Johannesburg - Cosatu and its affiliated unions have sent out a clear and stern message to the government and the private sector that it cannot be business as usual while the country continues to battle rampant unemployment, high interest rates, the energy and water crises and inequality.
The union's Matthew Parks said they were pleased that workers across all nine provinces had responded positively to the call to stay away from work in support of the nationwide strike to put the spotlight on workers' plight.
Parks said that as it stood, the levels of frustration, despair, anger, poverty, indebtedness, unemployment, crime and corruption were a ticking time bomb that the government and businesses had to deal with sooner rather than later.
"The working class is bleeding from the government's sluggish response to policy failures that are leading to cuts in real wages and a rise in unemployment, with more than half the population struggling to make ends meet."
Parks said the two main concerns for the trade union were mainly for the government to raise the Social Relief of Distress Grant to the food poverty line in the October medium-term budget policy statement.
Secondly, for the extension of the Presidential Employment Stimulus to accommodate 1 million active participants in October 2023 and a further 2 million in February 2024.
In addition to that, in the same vein that priority has been given to addressing the challenges at Eskom, he said interventions had to be looked into to rebuild and modernise Transnet and Metrorail.
"We are also sending a message to the Reserve Bank to go easy on the repo rate as ordinary workers are battling to make ends it. These are hard issues that won't be solved overnight, and ignoring them will come at a huge price tag, so we have to keep sending the message out there."
The Star