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General strike by Cosatu in October seems more likely
Labour unrest could become part of the price the South African economy might have to pay for the unfolding battle within the ranks of the country’s governing alliance. Unless relations between the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and its ally, the African National Congress (ANC) as leader of the ruling alliance, improve dramatically in the immediate to near future, the country could face a crippling general strike by October of this year.
Cosatu, in an attack on the Budget speech, accused the government of “talking left and walking right”.
The trade union federation threatened that it would call a general strike before October if the government did not take steps to improve workers’ rights, especially those who are only temporarily employed through labour brokers. It also specifically targeted foreign companies employing temporary labour.
However, much more than just these issues are at stake and it will ultimately inform the decision to strike or not.
Tensions within the ruling alliance make its itchy appearance appear like chicken pox all over the South African body of politics at the moment, as is reflected in other reports in this bulletin.
Cosatu and some of its affiliate unions find themselves as major players in the escalating battle for political and economic control between the left and the centre nationalists within the ANC-led Alliance. Just how that battle pans out during the rest of the year, could have a decisive influence on the mood for strike action come October.
After President Jacob Zuma’s attempt in his State of the Nation Address to hide government’s failure to create 500 000 jobs as promised in his election campaign last year, behind some 480 000 very short-term and basic work opportunities under the expanded public works programme, Cosatu angrily demanded an explanation on how his government will address the nearly one million jobs lost in last year’s recession, and how it plans to create millions of promised jobs over the next few years. To date, no explanation has been forthcoming.
One of the few positives from Zuma’s address was the promotion of youth employment and development. With unemployment among the young being substantially higher than the national average, Zuma’s announcement of government interventions in the form of subsidies to encourage the employment of young people by companies was most welcome.
He also promised to speed up the establishment of the National Youth Development Agency.
In the subsequent Budget speech, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan gave details of the wage subsidy scheme to encourage companies to hire youth, labelling the position of the youth as “a serious challenge”.
Government’s preliminary estimate is that about 800 000 people will qualify for these subsidies, while its aim is to increase the employment of school-leavers by 500 000 by 2013.
When announcing the strike threat, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi also welcomed a letter Gordhan said he had sent to Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus, which calls for the Reserve Bank to widen the focus of its mandate to include job creation. However, Cosatu had been angered anew that Gordhan and the Bank are sticking to the policy of inflation targeting and Vavi again repeated that the unions want it scrapped.
Other issues in Zuma’s speech and Gordhan’s Budget have also renewed tensions between Cosatu and the SACP, and the ANC centre. Among these, are perceptions on the left that the government is again proceeding with some privatisation initiatives, this time relating particularly to Eskom and energy provision.
Meanwhile, leaders of a number of Cosatu-affiliated unions have said the Zuma government has not delivered on its promises to trade unions and that Cosatu has been “taken for a ride”.
The battle lines seem to have been drawn and often cited as the best-organised, best-funded and numerically biggest organisation in the Alliance, Cosatu may also be keen to assess its own strength through the response to a call to a general strike. It would come at a time when tensions are rising and there is increasing talk of an Alliance split or the left being cut out of the Alliance. It could well be used as a muscle-flexing exercise aimed at the ANC and those who oppose the left.
National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni was quoted in a Mail & Guardian (M&G) report as saying that the State of the Nation Address by President Zuma and the Budget speech by Gordhan showed that the union federation is not harvesting the fruits of its support for Zuma, and Cosatu should have refrained from supporting “individuals” in the ANC’s 2007 National Conference in Polokwane. He said Cosatu should have focused on policies rather than personalities.
Baleni said there is “anger from our structures” about the way the ANC treats Cosatu, as before the elections, “we are taken seriously, but after the elections we are not taken seriously any more”.
According to the report, he said Cosatu will take the ANC to task about its concerns regarding the budget, but admitted that mere talking has limited success. “We can’t just get promises all the time; we want to see it... At some point, something must be done.”
Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini told the M&G the federation was unhappy about the proposals in the Budget that moot a move towards a two-tier labour market, calling it a “recipe for disaster”.
In 2005, then Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi proposed a dual labour market system for young people, small businesses and certain labour-intensive industries to address the high unemployment rate, but this was rejected by the ANC during the party’s national general council that year. The idea was also given the thumbs-down during the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007.
Looked upon more favourably was the announcement by the Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies – following from Zuma and Gordhan’s respective speeches – that the government aims to create 2.4 million jobs by 2020 with the launch of the new Industrial Policy Action Plan, which comes into effect in April. But the unions remain skeptical.
Meanwhile, there has been no sign of jobs recovery in the latest government statistics released. The latest employment report released by Statistics SA states that South Africa's labour market stopped contracting in the fourth quarter, but the unemployment rate remains at 24.3% in the fourth quarter (one quarter of all South Africans), marginally changed from the 24.5% rate recorded in the third quarter.
The more than 500 000 South African workers employed daily via labour brokers and recruitment agencies continue to live with much uncertainty. While politicians of the ANC, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party (SACP) eagerly jumped on the political bandwagon in their vocal pursuit of a total shutdown of the labour brokering industry, Cosatu is now becoming suspicious of the ANC’s real commitment to this goal.
Cosatu and the SACP want the labour brokering industry wiped out despite it having added upwards of 3.5 million workers to the employment pool since 2000 and contributing upwards of R10-billion in tax income each year. The fate of these workers is very much linked to the fate of the industry and a shut-down or stifling regulation will most likely see most of them joining the ranks of South Africa’s more than four million unemployed people, a fact Cosatu and the SACP are simply ignoring, or have lost sight of as they focus on presenting the immorality and negatives of some labour brokering practices, while not considering some of the advantages.
Be that as it may, there is justification to suspect that is not always so much the moral objection to labour brokering being “slavery” that is driving Cosatu in its quest to have the practice banned as it is perhaps the federation’s concern over the growth in casual and contract labour, which is eating into its organisational and financial turf and is putting an ever-growing slice of the labour market outside its organisational reach.
Not only is this costing the labour federation and its affiliated unions numerical strength, organisational clout and income, but it is also placing many workers outside the political reach of the ANC-led political Alliance. The latter phenomenon was an intrinsic part of the ANC’s failure to secure the vote of workers in the Western Cape in the April 2009 general election, which caused the ANC to lose control of the province to the Democratic Alliance.
After the election, Alliance leaders expressed serious concern over this. And since then Patrick Craven, Cosatu’s spokesman, has also publicly acknowledged that Cosatu was unable to organise temporary workers.
Recently, Craven was reported as having confirmed that last year’s recession meant a loss of members. But he added that labour brokering was the major obstacle to recruitment as workers did not have a permanent workplace and brokers did not encourage union membership.
It is these kinds of issues, against the background of worsening relations within the Alliance as the battle for control gains momentum that could, if not resolved, contribute much to a political climate favouring a general strike in October – an event a struggling post-recession South Africa can ill afford.
