SOUTH AFRICA: COSATU bitterly condemns labour law changes
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) on July 27 condemned the African National Congress (ANC) government's proposed amendments to South Africa's labour laws as "the most serious attack on hard-won workers' rights and gains since the attempt by P.W. Botha's [apartheid] regime to roll back workers' rights".
On July 26, labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana announced the government's proposed changes to three key labour laws. The amendments include scrapping overtime pay for Sunday work, allowing bargaining councils to agree to increase ordinary working hours beyond 45 hours a week, and varying all basic working conditions and standards downwards.
COSATU's hopes that the government would make mass sackings more difficult by legislating to make it compulsory for employers to negotiate with unions before retrenchments were dashed. Employers who intend to sack more than 500 workers will be required only to notify the labour minister. Companies must also inform workers before they go into liquidation.
Announcing the amendments after their endorsement by the ANC cabinet, Mdladlana said they would "send a clear signal to local and foreign investors that we are seeking to create a labour market that is efficient and stable".
COSATU said on July 27: "Instead of the relatively minor, technical amendments to fine-tune labour legislation, as had been suggested, many of the proposed amendments completely upset the delicate balance achieved through years of negotiations ... It seems like the minister and the task team has allowed itself to be stampeded by the hysteria generated by some in business and the media around claims of 'labour market inflexibility' ...
"The effect of the proposed set of amendments will be totally the opposite of that which was promised: it will facilitate and continue to promote the ongoing mass destruction of jobs; it will seriously undermine the protection which vulnerable workers have under current legislation; and it will destabilise our current system of collective bargaining."
COSATU stated that proposed amendments in relation to mass sackings merely "tinker with the current arrangement [by] allowing employers to retrench workers after going through the motions of consultation ... The proposal for 'facilitated consultation' in the case of retrenchments involving more than 500 workers, not only excludes the majority of retrenched workers, but could have the unintended consequence of speeding up the retrenchment process."
"The proposal to completely get rid of the premium for Sunday work, and therefore Sunday as a protected day of rest for workers, is a massive step backwards, and totally unacceptable. If implemented, it will create a position which is even worse than that afforded to workers under the old apartheid BCEA", COSATU noted.
"COSATU has been upbeat about gains workers have made since 1994 ... and mobilised workers for the ANC's 1999 election victory", COSATU stated. "Today, we don't know what to think. There appears to be an obsession with what the mythical 'investor' is supposed to think about our labour market and a blocking out of the realities facing millions of vulnerable workers, still oppressed by the apartheid legacy ...
"COSATU wishes to warn that the hard-won rights of mainly black workers will not willy nilly be taken away. We shall resist this attack with every possible means within our power.
"President Mandela once told the COSATU congress that if any future government tries to do to workers what the apartheid regime did, 'You must do to them what you did to that regime'. It appears that the drafters are oblivious to that reality. Our members must prepare for a battle even bigger than the one that helped to block the P.W. Botha amendments to the Labour Relations Act in 1988."
BY NORM DIXON