20 October 2003
The South African Communist Party (SACP) fully supports the national strike by workers at Shoprite-Checkers as called by the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union (SACCAWU) starting on 23 October 2003.
The SACP condemns the Shoprite-Checkers Group of Companies for its ill-treatment of workers through casualisation, unilaterally forcing workers to take HIV/AIDS tests, reducing years of service, reducing the hourly and overtime rates, forcing compulsory membership by workers of the Company's Retirement Fund, and forcing workers to buy working uniforms themselves.
The SACCAWU-led strike is for the defence of the rights of workers established in law recently through the Wholesale and Retail Sectoral Determination gazetted in December 2002. All these actions of Shoprite go against this Sectoral Determination and other labour laws.
The retail sector as a whole is characterised by high levels of casualisation and exploitative labour. Casualisation means that workers have limited rights, no benefits, and not protected in terms of the law.
Shoprite, like many other companies, uses casualisation to by-pass labour law. Through casualisation, hundreds and thousands of workers have been made more vunlerable to worsening exploitation. The SACCAWU strike is therefore a timely intervention to attack and reverse the scourge of casualisation which has punished hundreds of thousands of workers over the last few years. We also support this action as it is in line with our 2003 Red October Campaign, to mobilise the working class to defend vulnerable workers, including farm, domestic and casual workers.
While the Company expects workers to accept exploitation, starvation wages and slave-labour working conditions, it awards its CEO, Whitey Basson, a whopping salary of R5,2 million during the same year that this Company shed 3351 workers' jobs!
The SACP also condemns Shoprite for its victimisation of casual workers and attempts to divide full and part-time workers. The SACP calls on all casual workers at Shoprite to join this strike as part of ensuring that Shoprite does not succeed in its attempt to divide workers. We also call upon all casual workers at Shoprite to join SACCAWU in their numbers as the only defence of their rights and decent working conditions.
The SACP calls on all workers, poor people and other South Africans who support workers' rights to support the SACCAWU strike at Checkers by not buying from Shoprite for the duration of the strike.
The attempts by Shoprtite to force workers to join the Company's Retirement Fund and not a retirement fund of their choice is unacceptable and must be rejected. The SACP calls on the Shoprite workers to ensure that they do not only join a retirement fund of their choice but also ensure that they have a say in how this retirement fund makes investment and other decisions.
CONTACT
Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information and Publicity
South African Communist Party
Tel - + 27 11 339 3621, Fax - +27 11 339 4244/6880, Cell - +83 651 0271
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za