Hon Chairperson, the EFF rejects this budget Vote. There is a serious crisis at ArcelorMittal in Sedibeng and we want to call on the Minister to urgently go and visit ArcelorMittal. Workers are not paid on time and some outsourced contract worker are paid as little as R2 650 by outsourced contractors there. The R2 650 salary that metal workers in ArcelorMittal are paid is even below
President Ramaphosa's ill conceived and misguided R3 500 national minimum wage.
Metal workers do the toughest job of metal process but earn the least. Workers do not have medical aid and companies that AcerlorMittal outsourced work to do, don't even follow occupational health standards. When workers are injured, they are forced out of work and they do not get any form of compensation but we must characterise these of outsourcing and contract workers as failure of the labour laws after 1994.
To dismantle the relationship between apartheid economy and cheap labour. The whole apartheid capitalist system depended upon unlimited supply of cheap black migrant labour, a system which continues even today. Security guards and cleaners working at the airport managed by Accsa are outsourced to companies that are continuing with the practice of cheap labour who knows, maybe these companies Minister, are your friends and your cronies.
Workers in UNISA were employed in fixed term contract through labour brokers for more than a decade. Workers in Marikana mines are fighting for a minimum wage of R12 500.vWorkers at Pick 'N Pay, Shoprite, Spar and other retail stores, who pack groceries items in
the shelves are employed as contract workers through labour brokers for work than can be done and is done on daily basis and they get as little as R1800 per month.
Here in Parliament, cleaners who clean after Ministers and deputy Ministers are paid through labour brokers as outsourced workers for work that is permanent in nature. Why don't you employ them permanently if you advocate for the eradication of unemployment. This is essentially breaking the law because the Constitutional court ruled that workers placed by labour broker automatically become permanent after three months but the department of labour has no capacity to enforce any of the labour laws meant to protect workers.
And now the very department that has no capacity to enforce law has the most ineffective Minister without impact. We don't know what are you up to? What have you been doing in government? And you are expected to lead government to find solution to problems of unemployment even your President in his own admission does not have a solution for.
We told him during Sona debate that he has no new ideas to get almost 10 million unemployed, majority who are youth, willing and
looking for jobs. The circuses of job summit held with captains of industries to help creating two hundred thousand jobs and hold back on retrenchment, failed dismally.
Now the very same captains of industries are not only failing to create new jobs but they are during the opposite of retrenching. Over the past eighteen months alone, Tongaat Hulett announced that it was going to retrench over 5 000 workers because of law sugar price. Sibanye Steel Water gave notice to get rid of 3 500 workers, MultiChoice indicated that it will retrench over 2 000 of its workers. Standard bank had plans to let off, 1 200 workers.
The only thing that these people and these crooks are up to, is profit, nothing else and to exploit our people. Our analysis tells us that the South Africa is on the verge of major labour unemployment disaster and your department has remained largely useless in stopping this looming labour disaster.
If you were a sharp Minister, you would follow the foot steps of Herman Mashaba who actually listened to us of in sourcing workers, in sourcing security workers. Those who listen to our policies like Herman Mashaba, have changed the lives of thousands of workers who were victims of abuse and exploitation by labour brokers. Over and
above, the need to create new jobs, we need to protect existing and ensure that those jobs pay workers a living wage, R4 500 for cleaners and R1 2500 for mine workers.
For this reason, your department should consider, we are advising you Minister. Your department should consider to develop a protection Bill which will protect workers from being the first casualties of bad management decision of these companies.
We need to revise minimum wage to ensure that no worker anywhere at any time in South Africa earns less than R4 500 per month.
The exception your current minimum deals, gives to famers is an insult to millions of overworked underpaid Agricultural workers across the country as the EFF, this is the time to deliver, implement, if we can expropriate land without compensation. If we can accelerate nationalization of mines and key factors of economy will be able to create jobs. #Our jobs and land now. Thank you.