Labor unions in the transport and mining sectors on Wednesday said they would defend their members facing retrenchments due to COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa.
This comes after a number of businesses in both industries issued unions with notices to retrench workers citing the lockdown as the reason.
Speaking to Xinhua, Anele Kiet, deputy Secretary General of the South African Transport Allied Workers Union (Satawu) said companies should refrain from using the lockdown to retrench workers.
“We will defend our members from greedy employers who want to use the lockdown as a scapegoat to retrench. The transport sector was declared as essential from the start so we don’t understand what’s going on,” he said.
He accused businesses in the transport industry of wanting to maximize profits at the expense of workers. This view is shared by the National Union of Mine Workers (Num).
“We want to assure our members that we will allow no company to use the COVID-19 pandemic to retrench workers,” NUM’s General Secretary David Sipunzi said. He said they were preparing to take a mining company who reduced workers salaries by over 12 percent to court.
