The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Thursday expressed concern about companies using the global financial meltdown as an excuse to cut jobs and maximise profits.
”The CEC [central executive committee] noted with concern that in some cases companies are opportunistically using the international economic crisis as the excuse to embark upon previously conceived plans to cut jobs and maximise profits,” Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told a media briefing in Johannesburg.
”For example, it does not make sense that the gold mines are jumping [on] the bandwagon of cutting jobs when the price of gold remains stable.”
Vavi said all affiliated unions should ”fight relentlessly, using every means in their disposal, to resist job losses”.
”In this regard, unions must aggressively utilise the provisions of section 189 of the Labour Relations Act and, in the case of the mining industry, section 52 of Mineral Petroleum Resources Development Act.”
Cosatu warned it would monitor the ”ongoing carnage of job losses” and then explore whether to protest against the ”job-loss bloodbath”.
”No trade union movement worth its salt would just fold arms at the time when its members and workers in general are paying the price … for a crisis they did not create, a crisis, in fact, caused by inequities in the global economic system.”
Cosatu affiliate the National Union of Mineworkers estimated that between 20 000 and 50 000 jobs may be lost in the mining industry.
Another affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, told Cosatu’s CEC that 11 000 jobs were lost in the car components industry in 2008. In 2009 a further 29 700 jobs were at risk.
During the press briefing Vavi ”warmly endorsed” the ”framework for South Africa’s response to the international economic crisis”.
It was negotiated at a presidential economic joint working meeting in December 2008. — Sapa