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The South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) is preparing for a mass strike in 2018 to raise concerns about outsourcing and unfair pay.
On Thursday, Saftu members, together with an estimated 400 outsourced workers, marched to the Gauteng premier’s office in Johannesburg in hopes of putting pressure on the Gauteng local government to insource workers and employ staff permanently.
Saftu said public institutions such as hospitals, clinics, various levels of government departments, prisons and tertiary institutions retrench staff and outsource work to private companies, and as a result become understaffed and ill-equipped.
Saftu claims this is done to cut budget costs.
“We reject outsourcing, we reject labour brokers,” said Zwelinzima Vavi, the union’s general secretary.
Saftu’s mass strike planned for the new year aims to ensure their demands are addressed.
Vavi said the Gauteng leaders should be held accountable for the promises they made to end outsourcing by this December.
“2018 must be the year of the workers,” said Vavi.
An official from the premier’s office received a memorandum with the following demands:
• All employers in the public service must employ all staff directly and provide medical aid and provident fund benefits;
• Increase wages to be no less than R10 000 a month;
• Employers to be compelled to provide equal pay for work of equal value;
• Government to ban the use of labour brokers;
• Democratically elected workers’ representatives to sit on all the committees managing the insourcing process at every level of government;
• The mayor of Johannesburg to employ all workers – including security staff, cleaners, landscapers and others – permanently;
• All workers who were recently retrenched through the termination of contracts with service providers to be reinstated;
• And to remove the expanded public works programme, the community work programme and the Jozi@work programme.
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