Durban - President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address would be a failure if he did not address the jobs bloodbath which was currently plaguing the country, trade union federation Cosatu said.
Ramaphosa will deliver his fourth SONA on Thursday night.
Cosatu in KwaZulu-Natal said Ramaphosa had to clearly pronounce how he aimed to deal with the jobs bloodbath and rising unemployment.
Cosatu's KZN secretary Edwin Mkhize, called on Ramaphosa to come out clearly on how his government intends to resolve the problems of State Owned Enterprises "such as Eskom and SAA which are currently underperforming".
Mkhize said Cosatu in KZN was also deeply concerned by the appalling level of retrenchments and mass dismissals of workers with the unemployment rate in the country currently at 29.1%.
"We know that the real unemployment rate is around 38.5%, above 40% of this is youth," Mkhize said.
He said that some retrenchments were unnecessary as they were a result of technological reasons as opposed to operational reasons and that even some of those based on operational reasons were driven by greed and profit accumulation.
"The government seems to be found wanting and its failure to protect and create jobs can only lead to a worse state of affairs.
"We think in his state of the nation address today, President Cyril Ramaphosa would have failed dismally if he cannot pronounce himself clearly on how he intends to address this jobs bloodbath crisis, and what is the plan to reduce levels of unemployment," said Mkhize.