Johannesburg - Workers' concerns do not come high up in the order of priorities of policy-makers, trade unions charged last week after Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni failed to even once refer to the current wave of retrenchments in his statement of the monetary policy committee this week.
"In lowering interest rates by only 50 basis points Mboweni missed out on an opportunity to provide a real stimulus to the economy and thus protect jobs," said trade union Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans.
The union said it had calculated that the total number of planned layoffs had risen to more than 24 000 since the current wave of retrenchments started .
"The latest addition to these numbers includes more than 1 400 employees of the mining contractor, Murray & Roberts," said Kleynhans.
"Solidarity already had its first Section 189 consultation meeting with the management of Murray & Roberts this week to discuss the planned retrenchments.
"According to the notice issued to Solidarity, the current economic conditions as well as limited growth and expansion of Murray & Roberts' current contracts are the main reasons for the planned retrenchments.?"
On Friday luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz SA, a unit of Daimler AG, cut production at its East London plant and started a review of jobs as the automotive market slowdown deepened.
The company has to reduce operational costs and will "commence with an employee restructuring programme affecting salaried employees", Annelise van der Laan , a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson, said.
The carmaker couldn't say how many of the 3 500 workers at the East London plant would be affected, she said, adding that there was a hiring freeze. The employment review will be completed by the end of February.
Cosatu said this week it was deeply worried by the findings of a KPMG survey that more than a third of South Africa's top 120 companies were likely to retrench staff in the next six months.
"If true, this news confirms the federation's worst fears that the global economic meltdown will soon lead to mass retrenchments," Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said.
"No less alarming was that the survey also found that as many as 65% of companies were likely to offer staff voluntary packages rather than forcing them out of work.
"Unemployment is still unemployment even if it is 'voluntary'." He added: "With jobless levels already far too high, such a big increase in retrenchments would be devastating both for the individual workers and their families as well as for the country's economic growth prospects."
'Black Christmas'
The KPMG report predicts that the worst-affected sectors will be construction, mining, financial services, forestry, paper and pulp, vehicles and logistics, which means that the entire economy will take a knock.
KPMG also reported that about 90% of companies across all sectors had already dramatically cut costs and said that related not to the recent sub-prime crisis but to local economic factors, such as high interest rates, inflation and the volatile exchange rate.
The union federation said: "That confirms Cosatu's prediction that conservative economic policies, including rigid inflation targeting, which has resulted in the constant rise in interest rates, would lead to cutbacks and ultimately retrenchments even before the effects of the global crisis began to bite.
"The report revealed an agreement on the need to reduce interest rates and direct taxes, combined with increased government expenditure in the energy sector to stimulate the economy. The views on both cutting interest rates and increasing government investment in energy are in line with policies that Cosatu has long been campaigning for," the unions body added.
"For the majority of South Africans the 2008 'festive' season will be a 'Black Christmas'. Even most employed workers will not have enough money to spend on their families after months of hard toil. They will not have enough to pay for their children's education at the beginning of 2009."
Cosatu called on South Africans to buy locally manufactured goods to save jobs. It said it also welcomed a declaration of the Presidential Joint Economic Working Group urging all sectors to do 'everything in their power' to avoid retrenchments.
"The federation supports the decision to set up a special task team - made up of business, labour and the government - to look at how best to cope with the knock-on effect of job losses and to minimise job losses and other negative consequences brought by the crisis."
Solidarity has also released a report that shows that if the global economic crisis and consequent weakening of the South African economy continued into 2009 as many as 310 000 South Africans could lose their jobs.
The union said: "We believe that we are only now starting to feel the effect of interest rate hikes over the past two years and that an interest rate cut of only 50 basis points would not halt a slowing of or even a drop in spending.
"Therefore, if South Africa is serious about combating unemployment by means of economic growth, it would be a logical step for the Reserve Bank to lower interest rates by more than 50 basis points. Such a lowering would also make it easier for us as a union to convince companies not to continue with retrenchments."
- City Press