The South African Federation of Trade Unions said it was mobilising workers to assemble at Parliament in Cape Town on Tuesday when “the debate on the laws to emasculate the working class and its trade unions and a poverty minimum wage are due to be completed.”
Saftu said, “this will be a show of strength by workers, from all unions and federations, members of no union, casual workers, informal traders, the unemployed, progressive civil society and all South Africans.”
Parliament will be considering the National Minimum Wage and various amendments to the Labour Legislation.
“If passed these laws will shift the balance of power even more than it already is to the benefit of the employers. It effectively bans workers from exercising their constitutional right to strike and will turn them into slaves,” said Saftu spokesperson, Patrick Craven.
“We are also determined to continue the fight against the poverty national minimum wage of R20, R18, R15 and R11 an hour,” he said.
Craven said in the worlds “most unequal society, it is an outrage that the billionaire bosses of big business and their representatives on the ANC benches in Parliament expect workers to be able to live on a wage that even the President himself concedes is not a living wage.
“We demand a national minimum wage that is a living wage - the R12 500 a month demanded by the Marikana martyrs,” he said.
