South Africa’s largest labour union group, with more than a million and a half members, has said that it will stage a nationwide strike on the thirteenth of February over large-scale layoffs at ailing state-owned firms and at private companies.
The decision by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) poses a major threat to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan to revive the economy by cutting the government’s wage bill and reforming state firms that are drowning in debt and plagued by corruption.
Cosatu spokesman Sizwe Pamla said threats of deeper job cuts at state power firm Eskom and at public broadcaster SABC as well as other government plans to squeeze headcounts had prompted the decision for a nationwide strike by its 1.6 million members.
Pamla said the union has deadlocked with the government and private sector on the issue of having a moratorium on retrenchments, adding that the union has no option but to apply for this strike.
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