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Workers Killed and Injured on the Job

Against Wage-Labour

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:45:00

June 9, 2008, Stelllenbosch, South Africa: Five workers have died and thirteen have been injured when a sub-contractor was demolishing a wall at an old wine cellar in Stellenbosch in the wine region of South Africa.

A 150 ton concrete slab fell on the group of workers when an interior wall was being removed in the 60-year-old building. One of the injured men will never be able to use his legs again, another lost his fingers and several others had fractures in their arms as well as head injuries. Neither the main contractor nor the sub-contractor who was one of the injured even knew the names of the workers. It is suspected that the workers were literally picked up in the streets. It is probable that this deadly incident will end up in the courts with demands for millions of Rand in compensation.

This unstable building was being remodeled and renovated when it collapsed. It has since been completely demolished due to its severe instability. The viciousness of this fatal incident highlights the push for profits over safety. Workers need to survive and so are ill-fated to work in dangerous conditions with extremely low wages. The time that they put in creates an enormous amount of wealth that is never left in the hands of the producers of the wealth, the workers. While both the government and employers seem to regret these situations due to the inevitable loss of profits and the ensuing lawsuits, the system chugs on and it will only be a matter of time before other workers die while they wage-labour. The systemic class system is the foundation for such brutal conditions and so at the heart of the matter, the root injustice must be fought, that is, capitalism and its base wage-labour.

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