Cosatu rejects state growth plan

Johannesburg - The government's new growth path in its current form should be rejected, trade union federation Cosatu said in a resolution prepared for its central committee meeting this week.

The resolution was handed to delegates on Wednesday.

The plan should be rejected because it limited the capacity of the state to play an interventionist and developmental role.

It also did not link social development and economic policy and was therefore an inadequate platform to support the organisation's living wage campaign, said Cosatu.

"Cosatu must champion its own growth path towards full employment as a platform upon which to advance our living wage demands and to mobilise the broader left forces."

Cosatu said an alternative growth path "should protect our self-determination via the imposition of exchange controls so that profits are invested for social development purposes in support of a living wage and decent work agenda".

The union federation added that it would reject the diagnostic report of the National Planning Commission because of its anti-working class stance, "particularly in its tendency to blame the working class for high levels of unemployment and the dysfunctional education system".