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COSATU: COSATU’s SONA 2016 expectations

Sidumo Dlamini
Sidumo Dlamini

10th February 2016

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The Congress of South African Trade Unions is looking forward with expectancy to President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address, {SONA} tomorrow, 11 February 2016 in Parliament. This SONA comes at a time when our economy is on its knees and the nation is crying for bold and decisive leadership. Workers have been ravaged by retrenchments and shrinking wages and the poor are struggling with rising food, energy and transport prices. The federation expects the president to revisit the previous commitments made by government of creating decent work and sustainable livelihoods for all and also of improving our education and health systems.

Crime and corruption are destroying both the public and private sectors. We expect the president to outline strategies and plans to defeat this destructive scourge that is eating the fabric of our nation. The deepening inequalities demand that there be fundamental structural changes in the economy in pursuit of the radical phase of our transition. We expect to hear how government is going to allow the majority of South Africans to participate in the economy through land reform.

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With the nation experiencing the worst drought in years, we need to hear about government plans to ensure steady food production and food security. Going forward we expect job creation and employment protection to be at the heart of everything that all spheres of government do. Our unemployment rate remains stubbornly high above 34% and the ongoing retrenchments means that we are likely to see this figure increase in the coming quarters.

The economy is not absorbing any new entrants to the labour market and government has completely missed all its job creation targets.  Something drastic needs to be done to change the status quo and we expect the SONA to articulate that. Every political office bearer and every government department should be given job creation targets to diffuse this ticking time bomb and avoid the looming social instability.

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COSATU strongly welcomes the Departments of Trade and Industry and Economic Development's many critical interventions to industrialise the economy and protect and grow fragile sectors whilst protecting and creating jobs.  More such interventions are needed on a mass scale across the economy, particularly in the agricultural, food, textile, clothing, mining and aquaculture sectors. We expect to hear from government how are we going to use quotas, tariffs and subsidies to kick-start and nurture the chosen industries that will result in job creation.

An urgent summit is needed to deal with the jobs blood bath that is currently engulfing the mining sector.  It is critical that government plays its leadership role and bring together business, labour and government to stabilise and grow the mining sector and protect all mining jobs.

We expect to hear about government plans to intensify the interventions and turnaround strategies for our flailing State Owned Entities.  More needs to be done to bring stability and ensure the sustainability of such key SOEs as SAA, Eskom, the Post Office, Telkom and SANRAL.  Government must bring to an end the wrecking ball management approach of too many of the SOE CEOs.

Government will not be taken seriously ,when we see SAA threaten retrenchments and play fast and loose with our tax payers' money. We cannot afford to continue to have a Post Office ,which fails to pay its staff in full and on time and have Telkom that is running amok with retrenchments and that also continues to replace its workers with exploitative labour brokers.

It is unsustainable to have an electricity utility like Eskom ,which year after year robs lower and middle income families with electricity price increases ,ranging between 3 and 5 times inflation and salary increase levels. The less said about SANRAL’s ill-conceived efforts to privatise access to roads that were built with workers' taxes the better. The president needs to use the SONA to come with a clear and a more coherent message on the mandate and role of these parastatals in transforming the economy and delivering services to the poor.

Government needs to abandon the Thatcherite approach of dealing with economic stagnation through privatisation. The privatisation of Eskom and SANRAL’s privatisation of our roads will not solve any problem but will exacerbate an already worse situation.

We expect to hear about government’s plans to introduce a safe, reliable , accessible, affordable public transport system , especially in working class areas.  Government needs to accept that e-Tolls have been rejected overwhelmingly by the public and they need to be scrapped once and for all.  They should also cancel the irrational plans to expand e-Tolls to Durban and Cape Town.

Eskom and government must abandon the costly, unnecessary and dangerous nuclear energy plans.  Nuclear energy is old technology and no longer needed and with a price tag estimated to be between R1.5 to R3 trillion, it will collapse our economy instead of helping it grow.

There are far better, cheaper, safer, and quicker and more job intensive forms of energy available in solar, wind, hydro and renewable energies.  We expect the president to outline government’s plan to move with speed to embrace the new kinds of energy generation that will create jobs and will also not put our future financial stability at risk.

COSATU appreciates and applauds government's drive to expand our infrastructure development and much has been achieved in this regard.  Given the still perilous state of our economy, more needs to be done to further expand and improve our roads, dams, electricity, hospitals, schools, housing, police and other badly needed public infrastructure.

Whilst COSATU appreciates government's efforts to create jobs and provide training to the unemployed through the Expanded Public and Community Works Programmes, we also need to urgently deal with the many unintended consequences that have arisen.

