SACTWU PROFILE

Sactwu is the biggest union in the clothing, textile and leather industry, with more than 100 000 members. This allows Sactwu to represent members more effectively. We negotiate wages for the vast majority of workers in the clothing, textile and leather industry, and our agreements cover over 150 000 workers.

We have an organisational capacity to take up worker problems, with over 50 organisers employed country wide, and 40 other support staff. We build worker leadership on the shop floor, with 3000 shop stewards, all of who are elected every three years by secret ballot by union members. We employ two full-time officials to train shop stewards.

We have a qualified research team that studies economic problems in the industry, and help to develop solutions on issues such as imports, exports, buy local campaign, and ways to save factories from closing.

We run big campaigns to save jobs, and have led the call to set up a ‘buy South Africa campaign’, and we enter into agreements with big companies to support the local industry.

We provide numerous personal benefits for members, and these include automatic funeral cover.

We have programmes which benefits our members and their family.

We defend workers against unfair dismissals at factory level, at the CCMA, in the Bargaining Council and in the Labour Court. Every year we take up at least 250 cases at the CCMA and we spend almost R1 million in Labour Court cases.

We provide a home for workers, uniting people who speak Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho, English, Xhosa, Tswana and every other local language. We bring together Christians, Muslims, Hindu and every other religion;