Communication Activist Network Pamphlet: Unemployment Is War! – Time To Fight Back!
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| Pamphlet: Unemployment Is War! – Time To Fight Back! |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Saturday, 12 June 2010 16:38 |
Unemployment Is War! – Time To Fight Back!
A VIRUS EATING THE YOUTH Unemployment is a disaster in our communities. More than 40% of working age South Africans are now without jobs - cast onto the scrapheap; their creativity, imagination and energy, vital to the rebuilding of our country, day by day destroyed! 70% of the unemployed are youth and the majority are women. Those who are still working are under constant threat of retrenchments and worsening conditions of employment. Many work for income that is way below the minimum living wage.
Unemployment is a like a virus – a silent killer infecting our communities with substance abuse, crime, domestic violence and xenophobia. It is destroying our families and is the cause of suicide and many other social ills.
For every one person who loses her or his job as many as 10 dependents loose a source of livelihood. No wonder we cannot afford to pay for water, electricity, and housing.
For millions without a job it is not just the loss of being able to afford the basic things of life. It is also the loss of dignity that destroys people and communities. It has turned our communities into places of fear and misery, with violence, abuse and crime our daily reality. When women have jobs they are the most exploited section of the workforce. As caregivers, mothers, and young girls, women also carry the bulk of the unemployment burden.
Given the wealth of South Africa, there is no reason why we cannot all enjoy decent work.
WE VOTE, BUT STILL NO JOBS Unemployment is not a natural disaster like a flood or an earthquake. Unemployment is caused by business owners who want to make more money. The government passes laws to help these bosses make profit.
We vote but the government does not listen to the poor who are the majority. Instead they do what the bosses want – letting them invest their money in the stock market and take it overseas, rather than making them create jobs for the masses.
Our economy is a built on the export of mainly raw material and the import of high value goods. High levels of inequality were created by the national oppression of black people under colonialism and apartheid. We were never able to develop a big internal market that could support the development of strong local industries able to supply the needs of our people.
Tax cuts for the rich, cuts in public spending, privatisation, free trade policies and export led growth not only killed jobs but destroyed decent work and attacked the welfare of the majority.
Instead of creating decent work, our economy creates mostly low quality and low paid jobs, which people are forced to accept out of desperation.
They tell us “the economic fundamentals are sound”, yet South Africa lost over one million jobs in the last year. The government policies may be sound for the rich, but they are a disaster for the poor.
Government also lies about the size of unemployment. They say 25% of our people are unemployed – but they count begging for money or food and working in your own house as “employment”. They also exclude people too discouraged to look for work form the number of unemployed. Real unemployment is as high as 70 % in many communities.
Jobs are mostly viewed as something that is easily to get rid of. Businesses and government are constantly looking to cut the number of workers and introduce technology to make more money.
Mass unemployment represents a huge waste of our South Africa's most important resource – its own people.
WORK IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE You have been robbed of the right to work, the choice and the guarantee of employment. Now we need to unite behind the call to demand the right to decent work for all people in South Africa.
To deal with the destructive unemployment virus we need to change how society values work. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Freedom Charter (cheater) both call for the Right to Work. The Freedom Charter says: “The state shall recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full unemployment benefits”
Decent work is a right not a privilege. Work is what separates humans from other species and is the basis for dignity of people, the social fabric of community and human solidarity. In other words work is life.
Just as the South African constitution guarantees the right to life, water, food and other human, social, economic and cultural rights, the right to work should be guaranteed.
In parts of India the Government is legally bound to provide work to all those who are able bodied. In Venezuela housewives receive a grant from government for house chores.
A government that says it cannot create jobs and it is not their responsibility to do so, is unfit to govern.
MAKE UNEMPLOYMENT HISTORY - TIME TO FIGHT BACK! We will win the RIGHT TO WORK when we unite as the unemployed youth, the retrenched workers, farm workers and other casualised and part-time workers as well as the mass of workers whose dependents are reliant on their incomes.
We must unite to fight for:
· Reducing the working week without loss of pay; · One year guaranteed work at a living wage for one million workers in the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP); · An end to casualisation, labour flexibility and the use of labour brokers; · Defend existing jobs. Stop all retrenchments; · Revision of the Unemployment Insurance Fund to provide a living allowance for a reasonable period of time; · Immediate introduction of an adequate basic income grant so that all people can live a life of dignity; · Free quality public services including free transport and decent health care for unemployed workers; · Pay caregivers, especially for children and HIV-AIDS sufferers, as the basis towards the payment of the unpaid labour of women; · Re-introduction of major exchange controls, tariffs and other measures to protect local industry; · Immediate halt to privatisation and the unfreezing of the 650 000 posts in the public sector; · More effective skills development programmes that includes guaranteed apprenticeships and learnerships to meet social needs; · Fundamental land and agrarian reform to ensure sustainable livelihoods; · The creation of green jobs and expansion of support to the cooperative sector, · Cutting interest rates and abandoning inflation targeting; · Diversifying our economy on the basis of an inward oriented industrial strategy, · Cancel the debts of the poor; · Put the RIGHT TO WORK in the Constitution! JOIN THE WAR FOR DECENT WORK Join the fight for decent work! Contact Soundz of the South on 083 447 2939 or the Alternative Information Development Centre on 0741036704.
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