the rag trade
Marianne Merten
Francis Hartley spent 35 years working in Cape Town’s clothing and textile factories. She has been unemployed for almost a year since her factory was liquidated because orders were being cancelled.
She is one of the estimated 20 000 clothing and textile workers across South African who lost their jobs last year. The South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) estimates 10 000 workers have been retrenched so far this year.
Lunchtime protests this week drew attention to the job losses. The union blames the losses on companies moving to neighbouring countries where labour is cheaper and often not as organised, and on illegal products and cheap imports.
Hartley turned 60 last December. She is known as Auntie Fran to friends, factory workers and at Sactwu, where she was a shop steward.
She had been working at Peerless, one of Cape Town’s oldest factories, for 29 years when it closed last August.
“I felt sorry for the young ones,” she says. “Each week a group used to go. We used to have prayer meetings. The liquidator came to speak to us. Even the bosses cried.”
Two brothers who had worked at the factory for more than 20 years, she remembers, looked worried that day for the first time. Their father had just retired from the same factory.
Hartley blames the cheap imports and the lack of modern technology at many of the factories. The government has done little to save jobs, she adds.
“Workers are willing. Many are really good machinists. But they are illiterate. It’s heartbreaking. There is no training going on. They should have started this long ago.”
Since she started working as an examiner and later as a quality controller in the Sixties, little has changed in Cape Town’s clothing and textile industry. Hartley says she still gets phone calls from workers complaining they are not being paid for overtime.
In an industry where women are the majority of the workforce, many are employed on a casual basis. Those without permanent jobs are the first to go.
A friend and former colleague of Hartley’s who was also retrenched is now at home with her daughter – who also lost her job in one of the clothing factories – her daughter’s baby and her son’s child.
“A lot of the workers are still unemployed. Their unemployment money has now run out,” says Hartley, shaking her head. “Some of them are having a really hard time. The little money that comes in goes to the children. A lot of them are women, single parents.”
Hartley herself is getting a monthly pension of around R500. “I’m used to working for my money. You have to stand in the queue. You feel like a beggar.” In June she received a R600 one-off pay-out from the liquidated company. Apparently more money could be paid to former workers as the building has been sold off.
“I had enough. Two factories [have] closed down on me.”
But Hartley says she is lucky. She managed to raise four sons while working in the clothing sector. All of them have good jobs.
The eldest of seven siblings who grew up in a convent in Parow, she says she had to start working when her second child was on the way.
Over recent years Hartley has attended several workshops in her capacity as union shop steward. One on Aids/HIV captured her heart and she now wants to volunteer at an Aids/HIV awareness organisations. She is also on the proportional representation list as an African National Congress candidate for elections to the Tygerberg Council.
ENDS