Cosatu condemns use of trucks to transport workers 28-11-07

 

COSATU condemns use of trucks to transport workers

The Congress of South African Trade Unions is shocked and disgusted at the discovery of 103 seasonal farm workers being transported in the back of a windowless truck, after they were stopped at a weigh bridge on their way to a strawberry farm outside Swellendam in the Western Cape yesterday.

COSATU congratulates the traffic police officers who stopped the truck and refused to let it move until alternative transport was organised. Their firm action may well have prevented a repetition of the kind of disaster at De Doorns on 13 November when eight workers were killed and 36 were injured when the truck they were in overturned. In this month alone in the Western Cape, eighteen farm workers have died while being transported from their workplaces.

Yet again COSATU demands that the use of trucks and bakkies to transport workers must stop. It reveals a contemptuous disregard for workers' safety by employers. In this latest case the workers told the media that they even have to pay R10 a day out of their meagre R250-R300 weekly wage for the transport which is endangering their lives.

One of them told the reporter: "It's dangerous to get into the truck. There are no chairs. We get in like loaves of bread". Another added: "People fall about, some are seriously injured. We are very worried." The traffic officials also said the workers were packed "like loaves of bread" without access to fresh air.

Provincial traffic authorities at the weigh bridge confirmed that trucks were unsuitable for transporting people, as there were no ventilation, seats or anything to hold on to.

As COSATU said after the De Doorns tragedy: "Farmers, and other employers, who transport workers on the back of trucks are treating them as if they were worth no more than sacks of potatoes and cabbages. It is all too typical of the apartheid-era style of management still exhibited by many employers who treat their workers with contempt".

Traffic officials must wage a sustained campaign to stop the use of open trucks and bakkies to carry passengers and impose severe penalties for those who do not comply.

Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)