Cosatu convenes Central Committee against the backdrop of a 42.9% overall unemployment rate

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will be convening its Central Committee this week where delegates, from the leadership of the Federation and its Affiliates, to shop stewards and workers from across the country and its economic sectors will gather.

Cosatu’s Central Committee is a platform for members to reflect on the many challenges facing the working class, the Federation’s successes and obstacles tackling these and most critically what is to be done to improve the working and living conditions of workers.  

It is a workers’ parliament and a chance for their voices to be heard by government, business and society.  Workers are the backbone of the economy.  Their lived experiences need to be understood and their aspirations be provided a path to realisation.

The Central Committee provides space for members to engage on policy and organisational challenges and solutions as Cosatu prepares to hold its elective congress in September 2026.

Unions are the organised detachment of the working class.  Their tasks are to protect and save workers’ jobs, to improve their wages and working conditions, to defend their rights and to uplift them from poverty.

The Central Committee takes place against the backdrop of a 42.9% overall and a 72% youth unemployment rate.  It takes places in a nation still bearing the painful scars of poverty and inequality inherited from 350 years of apartheid and colonial rule and perpetuated by capitalism.

We gather as companies shed alarming numbers of jobs, from Glencore to Goodyear, with more likely to come as the 30% tariff hikes on South African exports by the United States hits agricultural and manufacturing sectors.  Over the past two decades it is estimated that up to 350 000 industrial jobs have been lost as the increasingly unaffordable price of electricity hits the industrial sectors.

More job seekers enter the economy each year than it can absorb.  Matters are likely to worsen as the 4th industrial revolution gathers momentum, where even white-collar jobs will be at risk to automation.

Working-class communities are under siege to endemic levels of crime and gender-based violence with law enforcement and the judiciary overwhelmed.

Whilst these paint a deeply worrying picture that must sound the alarm bells from Union Buildings to Parliament and the JSE, there are areas of progress that provide space for the economy to recover.

Thanks to the relentless efforts of the workers of Eskom and municipalities, the nation has turned the corner on loadshedding.  Transnet is stabilising with a welcome improvement in performance, giving breathing room to the mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors.  Metro Rail is reopening lines providing workers with cheaper and faster means to get to work.  The South African Revenue Service is once again providing a path to rebuilding the state.  

Critics are quick to question the role of trade unions yet forget that it is unions that put an end to the era of child labour and set in place the many progressive labour laws that uplift the working conditions and affirm the rights and protections of millions of workers today.

Over the past few years, it is Cosatu working with government led by the African National Congress that put in place the National Minimum Wage raising the wages of 6 million farm, domestic, construction, retail, hospitality, cleaning, security and other workers.

It is Cosatu working with government and business at Nedlac during COVID-19 that helped release over R65 billion from the Unemployment Insurance Fund to help 5.7 million workers feed their families, the single largest source of stimulus to an economy under lockdown.  

In September 2024, after four years of negotiations led by Cosatu with Treasury and Parliament, the much heralded Two Pot Pension Reforms came into effect putting over R60 billion into the pockets of more than 3.5 million highly indebted workers, providing relief and stimulus to the economy.

Whilst Cosatu correctly celebrates these hard won victories, we remain deeply concerned by the alarming numbers of workers who see their legal rights undermined daily by employers, from the 7700 defaulting on pension fund contributions to the dozen plus municipalities owing staff salaries, to women subjected to sexual harassment and even strip searches at work, to domestic workers paid below the minimum wage.  

Though the challenges facing the South African working-class are daunting, Cosatu remains a trade union movement founded upon the principles of international solidarity.  During the darkest days of apartheid, it was workers’ solidarity from the Cuban internationalist brigades helping defend Angola from the onslaught of the then South African Defence Force’s invasions to Irish dock workers who refused to offload South African products.  

Today Cosatu affirms its support to workers struggling from the war against the Palestinian people to the occupation of Western Sahara and the human rights abuses unleashed against the democratic movement in Swaziland.

The key to ensuring workers can defend their hard-won gains and advance working-class struggles, is a well-oiled trade union movement.  Much of the Central Committee will focus on Cosatu’s recruitment drives, servicing members, education and training shop stewards, organising the unorganised and in particular new emerging economic sectors, to exploiting social media to reach young and eplatform workers, to ensuring atypical workers e.g. Uber drivers and actors are protected by our labour laws.

Much attention will be paid to how we achieve Cosatu’s founding President, Elijah Barayi’s clarion call of one industry, one union, one country, one federation.  Whilst organised labour is split into different federations and unions with various political differences, these mean little when workers are retrenched.

Cosatu was founded in alliance with the ANC and the South African Communist Party, an alliance that remains as relevant today as it did in 1985.  Struggles are not static, but the fundamental goals of the socio-economic emancipation of the working class remain as does the vision of a socialist society.

The challenges facing workers and the unemployed remain daunting.  This Central Committee must emerge with a clear plan of action to defend and advance their struggles.

Cosatu General Secretary Solly Phetoe

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

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