WASP marched in solidarity with striking GIWUSA workers to #Clover Head Offices in Johannesburg to hand over the memorandum of demands today. Workers rejected the 5,5% increase signed by FAWU. A number of FAWU members are currently supporting the strike, or want to do so. WASP is appealing to all workers at Clover to join and actively support a united action against those who are exploiting and oppressing them – the bosses! In addition to supporting the picket action, WASP is calling on all working class formations to intensify the call to #BoycottClover.
We are further calling on GIWUSA to escalate the campaign. On Monday a protest is planned at the Israeli embassy, which is an important statement in the best traditions of working-class solidarity and socialist internationalism against the brutal military occupation and land dispossesions of the Palestinian masses by Israeli imperialism. The acquisition of Clover by Israeli consortium Milco, means that the profits the bosses want to protect are directly funding this imperialism. We think GIWUSA should also organise, and call upon all working class formations, for mass occupation of Clover and other landmarks until the workers’ demands are met.
SAFTU and the working class movement should support this strike, the significance of which in the struggle to break the capitalist resistance to wage increase this year, cannot be overstated. The public sector and metal industry wage freezes have set a wrong example. It has emboldened the capitalists in every sector of the economy, including those benefitting from the crisis – in particular food and pharmaceuticals industries – to impose wage freezes, retrenchments and restructuring that undermine workers rights won over decades of heroic workers struggles.
WASP salutes workers organised in GIWUSA for spearheading this fight in Nature’s Garden, Clover, and in many companies organised by them. WASP, through its members in GIWUSA structures and outside, will continue to stand in solidarity with these struggles, and actively support the resistance to the brutal austerity policies of the capitalist class. Through its members amongst shopstewards and in the leadership bodies of the union, and SAFTU, WASP will continue to push for a fighting rank and file strategy and alternatives to the trade union leaders who submit to the pressures of the capitalist class for austerity and restructuring.
Please read our previous statement on the #CloverStrike here:
WASP STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH #CLOVERSTRIKE
