PRETORIA – DENOSA is holding a five-day Educators’ Training at the DENOSA Head Offices in Pretoria, courtesy of Workers World Media Production, where the organisation’s educators from all provinces are in attendance.
From this training, the educators will train shop stewards in provinces, which will strengthen DENOSA’s case representation for members in the workplace.
The educators are taken through the different areas of the training, which will assist in awakening the shop stewards’ holistic consciousness of the workplace environment and its resultant challenges for workers.
The training will wrap up on 19 August. After that, educators from provinces will be putting together programmes to conduct shop steward training in their respective provinces.
The workplace in South Africa has become an occupational risk for workers as employers, including the government, are currently embarking on a mass-scale reduction of personnel numbers and budgets due to the introduction of workplace automation through innovation and as a result of under-funding.
Shortage of staff is presenting a new risk for workers in the world of work, as employees have become prone to litigations, especially in the healthcare sector.
Poor investment in the healthcare sector has led to various high-risk units in healthcare facilities experiencing a shortage of staff.
Furthermore, poor interpretation and poor implementation of both the labour laws and collective agreements by employers have thrown the world of work into chaos and this has brought unhappiness among employees.
“This is where the training comes in handy,” says DENOSA Coordinator for Bargaining, Organising and Campaigns (BOC) Unit at DENOSA, Matshidiso Dipudi.
“The training will increase the levels of assertiveness and confidence on all our shop stewards on the shopfloor as they defend members in the workplace. The workers are facing a vicious onslaught from the employers out there, both the public and private, in various areas like clinical, occupational health and safety, and collective bargaining. Their rights, generally, are contested constantly in the workplace, “ concluded Dipudi.
