NUMSA supports FAWU’s march against chicken imports and in defense of jobs in the poultry sector!

The National Office Bearers (NOBs’) of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) welcome and support the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) mass action today, 3 April 2013, to highlight the threats posed by importation of chicken to the already shrinking 40 000 jobs in our country’s poultry industry.

NUMSA believes that in the context of high unemployment no further losses of jobs is justifiable. We also believe that as consumers the decimation of the local poultry industry robs us over time of choices and may lead to high prices of chicken and related products.

Where we stand as NUMSA, we strongly believe that we are confronted by a combination of failures – or more precisely a systematic inability to introduce progressive reforms to boost our agricultural, food and poultry sectors and defend existing jobs.

Instead, as a country we leave everything to the evil hands of the capitalist embedded profit “markets”; a direction that the National Development Plan (NDP) wants us to follow.

In our view the march by FAWU is in line with the COSATU call for a state-owned food chain company in order to break the over-reliance on foreign multinationals and local conglomerates that dominate the food and agro-processing sector.

It is only when we break this monopoly decisively that we will be able to resolve the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and inequality, thus making this a guarantor of food security for the workers and the poor.

We further call on trade authorities to do everything in their power to avert the catastrophe facing the industry, including the increase in import tariffs.

Contact:
Castro Ngobese, National Spokesperson – 081 011 1137