Thursday, 10 September 2026: The South African Communist Party (SACP) stands in firm solidarity with workers at Adcock Ingram following the company’s plans to retrench up to 250 workers and close one of its plants.

The retrenchment notice came after some workers, concerned about health and safety, blew the whistle on the company’s non-compliance with health and safety regulations. Instead of addressing the core concern of protecting the workers’ right to life, and that of the public at large, the pharmaceutical company’s capitalist bosses reacted with the latest assault on the workers’ livelihoods. The capitalist bosses are driven by their insatiable quest to maximise private profit at the expense of workers, who produce the wealth the same bosses appropriate and accumulate, converting it into their private property.

Adcock Ingram’s plans come amidst a deepening crisis of retrenchments within the pharmaceutical sector. Over 2,500 workers have been retrenched in the past 18 months. The crisis of a high unemployment rate, alongside high poverty and high inequality rates, continues to have a major impact on about 13 million active and discouraged unemployed work seekers in South Africa.

In the second quarter of 2026, the official unemployment rate, which excludes discouraged work seekers as it only accounts for active work seekers, increased to 33.6 per cent, with 8.5 million people unemployed. Employment fell by 16,000 to 16.7 million. In the same quarter, the expanded unemployment rate, which accounts for discouraged work seekers, increased to approximately 44 per cent. This represents an unemployment crisis affecting roughly 13 million active and discouraged work seekers, with Black African women followed by Black African men being the worst impacted.

As the SACP, we stand in solidarity with workers as they continue to oppose Adcock Ingram’s decision resolutely. The SACP calls upon the government to step in and prevent the rampant retrenchments. To this end, we reiterate our policy position for the development, diversification and growth of a state-owned pharmaceutical manufacturing sector to produce medicine to look after the health-care needs of all. We also call on workers across union and federation affiliations and the entire left movement to stand in solidarity with workers against retrenchments.