Growing unemployment will make it difficult for the African National Congress (ANC) to meet its target of halving unemployment and poverty within the first two decades of freedom, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Wednesday.
”The incoming ANC government has the daunting task of realising its election promise of creating decent work for all in a climate where the economy is shedding employment at a frightening pace,” the trade union federation said in a statement.
The Cosatu was reacting to a Statistics South Africa survey released on Tuesday, indicating that the unemployment rate rose to 23,5% in the first quarter of 2009 from 21,9% in the previous three months.
”Under the 2005 Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative, government suggested that if economic growth rose to 6%by 2009, it would be possible to cut down unemployment to around two million or 14% of the labour force by 2014.
”At its apex of job creation between 2004 and 2006, the economy was only able to generate half a million jobs a year, yet if the current survey is anything to go by, the economy is shedding at least half of that number every three months,” Cosatu said.
According to the Pretoria-based agency’s quarterly labour survey, a total of 208 000 people living in South Africa lost their jobs between the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009.
Losses occurred both in the formal (88 000) and in the informal (96 000) sectors. Agriculture and private households accounted for the other losses.
”It is alarming that even this sector, which has traditionally offered a minimal degree of livelihood for retrenched workers and those who cannot find employment in the formal sector, is now said to be shedding jobs as well,” Cosatu said.
With no source of income, workers will turn to family members receiving state social grants, thus exhausting the little money offered.
”Often those who lose jobs in the mines, factories and supermarkets end up in the informal sector where they set up small survivalist enterprises. As more people are thrown out of work they will have to rely on their limited unemployment insurance benefits, and once these are exhausted, on those family members already on the state’s grant system,” it said.
The increased unemployment rate was also likely to spark tensions in the labour market as employees would start demanding higher wages to counteract the high cost of living while their employers would point to the worsening economic situation as an excuse to curb wage increases, Cosatu said. — Sapa