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The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa is appalled by the employment figures for the first three months of 2016 released on 9 May 2016 by Statistics South Africa.

In a country which already had one of the highest rates of unemployment in the world, the percentage of workers without a job soared from 24.5% in the fourth quarter of last year to 26,7% in the first three months of this year, an increase of 2.2%.

The more realistic expanded unemployment rate, which includes those who were available to work but did not look for work in the period, rose even more sharply, by 2.5% over the same three months, from 33.8% to 36.3%.

This means that 5.7-million people who are actively looking for jobs cannot find any‚ up from 5.2-million people in the fourth quarter of last year, a rise of half a million. The number of employed people dropped by 355‚000 in the first quarter of 2016‚ says Statistics SA, the largest decrease since 2010.

These grim statistics confirm Numsa’s fears that we are in the midst of a job loss bloodbath. The largest losses were in construction‚ manufacturing‚ and trade. Jobs in manufacturing, where most Numsa members work, declined both quarter-to-quarter, by 100,000, and year-on-year, by 141,000. As economic growth is barely crawling ahead, companies are struggling to survive while at the same time more people have reached working age and are starting to look for jobs.

This confirms the union’s view that monopoly capitalism is plunging the country into a catastrophic crisis, which will inflict misery upon millions of workers and the poor. It is part of a global recession in which South Africa is especially hard-hit.

This will however strengthen the workers determination to fight against a capitalist system which ruthlessly exploits them when they are employed and then back tosses them on to the scrapheap when the economy crashes. Workers are more determined than ever to fight, both to save their jobs and improve their living standards and for a fundamental socialist transformation of the economy and society.

As Numsa’s President Andrew Chirwa said at the union’s recent National Bargaining Conference (NBC): “Capitalism is a system that enslaves others for their labour in order to enrich a tiny minority. For the world working class, it matters little whether capitalists are happy or not: we are its slaves – they own our labour, and therefore, they own us. To survive, we need their wages.

“Now, when their system, which is always a crisis for the working class, is not working well, they hire fewer workers, pay low wages, become more brutal in the work place, and generally do not care about the safety of workers as they struggle to squeeze as much profits as possible from the workers.”

Numsa will never accept that workers must pay for an economic crisis that is none of their making, but a structural crisis of a global monopoly capitalist system. We will not compromise our members. The NBC was clear where the real blame must be laid for this economic catastrophe.  It is not only a reflection of the global crisis, but a direct result of the neo-liberal agenda of the ANC /SACP government, which has created our own, self-inflicted crisis.

The recent crisis of jobs has raised calls for government to designate all products we have capacity to manufacture in the country to be manufactured and produced by local companies, meaning we stop all SOEs and private companies importing products that can be produced in South Africa. This will go a long way to create jobs.

Government must swiftly move to dump the current macro-economic framework and re-nationalise the steel industry. This means that with speed Government must take over Evraz High veld steel and reopen it on an urgent basis, and open Mapochs Mine and Vancham.

But Government must not just nationalize the steel industry only, but the whole value chain: iron ore, manganese, coal, and vanadium. Eskom must deliver cheap electrify tariffs to battling industries, and small medium size companies.

Eskom must give cheap electricity tariffs to smelters so that we can beneficiate our iron ore and stop exporting jobs to China as a result of exorbitant tariffs increases, because by the time Eskom finish building  Medupi or Kusile power stations there will be no industry to supply electricity to.

We are in the midst of a national emergency and we demand that government does what is necessary to build our economy rather than the profits of their friends, the white monopoly capitalist elite. So we repeat the call by the NBC to campaign to:

vEnd the investment strike by South African capital.
vStop capital leaving the country so that it is invested here
vIntroduce prescribed assets requirements for investors, to ensure socially acceptable investment patterns.
vCut interest rates so there is more investment for industry
vIncrease tariffs to protect our industries
vStop giving subsidies to companies who buy components from companies who have moved production to other countries
vProvide us with decent public transport, education and health services, all of which will also create jobs
vNationalise the Reserve Bank and use it to target employment creation not inflation
vPrice controls and subsidies for basic goods and services

These latest unemployment statistics will make us more determined than ever to build the new independent, democratic, militant workers federation and to forge ahead with the creation of the new workers’ socialist party.

Issued by The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa