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Targeting big names of South Africa's
textile and apparel retail sector, the country’s largest
labour federation announced protests to force leading
shop chains to buy locally made clothes rather than cheap
Asian imports, union officials said on Wednesday.
The protests, which include picketing
at shops and sit-ins, will begin after the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) -- an alliance partner
of the ruling African National Congress executive meeting
is held after May 23-25.
"It will include pickets of retailers
and shopping malls, human chains, sit-ins, boycotts of
foreign goods and mass attendance at the annual general
meetings of all retailers," Cosatu General-Secretary
Zwelinzima Vavi told reporters.
Fashion retailers Truworths, Woolworths,
Foschini, Edcon and supermarket chain Pick 'n Pay are
all being targeted in this mammoth campaign that has already
gathered inertia.
"We are looking at a long period
of mass action ... right until March next year,"
said Vavi.
Cosatu wants retailers to source up to
75 percent of their clothing, footwear, textile and leather
merchandise from South African manufacturers. Rtailers
on the other hand, cite country's competition regulations.
So far, the South African textiles and
clothing industry has already seen eclipse of 150,000
jobs in the last 10 years while the country’s unemployment
rate is 26.2 percent. As for the import of Chinese clothing
is concerned, a massive surge of 110 percent has been
recorded in 2003.
Cosatu, according to Vavi had already
consulted the Competition Commission and informed that
their request did not contravene the law because the labour
federation was neither a supplier nor a customer of the
retailers.
To add salt to the ‘badly mauled’ textile
industry is ever growing strong South African currency
- Rand, which Cosatu said has made local manufacturers
less competitive.
On May 19, Cosatu is due to hold further
discussions on with the government, the Reserve Bank and
business representatives on the rand's impact on South
Africa's export-based industries.
Tito Mboweni, Reserve Bank Governor explained
that key reason for the bank's surprise decision to cut
interest rates in mid-April was due to rand's negative
effect on some sectors of the economy such as mining and
manufacturing.
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