The South African Congress of Trade Unions (Cosatu) is concerned that the latest Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES) again show only very slow growth in formal employment, despite the growth in the economy in the past six months, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to the QES, formal employment rose by about only 300Â 000 in the year to March 2006. “That is only about half as fast as required to meet the Asgi-SA (Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative-South Africa) target of halving unemployment by 2014,” Cosatu said.
“The data confirms our concerns about the September 1995 Labour Force Survey [LFS]. This particular LFS was coupled with a survey on informal employment, which apparently led to a significant exaggeration in the growth in the informal sector. As a result, it substantially overstated overall employment growth.”
According to Cosatu, the income figures in the QES show that average monthly pay in the formal sector remained well under R2Â 000 per month, although it had risen “appreciably” in the past year.
“Overall, the QES findings again underscore that the growth spurt of the past few years has done far too little to benefit the majority of working people and the poor.
“Instead, as in the past, economic growth continues to enrich a minority, without substantially denting unemployment or creating decent work on the scale needed to address the massive national crisis of joblessness and poverty,” Cosatu said.
For this reason — Cosatu added — and in view of the refusal of business and the state to address the concerns of workers, the unemployed and the poor, the trade-union federation would continue, and take to new heights, its Jobs and Poverty Campaign, which demanded much stronger measures to support equitable growth.
“Cosatu’s May 2006 central executive committee (CEC) meeting adopted a programme of action for the next phase that will intensify the campaign until all our demands are met,” it said.
This will include submitting a new Section 77 notice to the National Economic Development and Labour Council calling for negotiations on Cosatu’s demands; discussing the campaign at Cosatu’s forthcoming provincial and national congresses; and convening local shop-steward councils, socialist forums, workplace and industrial general meetings to plan how to take the fight to the companies and government departments that have been blacklisted by the local shop-stewards’ councils.
In addition, Cosatu will organise meetings of the mass-democratic movement to form a broad coalition against unemployment and poverty and convene a bilateral meeting with the African National Congress to discuss the trade-union federation’s demands.
“The CEC called on Cosatu members to use all these meetings to debate the suggestion that we intensify the Jobs and Poverty Campaign through strikes for two or three days a week, for as long as it takes to get a response to our demands.
“All these debates will culminate at our national congress on September 18 to 21, which will adopt a programme of action for the coming three years to ensure that the second decade of democracy belongs to workers and the poor,” the statement concluded. — I-Net Bridge