The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) welcomes the decision by the Cape Town Labour Court to dismiss the interdict brought by slave-owners Concord Labour Brokers against the Motor Industry Bargaining Council (MIBCO) to try to nullify the 2010 Motor Agreement to ban labour brokers from fuel or petrol stations as from today Thursday 01 March 2012, as encoded in the bargaining agreement duly signed by NUMSA and Fuel Retailers Association (FRA) and Retail Motor Industry under the auspices of MIBCO.
The agreement was extended by the Minister of Labour to all employers and workers within MIBCO.
We strongly believe that the dastardly actions by Concord labour brokers are not class neutral, but a class position geared towards maintaining or reproducing Jan Van Riebeeck era slave-workers or apartheid cheap labour to the benefit of the capitalist bosses.
The actions by Concord Labour Brokers is an attack on our struggle to ban labour brokers in South Africa informed by our analytical understating that labour brokers are snakes because they steal a fraction of social surplus given by the capitalists’ bosses to the poorly exploited worker.
We demand that the Confederation of Associations in the Private Employment Sector (CAPES) to withdraw a similar interdict to be heard by the North Gauteng High Court very soon.
It is our contention that Concord Labour Brokers and CAPES should not use the organs of class rule, the courts, to undermine or try to outmaneuver the 2010 Motor Agreement to ban labour brokers in fuel or petrol stations.
This is a serious provocation and declaration of war directed towards the organised section of the working class.
We want to state categorically and clear that any moves by Concord Labour Brokers, CAPES or any employer to renege from the agreement to ban labour brokers will feel the wrath of our militant and fighting members.
We call on the ANC as the governing party to move with speed in banning labour brokers in our country.
This call to the ANC government is informed by the Freedom Charter, the over-arching policy document of the ANC, supposedly of its government which clearly states the following “Child labour, compound labour, the tot system and contract labour shall be abolished”.
This bold call made by our forbearers in Kliptown 57 years ago remains a pipe-dream to the cheaply and exploited workers by labour brokers.
On Wednesday 7 March 2012, when our members swamp the streets of our country to demand a total ban of labours brokers, the words of wisdom by revolutionary icon and chief architecture of our nascent democracy President Nelson Mandela will linger large in the minds of our members when he said “how many times has the liberation movement worked together with workers, and at the moment of victory betrayed workers?
There are many examples of that in the world…You must support the African National Congress (ANC) only so far as it delivers the goods; if the ANC government does not deliver the goods, you must do to it what you have done to the apartheid regime”.
Clearly our members are prepared to advance this directive by President Mandela ‘to do what they did years ago to apartheid sponsoring companies’ under the current and new conditions of exploitation of workers by labour brokers.
Contact:
Castro Ngobese, National Spokesperson – 083 627 5197
Source
Numsa Press Release