Conservatives set policy - Cosatu

Johannesburg - "Conservative bureaucrats" continued to drive government's economic policies, the Congress of SA Trade Unions said on Thursday, likening the current government to the previous administration.

"The government continues with the tendency inherited from the previous administration, to ignore policy directives it does not like and only implement those areas that the market or capital are happy with," said general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi at a briefing after a meeting of Cosatu's leadership.

"In this regard we are angry that the Treasury remains infected by the highly organised but conservative bureaucrats who have been driving neo-liberal and conservative policies for the last 16 years."

The union insisted that alliance summit resolutions should form the basis for the country's policies.

Vavi said strides were made within the alliance - the ANC, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party - to close policy gaps but these were side-stepped, evidenced in Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's budget.

"The problem is the picking and choosing attitudes by bureaucrats."

"When they like policy, they take it forward... when they don't like it... they drop it."

"This has been a problem for the last 16 years, and is coming back to haunt us again."

He criticised government's introduction of a wage subsidy to boost youth employment, saying this left room for the creation of another category of "super-super exploited" workers.

Not ANC policy

This idea was shot down at ANC conferences, yet it proceeded to become a government policy.

Vavi said introducing private players into power generation was also not an ANC policy. "Where was this decision taken? To us, this together with the introduction of the wages subsidies for the youth are examples of conservative and pro-business bureaucratic manipulation to side-step democratic processes."

He bemoaned the macro-economic policies which persisted, saying the country's economy, in terms of unemployment, was in crisis even before the economic meltdown which contributed to its descent into recession last year.

Despite strides made by the ANC government, "apartheid political economy faultlines" remained intact.

"That unemployment is structural and was created by the apartheid regime."

"In economic terms, the benefits are accrued by the white minority capitalists and not the overwhelming majority of our people."

"Inequalities remain characterised by the apartheid structures," he said.

"Whites remain better off than Indians, Indians remain better off than Coloureds and Coloureds remain better off than Africans. To add salt to injury inequalities are now growing within every racial group."

Last year almost a million jobs were lost which affected an estimated 4.8 million people, if dependants on those left jobless were considered.

Vavi said an estimated 890 000 jobs created last year were mostly in the informal sector.

While Cosatu welcomed the newly introduced industrial action plan, it warned that it would only succeed if the country's macro-economic policies were reviewed.

Cosatu reiterated that it would issue a section 77 notice to strike over Eskom receiving the go-ahead to hike power prices by 25 percent this year.

It would also resort to industrial action to get rid of the labour broking system, to force Gordhan to stop the wage subsidy policy for youth, and for the introduction of macro-economic policy that supported and not undermined a new growth path.

- Sapa