COSATU+neglects+workers+for+national+politics,+Mawande+Jack,+Herald



=‘Cosatu neglects workers for national politics’=


 * Mawande Jack, Labour Correspondent, The Herald, Port Elizabeth, 14 January 2008**

THE Congress of South African Trade Unions‘ continued preoccupation with alliance and ANC presidential succession politics has led to the neglect of workers‘ shop-floor issues, says Wits University sociology of work unit Professor Sakhela Buhlungu.

Cosatu‘s backing for Jacob Zuma‘s presidency of the ANC and the country, its strained relationship with the ANC over the ruling party‘s economic policies and its overzealousness to make the ANC a working class-biased movement were pointing to this.

While there were indications that shop-floor issues would dominate the agenda of trade unions, the labour federation seemed to be sidetracked by alliance politics, he said. “The preoccupation of Cosatu with national politics is taking up shop-floor issues.”

There have also been voices within Cosatu and the government calling on Cosatu to keep out of politics.

Numsa general secretary Silumko Nondwangu has also questioned the attempt by some in the labour movement to turn unions into “instruments of struggle for political office and not for workers.”

During the public service workers‘ strike last year, some in the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) and the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) were becoming uncomfortable with the growing tendency by some union leaders to attack the ANC and Thabo Mbeki, instead of concentrating on issues of the strike.

It was especially during last year‘s wage strikes that the mobilisation for the SACP and Zuma‘s support got into higher gear.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi lashed out at Buhlungu, saying “last year‘s workers‘ strikes were for better wages and an improvement in their conditions was higher than in other years”. He said Cosatu believed there could be no better conditions for workers when the political environment was not right.

“While we address shop-floor issues as our core business, we must continue to battle at the political level as well.”

Former Cosatu trade unionist and Anti-Privatisation Forum leader Lennie Gentle said statements calling on Cosatu to focus on its “core business” showed little respect for the history of the mass movement.


 * From: http://www.theherald.co.za/herald/news/n10_11012008.htm**

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