COSATU
How these positions were derived
Every stance on this page is AI-derived from parliamentary and public records — committee transcripts, submissions, and published statements — and each carries the one-line reason the model gave for it. They are a research starting point, not a position an organisation has confirmed. Verification is tiered. 235 of 451 stance records have been verified, and 37 corrected, by a paired AI review — two independent AI reviewers per actor plus an adjudicator — that checked each stance for coherence against the actor’s recorded brief and the idea text. That check did not reach back to primary parliamentary sources, so an AI-verified badge means internally consistent, not independently confirmed. A corrected row shows the revised position, with the originally recorded stance and the adjudicator’s reason inspectable on its badge. The distinct top tier is human review: 0 of 451 stance records across the whole site have been checked by a human reviewer, and a human review always outranks the AI tiers. None have yet. Human-reviewed rows get their own badge as soon as they exist; the 179 rows with neither badge are the model’s unchecked call.
Stakeholder brief
Primary interests
Worker protections under the Labour Relations Act and Basic Conditions of Employment Act; collective bargaining rights; equitable wage growth; just transition for workers in energy-intensive sectors. ANC alliance partner representing ~1.8m workers across public and private sectors.
Key concerns
Labour market flexibility reforms that erode LRA and BCEA protections; Eskom unbundling without adequate just transition planning for NUM members; privatisation of water and transport services raising costs for low-income workers; outsourcing that reduces public-sector employment quality.
What they bring
Deep knowledge of workplace conditions and implementation barriers; NEDLAC negotiating partner essential for any social compact; mobilisation capacity that can legitimise reform rollout; constituency buy-in critical for smooth energy and logistics restructuring.
Conditions for engagement
Meaningful social dialogue through NEDLAC before structural reforms are finalised; just transition funding ring-fenced in MTEF; skills retraining and income support for displaced workers; wage floor protections in newly concessioned entities.
Reform design insight
Labour-intensive growth paths and transition support programs must be built into infrastructure reform from the design stage, not added as afterthoughts. COSATU's concerns about job quality in IPP and concessioning models are a legitimate design input — poorly structured PPPs can reduce employment and wages while increasing efficiency. Engaging COSATU in co-designing transition frameworks produces more durable outcomes than marginalising it.
Recorded positions
46 positions across 5 reform packages. Supportive but heavily conditional.
24
Support
16
Conditional
6
Oppose
0
Neutral
Two scales are in play. The engagement posture above (Cautious) is one actor-level judgement, the axis the feasibility simulator scores. These four counts are the separate per-idea scale: support reads as champion, conditional reads as constructive critic, oppose reads as concerned, neutral has no posture counterpart at all — the posture scale has no neutral. An actor’s posture and its per-idea positions can disagree, and where they do the disagreement is the point.
Stance portfolio
Grouped by reform package, then by the binding constraint each idea addresses. The line under every title is the reason the stance was assigned.
Package 1: Infrastructure Unblock
10 ideas3 support5 conditional2 oppose- Support
COSATU supports nuclear new build as it creates unionisable, well-paid energy jobs unlike IPP contract work.
- ConditionalAI-verified
Agreement & opposition
Scored only on ideas both actors hold a recorded position on. Identical positions score +1, support against opposition −1, support against conditional +0.5, and any pair involving a neutral 0. The figure shown is the mean over the shared ideas. Pairs sharing fewer than 5 ideas are not scored — a one-idea overlap produces a perfect agreement that means nothing.
Most aligned
- DTIC (Dept. of Trade, Industry & Competition)+0.92Near-identical positions6 shared ideas of 46 · 6 agree · 0 clash
- National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)+0.81Near-identical positions8 shared ideas of 46 · 7 agree · 1 clash
- Presidency / Operation Vulindlela+0.65Mostly aligned20 shared ideas of 46 · 19 agree · 1 clash
Most opposed
Data as of 2026-08-24 · latest PMG meeting 2026-08-21