28 January 2004
The South African Communist Party (SACP) fully supports the 6-week strike by workers at Equity Aviation at major South African airports. We call on all workers in South African and all other South Africans concerned with a better life for all to join solidarity actions in support of the workers. We call upon Equity Aviation to negotiate in good faith and settle with the workers immediately, failing which the SACP will organise all its members and structures to throw their full weight behind the striking workers, and fully expose the backward, apartheid type labour relations practices of Equity Aviation.
Specifically, we call for the intensification of the campaign to send protest letters to Equity Aviation, Equity Alliance and Transnet - Equity Alliance and Transnet are part of the owners of Equity Aviation (Equity Aviation fax - 011 622 0963, Transnet CEO, Maria Ramos fax - 011 308 2312, Equity Alliance fax - 011 8800160.
The SACP is working together with SATAWU, COSATU and other organisations to organise other solidarity actions which will include pickets, sit-ins and meetings with owners of Equity Aviation. A programme of these actions will be announced later today.
We also call on the Transnet CEO to ensure that Transnet's 49% stake in Equity Aviation is used in the interests of the workers. In this case, this means that Transnet, as a publicly-owned parastatal, cannot sit watch idly whilst the management at Equity Aviation is negotiating in bad faith and not committed to a negotiated solution at all. We call on Transnet to use its power and stake in Equity Aviation to ensure that the workers' demands are met and the Equity Aviation management is called to order.
The SACP condemns the management at Equity Aviation for its immoral and unjustifiable attempts to seek to increase the exploitation and ill-treatment of its workers whilst at the same time wanting the same workers to accept lower wages. As SATAWU has repeatedly shown, Equity Aviation management is trying to use the wage negotiations to worsen conditions of work. They want workers to accept the following:-
In real terms, what Equity Aviation wants is a massive wage reduction and downward variation of working conditions taking workers back to the days of apartheid labour relations! The Communist Party believes that these bad-faith and backward tactics motives of Equity Aviation are a violation of the transfer agreement between Transnet and Equity Aviation. Under the agreement worker's conditions were guaranteed for 18 months from April 2003.
The Equity Aviation strike is a practical demonstration of what privatisation, outsourcing and casualisation means: profits for a few, increased exploitation for workers; economic empowerment for a small black elite and massive economic disempowerment for many black people! Equity Aviation, like many other companies, uses casualisation to by-pass labour law and benefits for workers.
The Equity Aviation strike, following on the SACCAWU strike against Shoprite-Checkers, is an important intervention to attack and reverse the scourge of casualisation which has punished hundreds of thousands of workers over the last few years. Further, the demand for a 40-hour working week must be revived. This strike also points to the need to review the restructuring of state assets away from privatisation and outsourcing towards strengthening and consolidating a strong public sector.
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