Solidarity calls on unions to set aside differences, allow economy to grow
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Trade union Solidarity on Monday called for a temporary setting aside of entrenched union differences to allow the South African economy to grow.
“It’s never too late for a timeous solution, because South Africa still has the winning recipe. Our leaders just have to be willing to get to the stove to bake the larger economic cake,” Solidarity general secretary Gideon du Plessis said in an op-ed.
The alternative, he noted, was increased union rivalry, decreased union membership, increased retrenchments and decreased capital investment.
Du Plessis isolated reverse racism, ethnicity and ideology as the three unstated barriers in the way of the eradication of what government and other figures have referred to as the triple evils of inequality, poverty and unemployment.
He said reverse racism was on the rise and cited as an example a Solidarity shop steward being falsely accused of receiving higher pay than his peers from other unions, when in actual fact he was R25 000 worse off.
He said ethnicity was also rearing its head and warned that friction between ethnic groups in the platinum belt had the potential to revive tensions there that were bought into sharp focus during the violence at Marikana last year.
He exposed ideology as being behind the drive to close the pay gap between skilled and unskilled workers, which was resulting in the migration of South African skills to other countries.
He said poverty, inequality and unemployment problems could only be dealt with if “all concerned set aside their entrenched differences for a while in order to pursue the common goal of expanding the economic cake”.
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