On 7 October, Cosatu plans protest action across all nine provinces as South Africa marks the World Day for Decent Work. The immediate public discussion will understandably focus on marches, workplace attendance, pay and the legal protection available to participating employees. However, the more important issue is the anxiety driving the action: workers fear that a job, once lost, may not be replaced.
John Botha, joint CEO of Global Business Solutions
That fear cannot be dismissed as rhetoric. South Africa's official unemployment rate rose to 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026.
In this environment, retrenchment is not simply the end of one employment relationship. It can remove the main income supporting an extended family and reduce spending in the community around it.
For many people, there is no realistic expectation of finding equivalent work quickly.
Cosatu's demands draw attention to retrenchments, the cost of living and the need for decent work. Its longstanding proposals have included tighter limits on retrenchments and stronger job-creation obligations.
The frustration behind those demands is understandable, but legislation cannot make every position sustainable when a business has lost its market, cannot carry its costs or is undergoing fundamental technological change.
The opposite position is equally inadequate. Employers cannot treat operational requirements as a convenient label applied after management has already made its decision.
South African labour law requires consultation precisely because retrenchment should be a measure of last resort and because alternatives must be considered meaningfully. A process that starts only once the business has exhausted its options may comply with a timetable while missing the purpose of consultation.
The real weakness is that South Africa often starts the job-saving conversation too late.
By the time a formal retrenchment notice is issued, orders may already have disappeared, cash reserves may be depleted and positions may have become unaffordable.
Employers and organised labour then negotiate within an increasingly narrow set of choices. What is presented as consultation becomes a debate about how losses will be allocated rather than how jobs can be preserved.
Preemptive measures
Businesses need earlier workforce-risk discussions.
Falling orders, sustained overtime reductions, rising input costs, automation plans, expiring contracts and changes in customer demand are not only financial indicators. They are potential employment indicators.
Where the risk is material, management should engage employee representatives before a retrenchment decision becomes inevitable.
Earlier engagement creates more room to examine credible alternatives. These may include redeployment, reskilling, reduced reliance on overtime and contractors, voluntary separation, agreed short-time arrangements, changes to shift structures, temporary relief measures or the phased introduction of new technology.
Not every option will suit every workplace, and none should be imposed outside the law or collective agreements. But choices exist earlier that may no longer exist after months of delay.
Government role and responsibility
Government also has a role beyond enforcing correct retrenchment procedure. Many job losses are driven by conditions outside a single workplace: energy and logistics costs, municipal failure, delayed payments, weak demand, crime and sector-specific shocks.
If an otherwise viable employer is under pressure because of a resolvable constraint, a rapid and coordinated intervention can sometimes protect more jobs than a later dispute about whether consultation was adequate.
Honest assessments
Any job-preservation intervention must also be measured honestly. Announcing a programme, training initiative or funding commitment is not the same as preserving employment.
The useful questions are how many jobs remained in place, for how long, at what cost, and whether the underlying business became more sustainable. Without this discipline, job preservation becomes another slogan rather than an outcome.
Organised labour, employers and government each carry responsibilities in this conversation.
Employers must share relevant information early enough for alternatives to be tested.
Unions must be willing to engage with productivity, skills, new technology and commercial realities before a crisis.
Government must respond faster where policy failures or infrastructure constraints are destroying viable employment.
None of these duties cancels the others.
The 7 October action will create a visible moment of pressure. It should not end when the marches disperse. South Africa needs a standing approach to job preservation that identifies risk earlier, brings the right parties together and measures whether interventions actually save sustainable work.
The strongest protection against retrenchment is not a promise that no job will ever disappear. It is a labour market in which warning signs are acted on early, consultation is genuine and employers have enough confidence to invest, adapt and create new opportunities.
That is the harder work that must begin before the retrenchment notice arrives.
