Retrenchments continue to bite

While workers were marching against job losses across the country, companies closed their ears and eyes to the protests and continued to draw up lists of those to be retrenched. In Port Elizabeth local alone, more than 400 jobs, including those at Continental Tyres, are on the line.

At Aberdare Cables, 300 production workers’ jobs are threatened because the company claims that Telkom and local government is no longer buying from it but would rather source from China and other countries. Borbet wants to retrench

15 workers because of lost orders from Europe while Precision Exhaust Systems has said that 62 jobs could go because they are not “financially viable”.

Now the local has decided to show its support for these workers. Between the end of July and September, the local will organise pickets, human chains and marches, to employers to show them how they feel about the situation.

They will also organise local general meetings and invite community members to share their suffering.An injury to one is an injury to all!

Workers at GB Engineering (Pan African Shopfitters) are continuing their battle to outlaw the use of labour brokers in their company.

An earlier Numsa News reported on workers’ struggle to use section 20 of the engineering agreement to force the company to negotiate the use of labour brokers.

When the company went ahead and introduced them anyway, Numsa declared a dispute and when it remained unresolved, prepared for a legal strike.

However the company then ran to the Labour Court for an urgent court order preventing the strike. The judge then interdicted Numsa from promoting or embarking on any strike action regarding the question of labour brokers.

Numsa has now appealed against this decision.

Meanwhile the company has changed labour brokers. It is now using Global Outsourcing Solutions, again without consultation.

Labour brokers will remain labour brokers despite changing their names. As long as they suck workers’ blood, we will continue to oppose them.