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The South African Communist Party (SACP) expresses its solidarity and support for airline Comair workers who have embarked on industrial action in support of their demands. The workers engaged in the strike action after wage negotiations for a multi-year collective bargaining agreement with the company deadlocked. Comair is operating Kulula and British Airways, both domestic and international portals.

The SACP is calling on all its members and leaders not to use Kulula and British Airways  as that will amount to crossing the picket line and will act against the workers' struggle to fight exploitation. Inequality in our society fundamentally lies between those who own and control means of production on the one hand and on the other, the workers who produce wealth using those means of production but are paid meagre wages. ‎Collective bargaining is an important instrument to fight for a better redistribution of income, the wealth produced by  workers at work, improve their working conditions and support all other decent work objectives. This is basically why, as the SACP, we support workers generally in their genuine collective bargaining struggles.

However ‎collective bargaining agreements can only soften the hardest edges of workers exploitation by their bosses; it does not do away with it. Given the power that they wield, which remains intact, and the control that they continue to exercise over means of production, capitalists can always find new ways of deepening workers exploitation for profit maximisation and private capital accumulation as well as undermine or even roll back collective bargaining achievements. It is therefore equally important for all workers to go beyond collective bargaining struggles and join the broader struggle for socialism, the most sustainable solution.

Issued by SACP