Cosatu protests against labour brokers

Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) members will hold demonstrations countrywide on Wednesday to demand the banning of labour brokers.

“There will be pickets and demonstrations, mainly during lunch breaks, countrywide,” said Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven.

The mass action is part of a global worker protest organised by the International Trade Union Confederation.

“Here in South Africa the focus will be on labour broking, which Cosatu has vowed to see outlawed,” the union federation said in a statement.

“Cosatu totally agrees with Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana’s description of labour broking as ‘a form of human trafficking, and an extreme form of free-market capitalism which reduces workers to commodities that can be traded for profit as if they were meat or vegetables’.”—Sapa