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The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa fully supports the international campaign for decent work, a campaign which is more necessary than ever in face of the relentless attacks by employers and governments on workers’ wages and job security, the spreading of casualisation of labour and the use of labour brokers, deindustrialisation and the capitalists’ attempts to sabotage collective bargaining and weaken trade unions.

Numsa is fully committed to defending workers’ jobs, their living standards and human rights. We are currently busy in negotiation in several sectors to get the best possible settlements for our members.

We shall not however be calling on our members to join the march called by the leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions on 7 October 2016. Numsa believes that this call is a desperate attempt to salvage some credibility by a federation which has abandoned the workers and turned itself into an appendage of the government and ruling party and has become enmeshed in the ANC’s factional battles and riven with divisions.

Numsa is joining forces with the students fighting for free higher education and against the brutal attacks by police and security companies, and will continue to campaign against neoliberal policies, in defence of jobs, trade union rights and a living minimum wage and in pursuit of a socialist world.

We are also working with a growing number of trade unions to launch a new independent and militant worker-controlled union federation which will unite and lead the working class struggle for their total emancipation from the chain of white monopoly capitalism.

Issued by Numsa