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The Congress of South African Trade Union has addressed workers who have been retrenched unfairly at Brits Bag Manufacturing. Some were dismissed verbally by the employer in June 2014 and others on 30th September 2014.
Both the retrenchments and verbal dismissals are selective to those who belong to the COSATU affiliate SACTWU, and those who are not in the unions are working under exploitation.

The company has been known as an exploiter since its establishment in the Moses Kotana and Madibeng municipalities in the Brits area. The company goes to the extent of undermining legislation, in particular the Basic Conditions of Employment and Labour Relations Acts and laws that deal with UIF.

During its unfair retrenchments in 2008, the company did not follow the law in terms of Section 189 of the LRA, by not registering workers as per the UIF laws. Many workers lost their UIF money due to that corruption and fraud by the employer, which they want to do again by retrenching them and later recalling them and not registering them with the UIF.
It is also reported that the company was involved in similar fraud and exploitation when it was called Land Pack. Many workers were retrenched and called back without being registered with the UIF for many months and later retrenched again. This is super-exploitation and union bashing by the company whose HR manager is an African black person exploiting his own sisters and brothers.

We call on all workers not to claim their UIF, not claim any money from the company, until we have done a proper investigations into what happened in 2008 and what happened in 2014.

We call on our Department of Labour UIF section and the police to investigate the matter and take action against the company for fraud.

We call on our union SACTWU to submit the cases of unfair dismissal under Section 189 of the LRA and jointly COSATU and SACTWU will take mass action on the campaign against the company on the exploitation of workers and union bashing.

We are starting our mobilisation jointly with the community to expose the company on a march which will take place on 29th 0ctober 2014 right at the main gates of the company both in Brits and Mogwase. We call on the company to reinstate all our members and, if indeed there is a need for retrenchment, follow the procedure with a consultation process, including involving the CCMA.
- See more at: http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=9668#sthash.teYSXQGP.dpuf

Issued by COSATU