Recently, we have seen cash strapped municipalities and government departments replacing permanent decent municipal or departmental jobs with temporary below minimum wage EPWP or CWP contracts.  This cannot be allowed to continue and requires decisive intervention by the Ministers for Public Works and COGTA.

We expect government to abandon its youth wage subsidy, which has put older workers at risk of losing their existing jobs in favour of younger workers under the youth wage subsidy.  The overwhelming majority of this subsidy has gone to labour brokers.

Government must honour the commitment it gave in the 2015 January 8 statement ,where the President committed the state to ending outsourcing and labour broking in government.  This has not happened and all we have seen is corrupt managers in the public service outsourcing contracts to themselves and their friends. We expect the SONA to declare that all government outsourcing and privatisation of any form must end.

The president should come out strongly against labour broking and must insist on them being banned.  The existing Labour Relations Act clause dealing with labour broking is being blatantly ignored by labour brokers and they must simply be banned once and for all.

Whilst much work has been done over the last 21 years by our ANC led government to drive land reform, we still feel that very little support is being given to help emerging farmers and in fact the agricultural sector as a whole.  This is a strategic sector of the economy and a key job creator.  More assistance must be given to emerging farmers in the form of training, equipment and infrastructure and export assistance.  We cannot expect them to compete equally on the world stage whilst their counterparts in Europe and the US are heavily subsidised by their governments.

The SONA should clarify and treat with urgency the issue of land reform and also of the support of the emerging farmers by government.

COSATU commends university students for their correct struggles for free tertiary education and transformation and expect government to move with speed to address these legitimate and progressive demands which are long standing goals of the Tripartite Alliance.  It was the right thing by government to shift resources to help impoverished students but more still needs to be done.  The NSFAS house hold income threshold must be scrapped as it is excluding hundreds of thousands of students from poor working and middle income families.

We expect government to deal with the perennial crises in our schooling system and should refrain from blaming over worked teachers for systemic problems.  They must ensure that there are adequate teachers in all schools and that those schools have the required text books, resources and adequate security.

We welcome the long awaited release of the NHI White Paper and we expect our government to be firm in its developmental mandate to deliver a quality, accessible free NHI for all.  It must not buckle to intimidation from a medical industry that has grown wealthy upon charging high tariffs and providing as few services as possible.

The federation acknowledges the President's intervention to address workers and COSATU's strong objections to the forced provident fund reforms.  This is a welcome and long overdue intervention and we hope that it will yield the desired results of the scrapping of the law.

This is a debacle that could have been avoided only if Treasury had engaged in meaningful consultations and listened to workers' concerns.  We expect the SONA to call on government to table its long promised discussion paper on Comprehensive Social Security paper for engagement at NEDLAC.  It’s been 15 years since they first promised to do so.

We expect our government to rethink our approaches to housing and to look at establishing a public housing company which can deliver decent dignified housing for all. The tendering system is wasteful and only benefits tenderpreneurs.

The president should outline government’s strategy to act decisively to address our unacceptably high levels of crime.  SAPS members need to be provided with the correct training and police killers need to be dealt with harshly.  Delays in trials need to be addressed and rampant gangsterism and corruption in prisons must be eradicated.

The SONA should address the poor investment in the maintenance of our water infrastructure by municipalities and provincial governments and this has left many towns without water for days and weeks at a time.  The national government needs to wake up to this crisis and come with a meaningful and serious plan to deal with this national crisis.  It must not simply do as it sought to do with Eskom, to price water out of the reach of lower and middle income families.

The president needs to address the government’s action on dealing with climate change.  Attending conferences and developing papers is not enough. What we need is real government action to deal with the devastating causes of climate change and also with major polluters.

The federation also expects Treasury to abandon its attacks on public service workers.  Teachers, nurses, refuse collectors, police officers; soldiers have families and deserve to be paid a decent living wage.  What government needs to do is to cut the exorbitant wages and luxurious perks paid to politicians, Heads of Departments and parastatal CEOs.

Government must not freeze badly needed public service posts and if there are posts to be frozen, then it must start with Cabinet ,where we now have 35 Ministers and 38 Deputy Ministers.  It is the top tier of government that is bloated and not the over stretched front line workers performing an actual and badly needed public service.

The SONA should talk to government putting a moratorium on the use of consultants. They must end the massive levels of wasteful and luxurious expenditure by top management in departments.

Government must increase taxes on luxury goods, the rich, large companies and raw mineral exports.  It must stop exploiting lower and middle income families through massive electricity and water tariff increases.  It must not increase the income tax on lower and middle income families, who are already struggling to survive.

COSATU expects the SONA to rally the nation around the goal of economic development and also provide the much needed courageous and critical interventions and leadership. Government should know that it cannot outsource its developmental role to the private sector and also that the status quo is unsustainable.

 

Issued by COSATU

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