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The Congress of South African Trade Unions notes the recent employment statistics released by Stats SA which reveal that 7000 new jobs were created in the formal non-agricultural sector. This amounts to 0.1% increase in employment for the sector.

COSATU believes this increase is not enough to offset the continuing job-loss bloodbath, which brings misery to thousands of families and leaves many workers idle and demoralised.

COSATU also believes that the increased casualisation of labour and the expansion of informal and atypical forms of employment condemned thousands of workers into insecure and vulnerable jobs where there exists an endemic fear of being summarily retrenched.

These disappointing figures show that the government is absolutely correct to make job creation its top priority and makes the ambitious plans in the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the New Growth Path, and their target of creating 5 million new jobs by 2020, even more relevant.

Notwithstanding our reservations on some elements of the New Growth Path, COSATU believes that government must turn words into deeds and implement the noble elements of the NGP in order to drive job creation in this country. Workers will lose confidence in the government’s ambitions, plans and targets if they see no new jobs actually being created.

We reiterate our call that the manufacturing sector has a huge potential to create decent jobs for the millions of job-less people in South Africa. COSATU strongly believes that government must take stern action to boost and support this sector.

COSATU will use these disappointing statistics to support its call for a substantial cut in interest rates and the devaluation of the rand to encourage new investment in job-creating industries and services as well as to make South African exports competitive on a global scale.

COSATU will convene a meeting with business representatives in the manufacturing sector on 29th September to discuss the 2009 Framework for South Africa’s Response to the International Economic Crisis as well as to devise means to take our common concerns on high interest rates and high exchange rate forward.