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Bloomberg reports that according to Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), the government must “re-nationalise” ArcelorMittal SA (Amsa) to avert job losses and rebuild SA’s beleaguered manufacturing industry.
The company has begun closing long steel plants that employ about 3,500 people and support as many as 100,000 indirect jobs. This follows after nearly two years of negotiations with the government failed to address the steel maker’s complaints, including high-input costs and competition from cheap imports. Amsa’s assets include what was once Iscor, the state-run steelmaker that was privatised in 1989. The shuttering of the long steel plants is bad news for a country, where a third of the workforce is unemployed, and there is a need to find alternate markets for its companies, hit by 30% tariffs on exports to the US.
“Job losses in South Africa are simply deepening at the most alarming rate,” Vavi lamented. Saftu is seeking talks with SA’s ministers of trade, industry and competition, and employment and labour to address the “bleeding” of jobs. “There’s been no real engagement between the key players to try and find real solutions, long-term solutions, to the crisis,” Vavi maintained.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Prinesha Naidoo at Moneyweb
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