Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you! -----Original Message----- From: "Patrick Craven" <[email protected]> Sender: [email protected] Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2011 16:41:54 To: <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] Subject: [COSATU Press] COSATU Free State Young Workers Conference Declaration
COSATU Free State Young Workers Conference Declaration Bloemfontein, 29 July 2011 We, the young workers coming from all the sixteen affiliates of COSATU in the Free State, drawn from the previously disadvantaged and toiling masses of our land, assembled in Bloemfontein on July 29, 2011. We were also buoyed by the presence of youth structures from our alliance partners, i.e. ANCYL and YCL. We acknowledge the presence of the student structures within our midst, i.e. SASCO and COSAS. We also acknowledge the presence of the young workers from our sister federations in Lesotho i.e. LLC, LECODU, LTUC and COLETU. We have seriously interrogated the challenges facing the young workers within the current epoch in relation to access to the scarce jobs within our country, challenges faced by young workers once in employment and finally to us residents and citizens beyond our workplaces. We realise the importance of us being active in the community structures as well as progressive formations within our communities, i.e. SACP, ANC, ANCYL, YCL, SANCO and ANCWL. We therefore duly commit to participating in the listed MDM structures with the sole aim of driving the NDR. We draw strength from the Communist Manifesto as penned by Frederick Engels and Karl Marx when it declares: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product”. The statement makes us aware that we are the only future of the working class and accept the awesome responsibility that has been bestowed upon us by circumstances and vow to take forward the revolution. We acknowledge that the young workers have the potential to take forward the National Democratic Revolution to its logical conclusion, in our time, and that the NDR should be to the benefit of the working class. Anything else would be demagogy and/or grandstanding which would not be supported by us! We embrace the view contained in the Communist Manifesto which declares that “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”. Guided by the following key and strategic documents of COSATU we have engaged on various issues confronting the young workers: ü COSATU’s 2015 plan ü 10th COSATU National Congress resolution on the youth ü COSATU discussion paper: “A New Growth Path Towards Full Employment” ü Declaration of COSATU 5th Central Committee Resolutions We have therefore taken a conscious decision to encourage young workers to join progressive political parties and trade unions in order to realise the broader objectives of the NDR. We shall take part in the socialist forums conducted by COSATU Locals in the respective areas where we work and toil. We are faced with a number of challenges in the workplaces, starting with access to employment which is really quite difficult. When we finally find employment an array of obstacles are lined up which makes career-pathing very difficult. The social and workplace responsibilities sometimes become too unbearable for some young workers. The other serious devil in the workplace is the precarious work that is exploiting mainly young workers. We vow to fight for the banishment of all precarious work, whatever fancy names are given to it, whether outsourcing, privatisation, casualisation or labour broking. We intend to achieve decent work in the short term! The working class youth are faced with an array of challenges - political, socio-economic and structural Issues - and we derive solace from the fact that the federation has a range of resolutions covering each one of these challenges and that our support of these resolutions will provide a better chance for those issues to be resolved in favour of the working class! Our salaries and wages get eaten up by the forever skyrocketing cost of living. We understand therefore that the COSATU Living Wage Campaign is central to the campaigns geared at improving the lives of the working class as a whole. We have dealt with, and made recommendations to the constitutional structures of the federation, in relation to various issues that would enhance the recruitment of young workers into the structures of the federation, and have outline a clear roadmap as a recommendation to the constitutional structures aimed at enhancing the recruitment and mobilisation of young workers. We further commit ourselves to establishing a youth structure with the aim of taking forward the resolutions of the federation in advancing the NDR, advancing the interests of the working class and consolidating the current gains made by the workers and the working class, and to politically conscientise our youth to understand their role within the Mass Democratic Movement structures We commit to uphold the values of our societies which includes being respectful to the elders and respecting the cultures and traditions of ourselves and others We therefore declare the above and wrap of declaration with the most famous slogan of modern times: “WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE” Sam Mashinini COSATU FS Provincial Secretary 6th Floor Atrium Building 10 Elizabeth Street Bloemfontein 9300 Tel: 051 447 5230 / 5499 Fax: 051 447 5603 Cell: 082 563 6954 "CONSOLIDATING WORKING CLASS POWER IN DEFENSE OF DECENT WORK AND SOCIALISM" -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "COSATU-press". 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