COSATU welcomes SATAWU court ruling! 10 - 04 - 06

COSATU welcomes SATAWU court ruling

The Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomes the decision of the labour court on Saturday 8 April to set aside the interim interdicts that temporarily halted the strike by security workers last week.

This decision vindicates the decision of the SA Transport and Allied Workers' Union (Satawu) to continue with their protest action. COSATU will continue to give them full support, starting with the workers who are marching in Cape Town and Durban today.

COSATU was outraged that the earlier court outlawed a legal and protected strike, on the grounds that 14 other small unions had reached an agreement with the employers and the SAAWTU action was therefore illegal and unprotected.

This was a clear attack on the constitutional right to strike. COSATU agrees with SATAWU that as the biggest union in the security industry, no wage agreement would be legal unless they accepted it, and is pleased that the labour court has recognized that and declared the 'agreement' with the other unions to be null and void.

We hope that the South African National Security Employers Organisation (Sansea) will now come to the table at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and negotiate a wage settlement acceptable to the workers.

Like SATAWU, COSATU does not advocate or condone violence, but agrees with the union that their members should not be provoked by aggressive policing tactics, or attempts to prevent them from exercising their legal right to march.

The security workers are among the most exploited and worst paid in the country, yet they daily risk their lives to protect the property and lives of the rest of us. It is a central plank of COSATU's Jobs and Poverty Campaign that workers like these must be given substantial wage increases, to bring their living standards closer to an acceptable level and to narrow the vast inequalities which blight our country.