SADTU STATEMENT ON INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ DAY, 1 MAY
01 May 2024
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) joins workers in South Africa and globally in celebrating International Workers’ Day, 1 May. The day serves, among others, to unite workers, renew the struggle against the exploitation of workers and to celebrate the milestones made by unions in the struggle for better conditions of workers.
This international day is, since the dawn of democracy in South Africa, celebrated as a paid public holiday; thanks to labour union federation COSATU. When COSATU was launched in December 1985, it made it one of its priorities to campaign for International Workers’ Day to be declared a public holiday. COSATU galvanised all South Africans to embark on stay-aways and rallies for the recognition of May Day. The day was finally enacted as a public holiday after the first democratic elections in 1994.
As we celebrate May Day this year, we also celebrate 30 years of a free and democratic South Africa. The two go together because the struggle for a free South Africa is also a struggle for workers and the working class. This democratic South Africa, for the first time in the country’s history, has a constitution that recognises the right to fair labour practices, join a trade union, join activities and programmes of a trade union and to strike.
The thirty years of a democratic South Africa has improved the lot for workers and the working class through various laws that have been passed to protect and guarantee their rights. As a union in the education sector, SADTU can attest to this as strides have been made for workers in sector. Education workers have a right to establish and join unions of their choice. Moreover, they have a right to strike.
Educators now receive equal salaries irrespective of gender and race. Women educators enjoy four months of paid maternity leave. In the apartheid era, being pregnant put many women teachers’ jobs at risk as taking time off for accouchement meant the termination of employment for many. Women in the education sector are contesting and appointed to management positions at schools and within the Department of education.
Today we have bargaining councils where workers and employers can sit across the table and negotiate conditions of service. This was unheard of before the 1994 breakthrough. The lot for workers has improved in general; they now have rights to equal pay for equal work, safer workplaces, paid leave including maternity and parental leave.
Whilst we commend the gains achieved for workers through various legislations, they are still subjected to unfavourable working conditions, low wages, casualisation and retrenchments. Employers are at times, deliberately ignoring legislation and undermine the gains workers have made.
As we celebrate this day, we are painfully aware of the millions of unemployed workers and the numbers continue to rise. In the basic education sector, we have thousands of vacant posts that have not been filled due to budget cuts. Teachers suffer the consequences of budget cuts as they teach overcrowded classrooms while unemployed teacher graduates languish at home. We want to see an end to austerity measures as they exacerbate unemployment levels.
The accusations by the likes of the DA that COSATU is the enemy of the unemployed as it is in an alliance with the ruling party which enacted laws such as the minimum wage that have trapped millions in unemployment and poverty, are disingenuous.
Enacting laws that recognise the rights of workers does not lead to poverty but the capitalist system the country is under. Our economy is still in the hands of the white minority.
We therefore call on COSATU and the Alliance partners to redouble their efforts to end the colonial, apartheid economic structure. We cannot allow a minority to continue to own our economy while the poor Black majority languish in poverty and unemployment.
We call on our members to turn up in their large numbers in rallies under the COSATU banner in all nine provinces to celebrate this day to unite and recommit to defending workers’ rights, fight against retrenchments, fight for a living wage and the scrapping austerity measures.
ISSUED BY: SADTU Secretariat