Vavi recently slammed the government and ANC for the amount of corruption quite clearly visible on all levels.
The current strikes are for increases that are double or more of the current inflation rate. Now, knowing myself that the inflation rate is the biggest farce out, I can see their point, especially seeing that quite a few CEO’s and top management of parastatals are handing themselves increases of more than double what the workers are asking for.
They also want to get rid of labour brokers, and a few other requests.
Why strike
Now here is where my understanding ends. Labour brokers help a lot of the union members to get work, why get rid of them? There are the ones that take advantage of blue-collar workers, but then, there are full-time employers that do exactly the same. Are we going to get rid of employers next? We need to make sure that workers are not getting taken advantage of, which is what the unions are for. But then…
What the unions are doing is perpetuating the catch-22 we currently have. If the workers don’t strike for a month or 2 out of every year, then the increase that the employers are offering would be enough, because remember, even though you can strike legally, there is still a rule of no work, no pay.
So for every month you strike, you are effectively giving up 8.3% of your annual salary. That’s more than the difference you are striking for. But seeing that the unions and govt are also perpetuating the situation of low to no education, the workers cannot quite work this out for themselves.
All the unions are effectively doing is to make sure that every worker out there strive to be as mediocre as the next one, because with the strikes no employer wants to be seen to give anyone a deserved increase or promotion for outstanding work, because they would have mutiny on their hands.
Where does this stop?
The Violence
The biggest problem with the strikers, is that they violently intimidate people who cannot afford to not be paid, to go on strike.
This has to end, if you want to continue working, nobody should be allowed to keep you from it. Your right to strike does not give you the right to force anyone else to do it too.
A law has to be passed in this regard, strikes can only be legal as long as there’s no violence and no intimidation. The moment either of these surface, the strike should be declared illegal, and whoever is not back at work the next day gets the axe, no questions asked.