Cosatu says the DA resolution on the minimum wage, adopted at its recent congress, exposes the party’s anti-working class agenda.
In a statement released on 9 April 2018, the spokesperson for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Sizwe Palma, said that the DA views “workers as glorified slaves and want to continue to perpetuate the low wage regime that has produced the working poor.”
The Democratic Alliance (DA) resolved at its elective conference held in Tshwane on 7 and 8 April 2018 that it would seek do away with national minimum wage for job seekers who have been out of the labour market for 12 months or more.
Under the resolution, workers would be allowed to opt out of minimum wage agreements for lesser salaries.
Pamla says that workers should, at the 2019 national and provincial elections, reject the official opposition’s position on the minimum wage.
Adding, “This glorification and perpetuation of poverty by the DA should not only be rejected but should be punished by the workers at the polls.”
The DA’s MP and spokesperson on labour matters, Michael Bagraim, told Political Analysis South Africa on Monday, 9 April 2018 that his party’s resolution is in favour of the working class.
“The youth of South Africa today between the ages of 16 and 25 have a 52% unemployment rate…over half of them are earning a minimum wage of nought,” he explained.
“We are desperate as a political party to try and pull people out of that hole because they never gonna get out of that hole,” he added.