By Celeste Ganga29 September 2007
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is bitterly disappointed with this week’s report from Statistics South Africa that there was a net increase of just 197 000 jobs between March 2006 and March2007.
“This is a dramatic slowdown from the average annual increase of 500 000 over each of the past three years,” says COSATU National spokesperson, Patrick Craven.
Craven explains that while any increase in employment is to be welcomed, this figure comes nowhere near the rate at which jobs need to be created if we are to reach the target set by ASGI-SA and the 2003 Growth and Development Summit of halving unemployment by 2014.
“Even conservative economists reckon that the economy would need to add 600 000 jobs a year to cut the unemployment rate to 14% by 2014,” says Craven.
COSATU is also concerned that yet again the biggest increase in employment has been in the “tertiary” sector which created nearly half of the new jobs created between March and June 2007.
“This is a sector with a very high level of casualisation of labour, suggesting that a growing percentage of the new jobs may be casual, temporary and low-paid forms of employment,” says Craven.
Craven adds that COSATU reiterates its belief that unemployment must be treated as a national emergency and far more radical measures be taken to create new jobs, including those agreed by the conference.
No comments:
Post a Comment