Red October plan to mobilise SA workers

JOHANNESBURG -- Red October, a campaign aimed at building the working class and creating jobs for rural people, was jointly launched by the Congress of SA Trade Unions and the SA Communist Party here this week.

"It is the beginning of a fusion between labour movements and the communist forces to strengthen the struggle for socialism and advance the working class fight," SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande told members of Cosatu-affiliates at the launch.

He said Red October would focus on empowering the working class and recruiting more members to its affiliated unions.

"The working class are assets and building them is a positive move towards economic growth and social development."

Nzimande said the campaign was to promote the presence presence of the working class and its political message and to reach out to all structures in the workplace.

"An integral part of Red October is to reach out to farm workers and the rural masses."

He said joint socialist forums and units would be formed in industrial and rural areas through intensive recruitment campaigns among workers.

Nzimande promised workers that the campaign would address the job loss crisis, public sector wage dispute, macro-economic policy, educating the working class, crime, gender equality and HIV/Aids in the workplace.

He highlighted that Red October was intended to build and consolidate working class consciousness.

"The threatened lockouts by some employers are attempts to return us (workers) to some of the most viciously fought practices under apartheid. It is time we fight these progressive labour laws, or any loopholes with all our power," said Nzimande.

Red October, he said, was an attempt to solve the labour crisis immediately.

The government had dropped company tax by five percent in this year's budget, but there was no indication that companies were reinvesting this reprieve in job creation.

"South African employers continue with what is essentially an investment strike. Yet, workers are expected to accept retrenchments, casualisation and privatisation in the hope that they will be employed in the near future," said Nzimande.

He reiterated that workers were an asset of transformation and not "numbers on a balance sheet, to be retrenched, downsized and outsourced".

Red October was part of a broader struggle to defend and enhance the dignity of the workers, Nzimande said.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the campaign would strengthen the SACP as the vanguard of the workers.

He said the working class faced an enormous challenge with the growing gap between the rich and the poor, increasing attacks on the quality of jobs through casualisation and sweatshops, mounting poverty and diseases.

"Do not just get workers into Cosatu, but develop soldiers for a socialist future. Educate the working class so that they will survive on their own if retrenched," he said.

He said Cosatu hoped to improve last year's recruitment record of 50 000 workers in one month.

"We know that the current wave of job losses makes this challenge even more difficult. We are, however, determined to do better than before," Vavi said. -- Sapa