Cosatu will hold a series of socio-economic strikes against soaring food, fuel and electricity prices over the next month.
The country’s largest trade union federation wants business and government to find methods to protect workers and the poor from declining standards of living.
The strikes mirror protests around the world as the poor buckle under the fallout from rising food prices and the stratospheric cost of oil. Retrenchments are rising as business confidence falls and closures abound.
The Mail & Guardian reported last month that more than 50 vehicle dealerships across the country have shut down their operations since the beginning of the year and that some companies were contemplating further retrenchments and closures in the coming months to cope with the deteriorating economic situation.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the fuel and electricity increases would not only have a devaÂÂstating impact on the cost of living of South African citizens but would have a knock-on effect on the cost of transport and manufactured goods.
”These price increases are not only ruining the lives of millions of poor families but also putting our economic future in jeopardy,” said Craven.
”They are slamming the brakes on economic growth and job creation. There is a growing danger that employers, faced with rising costs, will try to balance their books by retrenching workers. Some may have to close altogether.”
He said that continuous price increases would sabotage any chance of achieving the government’s goal of halving unemployment by 2014.
Craven said Cosatu was prepared to fight against any further job losses. ”Unemployment remains far too high and too many of the small and shrinking number of jobs are casual, temporary, insecure and low-paid.
As a result we have a growing army of working poor who, combined with the unemployed, constitute more than 20-million people living in poverty,” Craven said.
The strikes are set to begin in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal next Wednesday, followed by the rest of the provinces a week later.
Cosatu’s demands
- Minimum wages for workers covered by sectoral determinations should be increased sufficiently to compensate workers for the drop in their living standards in the past year.
- Immediate increase of social grants by at least the current rate of inflation to cushion the poorest families from the effect of rocketing prices
- A basic income grant must be introduced to give a minimum income to those who do not qualify for social grants at present.
- Tougher action must be taken against companies and their individual directors who are found guilty of price-fixing, and they must be obliged to bring their prices down.
Sasol and Arcelor Mittal must be renationalised and compelled to sell their petrol and steel at a price that reflects their cost of production rather than the inflated world market price.