SACTWU sets up student wing 22-07-08

 

SACTWU SETS UP STUDENT WING

The Southern African Clothing & Textile Workers' Union (SACTWU) has become the first trade union in the country to formally set up a student wing. This follows on a decision to do so, taken by the union's last National Congress held in August 2007.

In terms of thi decision, all recipients of the union's bursary scheme are required to become associate members of the union and to annually render at least 50 hours community service for union-linked projects and programmes.

SACTWU supports about 1000 students a year thorugh its bursary scheme and expect to have about the same number of members in the SACTWU Students Union (SASU).

SASU was launched earlier this year and, by the 15 July this year, the union had already approved about 800 applications for membership.

Some SASU members have already commenced part of their trade union community service.

To date, SASU members have

rendered assistance to the union’s Worker History Project (17 students, about 330 hours),
helped with trade union administration duties in some union offices (Western Cape: 4 students, 18 hours; Head Office: 13 students, 324 hours),
helped to revive the SACTWU Matric Winter Schools in the union's Western Cape and KZN regions, (KZN: 6 students, about 72 hours; W Cape: 4 students, about 40 hours),
assisted in primary schools in disadvanteged areas (2 students, about 65 hours) and
assisted in day hospitals (1 student, about 65 hours, already 15 hours more that required).

The 800 members of SASU represents 40 000 hours of available time this year, for community service linked to the trade union’s programmes. The union has thus far only used a small fraction of the available time to date, but have introduced a valuable additional resource. This is the first year of this arrangement and by next year we hope to use at least half of the available hours in a creative and useful way, to strengthen the union's programmes.

Issued by

Andre Kriel

SACTWU

Deputy General Secretary

If further comment is required, kindly contact SACTWU's Project Officer responsible for SASU's co-ordination, Fachmy Abrahams, on cell number 0733067605