Cosatu: Workers deserve, expect better from employers
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says it will continue the struggle for a higher minimum wage as workers deserve and expect improved pay.
Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi and ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa headed the main Workers Day rally in the Free State on Monday.
“We are here in our numbers from unions across all sectors of the economy to rededicate ourselves to serve workers and to remind all employers that workers deserve, demand and expect better,” Losi said.
Losi said the ill-treatment by employers has cost some workers their lives.
“All too often we read about a domestic worker in Johannesburg who is attacked by her employer's pit bulls and then struggles to access compensation or worse, dies from her injuries. Every week we lose a police officer in the line of duty. What then happens to their families without their breadwinners?
“Our nurses are forced to cover vacancies that are not filled, our doctors are working 48-hour shifts, our prison wardens are attacked by gangs in overcrowded prisons, our cleaners and security guards are paid little more than a slave wage.
“Our economy remains fragile. Unemployment has decreased but is still too high at 42%. Load shedding, cable theft, the vandalism of our railways, the deteriorating of basic services, the rising inflation, corruption and criminality continue to cripple the economy and threaten the ability of workers to improve their lives and take care of their families”.
Losi urged the government to increase the social distress grant for all the unemployed.
“It is workers who are paying the price for corruption and yet those who are tasked to deal with such criminality are not fit for purpose. Our task, therefore, is to advance working-class struggles without fear or favour.
“We say to government retain, extend and increase the social relief distress grant for all unemployed persons as it is the foundation for the basic income grant and one of the largest sources of relief for the poor in our country
“We must go to the elections in 2024, our most difficult elections since 1994, united and determined to defend the workers. We must go committed to tackling the failures and setbacks, geared to accelerate the struggles to improve the lives of the poor and ready to deliver a resounding victory for the alliance.”
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