NUM Mobilizes for World Day for Decent Work: Sounds Alarm Over the Systematic Destruction of Permanent Jobs

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) declares its unyielding support for the global World Day for Decent Work, observed annually on 7 October, and calls on all workers across the country to participate in nationwide provincial pickets, awareness campaigns, and mass demonstrations coordinated by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

Decent Work Day remains an indispensable frontline rallying point for the South African working class. In a nation grappling with devastating unemployment, deep structural poverty, and intolerable economic inequality, the NUM reaffirms its core demands: living wages, safe and healthy working environments, comprehensive social protection, and absolute respect for constitutional workers’ rights—chief among them being collective bargaining and the protected right to strike.

The union sounds an urgent alarm over an aggressive corporate onslaught designed to dismantle permanent employment across South Africa's core productive sectors.

Mining houses are increasingly weaponizing Section 189 restructuring processes under the Labor Relations Act as a deliberate ploy to evade standard labor obligations, shedding permanent posts only to replace them with precarious, low-wage subcontracted labor.

Simultaneously, employers within the metal and manufacturing sectors are brazenly abusing youth training programs. Under the guise of skills development, production learners are systematically exploited as cheap, dispensable labor to displace permanent personnel and circumvent bargained wage agreements.

This coordinated drive toward casualization strips workers of their dignity, hollows out job security, and weakens the collective bargaining framework that of workers fought to establish.

The NUM makes it unequivocally clear: training initiatives must build sustainable careers, not provide cover for exploitation; and operational restructuring must never serve as a backdoor mechanism to casualise the workforce.

The NUM urges mineworkers, energy workers, construction personnel, and metalworkers to take to the streets alongside COSATU on Wednesday, 7 October 2026. Organized labor will not retreat while corporate greed normalizes poverty wages and precarious work.

For more information, please contact:

Mpho Phakedi, NUM General Secretary, 082 882 3452
Livhuwani Mammburu, NUM National Spokesperson, 083 809 3257
Luphert Chilwane, NUM Media Officer, 083 809 3255

The National Union of Mineworkers
7 Rissik Street.
Cnr Frederick Johannesburg
Tel: 011 377 2111 Cell: 083 809 3257
Twitter: @Num_Media

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/NUM/10086002340