S.African states violate worker rights-labour body

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - Violations of core worker rights such as freedom to organise unions and to strike are a feature of life in the five-country South African Customs Union (SACU), the main global labour union body ITUC said on Wednesday.

ITUC, which represents 170 million workers in 158 countries, said current law across SACU -- Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland -- "limits the right to organise and restricts collective bargaining instead of promoting it."

In some cases, it said in a report distributed in Geneva, violations of freedom of association -- the right of workers to set up unions and join the one of their choice -- "are of an extremely serious nature."

The report focused on the four smaller SACU members rather than South Africa itself, whose ANC government has close links with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

The ITUC, the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation, said the worst offender was Swaziland where, it said, "the law does not allow strikes and the police use excessive violence to repress any strikes that take place."

Further, it declared, Swaziland "has institutionalised forced labour on the grounds of tradition" by compelling people to take part in public works with no remuneration.

Botswana and Lesotho either barred strikes or made it almost impossible for them to be declared with, in Botswana, a complex arbitration procedure which led to a planned stoppage being declared illegal and workers left at the risk of dismissal.

The ITUC, which wants labour conditions as set by the U.N. International Labour Organisation to be incorporated into global trading rules, issued its report to coincide with discussion at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) this week of SACU commercial policies.