As we mark Human Rights Day, let us not forget the rights of the workers

HUMAN Rights Day is a chance to celebrate our gains and rededicate ourselves to improving workers’ lives.

- SOLLY PHETOE

We have much to celebrate as a nation and trade union movement with real gains advancing human rights since 1994 under successive ANC-led governments.

We are governed by a progressive Constitution affirming the human rights of all citizens, in particular the vulnerable.

Critically it compels government to interpret human rights not through a narrow liberal perspective but rather an inclusive socio-economic perspective befitting South Africa’s still present apartheid and racially skewed landscape.

Workers’ rights are interlinked and inseparable from human rights. Cosatu was formed not only to defeat apartheid but also to improve the working and living conditions of workers.

Apartheid was based on the exploitation and suppression of the human rights of Black workers. Workers’ struggles and the struggle to defeat apartheid were indivisible. The struggles post-1994 to improve workers’ rights and the lives of working-class communities remain intrinsically linked.

Cosatu is proud of how we have managed to secure in law many workers’ rights. More needs to be done to ensure our labour laws keep pace with the evolving nature of work, including protecting atypical workers such as artists, musicians, and actors from being denied their rights.

Our labour laws have advanced workers’ rights from the right to work in a safe environment, repealing of racist legislation, setting minimum and maximum working hours, paid time off and overtime pay, maternity and parental and adoption leave, equal pay for equal work, and a national minimum wage uplifting 6 million impoverished workers’ wages.

Paying workers a living wage is key to boosting morale and productivity, eradicating indebtedness and poverty, and providing a decent life. If workers are to buy the goods businesses produce, they need to be paid a living wage.