Anti-Walmart coalition ponders way forward

 

Tony Ehrenreich, COSATU WC Provincial Secretary, 17 October 2011

An Anti-Walmart Coalition met over the weekend in Cape Town to discuss the way forward with regard to the Anti-Walmart campaign.

This is of particular importance in the light of the appeal by SACCAWU on the Competition Commission and Tribunal earlier this year, and the sitting of the appeal for 20-21 October 2011.

The meeting concluded to radically and on a much larger scale intensify the campaign against Walmart entering the country and using it as a springboard into the rest of the continent with a clear agenda to intensify the exploitation of workers in the country and continent, as well as severely negatively affecting other areas of our economies.

The meeting resolved to embark on mass pickets at the Appeals Tribunal set for 21-22 October 2011 of hundreds of workers from a range of COSATU affiliates as well as social movements, NGOs and other civil society organisations.

The protest action intends to explicitly demonstrate to the country and the Appeals Tribunal that not only are citizens opposed to the Walmart entry, but more seriously it poses a major threat to employment and the development of manufacturing and other sectors of the economy.

We believe that both the Competition Commission and Tribunal erred in their findings and that hardly any consideration was given to substantial evidence provided by labour, independent experts and government experts, and clear convergence of concerns emerged, based on Walmart’s history and track record, which point to serious concerns, attacks on trade unions and the destruction of local economies and job losses.

It is for this reason that workers in their hundreds will be demonstrating outside the Court where the appeal will be heard on the 20^th and 21^st October 2011

We further invite the media to attend a press conference scheduled for Tuesday 18 October 2011 at 12pm at COSATU Offices, Community House, Salt River, where details of the protests and further campaign against Walmart will be outlined