On Monday 4 October Gauteng EPWP workers will return to the CCMA in Pretoria. The Commission will hear the case on the March 2020 dismissal of over 3,000 workers by the ANC-run Gauteng Department of Infrastructure. The workers had been employed for seven years.
The Marxist Workers Party is marking the one year anniversary of the Gauteng Community Health Workers and EPWP workers’ march and sleep-over at Union Buildings. This took place on 12 and 13 February last year, during Ramaphosa’s 2020 “State of the Nation Address”. The action at Union Buildings last February was, we believe, the most significant workers’ movement event of 2020.
On 12 October the workers on the ANC government’s slave-labour Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) continued their struggle for permanent jobs and a living wage. Hundreds of EPWP workers took part in a day of action which was initiated by the National Union of Public Sector and Allied Workers (Nupsaw), an affiliate of the Saftu trade union federation.
The Gauteng Government has given CHWs permanent jobs. The CHW’s victory shows that mass struggle works and that it is possible to win permanent jobs. The march to the Premier’s Office on Monday 12 October is for EPWP workers to demand exactly this.
The symbolic protests by left activists taking place on 1 August have been called because of a growing feeling that something must be done. If the ANC government is left in charge of managing the pandemic, if capitalism and the profit motive continue to determine what is, and what is not, ‘possible’, the working class is heading for disaster. The working class needs to take charge. But how can the mass of the working class be mobilised to do this? Because that is what it will take to switch tracks and avoid the oncoming train-smash.
On Wednesday 17 June EPWP workers will protest outside the Gauteng Legislature in Joburg.
Open Letter published on behalf of the Gauteng EPWP Workers Forum following the Labour Court’s unfair ruling.
The 5,000 EPWP workers falling under Gauteng’s Department of Infrastructure Development have not received their April stipends.
On 9 and 10 March EPWP workers protested in Johannesburg and Pretoria outside offices of the Department of Infrastructure Development. In Johannesburg workers refused to leave until they got clear answers from management…
A planned meeting between the the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development and the workers’ leaders, set for Friday, 1 November is mentioned. At the last minute the meeting was “postponed until further notice”. Workers are mobilising for mass meetings to discuss the way forward.
Copyright © 2026 | WordPress Theme by MH Themes
