontentment right from the beginning as Cosatu already commenced discussions on proposals they thought should be included in new labour law legislation.
“We should strengthen worker rights, not erode them,” he said.
