South Africa’s Solidarity trade union on Friday announced that it was requesting that Minister of Labour Membathisi convene a national indaba where the problems that arose out of the implementation of affirmative action can be dealt with.
The union stated that the purpose of such a gathering must be to find a win-win solution for the racial problems that the country still experiences.
This follows Thursday’s condemnation by the minister of trade unions that used racism in order to mobilise workers. The minister was agreeing with concerns raised by Fedusa General Secretary Chez Milani over the weekend regarding the activities of the all-white Solidarity Unio.
According to Solidarity spokesperson Dirk Hermann, the union does not mobilise members on the basis of racial issues, but rather try to solve the high levels of alienation that its members experience in the workplace due to affirmative action.
“A solution for the problem must be found in order to stop the continuous allegations of racism that are still made by certain parts of the community.”
Hermann said that he’s not surprised by the allegations of Chez Milani, general secretary of the union federation Fedusa, on which the minister based his statement.
According to Hermann more than 50 000 of Fedusa’s members joined Solidarity over the last few years. Solidarity’s number of members have grown with more that 80 000 since 1994.
“Therefore it is clear why Milani start to use race as his last resort in order to save his union. We want to call on Fedusa to stop making allegations based on race and to rather try and improve its service delivery to members.”
He said Solidarity believes that affirmative action must take place in such a way that it does not create new forms of discrimination. “We would like to talk to the minister about ways in which we can develop a model to prevent this.” – I-Net Bridge