South Africa - October 3, 2021

NUMSA calls for the indefinite national strike in engineering

Organize a big struggle of the whole South African workers movement!

South African workers, and immigrants totally abandoned to their fate, who come by the thousands from countries near southern Africa in search of a better livelihood, are being terribly hit by hunger, unemployment, inflation, added to the corruption of the rulers, subservient of the multinationals. These were the reasons why last July they woke up fed up with so much misery, starring in huge action days of looting and clashes with the police.

In the midst of this catastrophe suffered by the labor movement and the oppressed South African masses, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the largest union in the sector, resolved to start mobilizing all workers in the engineering sector to undertake a indefinite national strike for October 5, 2021 and is calling for a national mobilization to demonstrate against the employers, who have shown that they are not moved by the suffering of workers and their families, who only care about their earnings (sic). Negotiations carried out by NUMSA and the four large employers' associations in the Bargaining Council representing some 430,000 workers in 90,000 companies in South Africa came to a standstill.

NUMSA demands an increase of 8% in the first year and during the next two years one equal to inflation plus 2%. The bosses of the Federation of Steel and Engineering Industries of South Africa (SEIFSA), refusing to the demands of the Union offered a hike of 4.4% for 2021, inflation plus 0.5% in 2022 and inflation plus 1% in the third year, under the excuse that the business sector has struggled in the midst of an economic recession exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and that its companies were really struggling to keep their doors open.

NUMSA denounces that in 2020 its members sacrificed their salary increases to save the Engineering sector due to the Covid-19 pandemic, by signing a status quo agreement that consisted of workers not obtaining a raise, and ensured that their conditions remained the same; it also says that the companies have been widely benefited; and yet now they do not want to return anything to the workers and refuse to give them a raise, a question that is rejected by NUMSA, which is why it announces that it is preparing for the mother of all strikes. While the official indexes indicate that the average income decreased by 16.8% !!

Faced with the terror that the start of this strike could lead to the beginning of a wave of strikes that threatens to wipe out all the means of production of its members, the South African Federation of Steel and Engineering Industries (Seifsa), with a sharp class instinct, stands that the strike would have a significant impact on the economy and struggling companies and argues, "We have experienced unprecedented job losses" and warned that the NUMSA strike could exceed the 4-week strike in 2014 that cost the South African economy 6 million rand.

Therefore, so that the entire working class and the oppressed South African masses can achieve all their demands, to obtain food, decent work, land, we need to prepare a decisive struggle to unify the whole working class, the employed, unemployed, immigrants, poor peasants, and make the call of NUMSA for engineering to expand to the entire working class and oppressed masses.

The idea is that unemployed and employed workers, agricultural workers, immigrants, consumers, organize themselves into committees by factory, by locality, by neighborhood and that they are coordinated at the national level. To set up the organizations suitable for combat is to pave the way to put a foot on the chest of that bourgeoisie that serves the transnational corporations and to defeat that corrupt government of the ANC.

For armed self-defense committees to defend themselves, for the destruction of the police and the repressive forces of the pro-imperialist government of the ANC.

All the organizations that speak on behalf of the working class, such as NUMSA, AMCU, SAFTU, currents like the ISO, have to break with the bourgeoisie and put all their weight to prepare and organize a true decisive struggle.

Conquering a revolutionary leadership of the working class in the unions is the way to unite the working class of the entire South Africa and achieve all their demands and that of the oppressed.

Imperialism and its servants from the black and white bourgeoisie must be expelled!

Expropriation of all the multinationals that plunder the entire African continent, without compensation!

The whole of the productive lands must be expropriated and given to those who work it!

This is the way to go. The working class, being the leader of the oppressed nation, must take the leadership of the nation into its own hands.

Correspondent