Steven Ntuli
Labour Minister Tito Mboweni is struggling to find workers for his department. The problem, he says, is that he pays too little.
The former trade union leader made this candid admission at an impromptu speech at Rhodes University this week.
”I am struggling to get black workers to work at the department because they say we do not pay,” he told about 100 mainly black students at a Workers’ Day meeting organised by the Student Representative Council.
Mboweni appeared unannounced at the meeting after delivering a speech at a rally in Port Elizabeth. South African Communist Party leader and senator Thenjiwe Mtinso was billed as the main speaker.
Students cheered, sang, ululated, shouted ANC slogans and danced when Mboweni entered the Rhodes General Lecture Theatre. He told them that May 1 was a ”significant international day which should be commemorated by all workers.” He said the day had emerged as a result of intense worker struggles and was recognised as early as 1886.
He then criticised black people who employed other black people to be their domestic servants for paying ”unreasonable salaries” and then justified the low pay on grounds that ”this is my aunt”.
He said this kind of unfair labour practice was ”an abuse of social justice”. A new labour relations bill was in the making and this would protect the rights of domestic workers, farm workers, and public sector workers.
Mtinso hit out at what she termed ”new-born” trade unions — unions which were emerging only now when apartheid had ended and labour repression had eased. She warned workers against ”abusing” the strike weapon. – Ecna