COSATU+Weekly+Mass+Class+Stayaway+General+Strike

COSATU Weekly, 20-26 May 2005
=Cosatu takes jobs campaign to the streets=

COSATU's Central Executive Committee (CEC) this week agreed on a rolling mass action in protest against jobs losses and poverty. "By far the biggest issue confronting workers remains the catastrophic loss of jobs and intolerably high levels of unemployment," its statement declared. "South Africa is continually losing jobs from the productive heart of the economy. Sections of mining and manufacturing have destroyed tens of thousands of jobs, and face the prospects of losing thousands more in the near future."

Faced with growing job losses and inadequate employment creation, COSATU and its affiliates last year entered into disputes with employers in the mining, clothing and retail sectors, as key actors in job losses, under Sec. 77 of the Labour Relations Act.

"In the months since we submitted notices of dispute, we have engaged extensively at Nedlac and elsewhere. Nedlac has now declared that a deadlock has nonetheless emerged. In the next few days, COSATU will submit notices that permit workers to embark on protected rolling mass action, including pickets, demonstrations, and a series of stayaways. The first stayaway will be on 27 June."

The CEC absolutely rejected the tendency of some government and business leaders to write off key sectors of the economy such as gold mining and clothing, textiles and footwear. "The unemployment rate is 40% if we count all those who want paid work, and close to 30%, using the narrower definition that counts as unemployed only workers who are actively seeking work. Moreover, economic growth remains relatively slow compared to other middle-income countries. In these circumstances, South Africans cannot afford to lose jobs or economic capacity. Instead, we need urgent action to address the threat to these industries."

With this campaign, COSATU demands decent work for all South Africans. "We will extend our coalition with the main organisations of civil society to mobilise around this fundamental objective. Amongst others our demands are:


 * Strong measures to end the overvaluation of the rand, especially through a reduction in the real interest rate, which is still higher than it was in the early 1990s or the 1980s. The high rand has led to a flood of imports and undermined the profitability of the mining industry.
 * Business must make much more serious efforts to avoid job losses. Retrenchment and closure should be the last step taken, since they destroy economic capabilities as well as worsening poverty and inequality.
 * Mining companies must do more to develop South African industry, rather than focusing on foreign mining opportunities.
 * Retailers must stock 75% local goods, cutting back on imports.
 * Government at all levels should strongly pursue local procurement policies.
 * Government must do more to assist businesses to avoid job losses and to help workers confronted by retrenchment. We appreciate the prioritisation of employment creation in government policy documents; now we must see more consistent action to put that commitment into action.
 * Government must review its trade strategy to ensure that it stops destroying jobs. The WTO provides for special safeguard measures to protect industries under threat from Chinese imports. These measures must be applied urgently to save the clothing industry. Government must itself initiate safeguard measures to protect vulnerable industries, or as a minimum allow unions to apply for them, rather than business alone."

The Jobs and Poverty Campaign supports additional demands from affiliates that relate to employment and workers' conditions. In particular, COSATU demands:
 * Local authorities immediately stop privatising basic services, which often leads to job losses, and reduced and more expensive essential services for the poor.
 * SEIFSA must immediately desist from insisting that NUMSA agree up-front to exclude SMMEs from agreements reached in the current round of wage negotiations. NUMSA protest actions on this issue, originally planned for 7 June will now form part of mass marches in urban centres on 27 June
 * In response to Edcon adverts attacking our demands on local procurement, the CEC will seek to ensure that no workers' money be invested, through retirement funds, in the company. COSATU will approach Old Mutual, as well as worker trustees of retirement funds, to withdraw investments from the Edcon group. Our collective retirement funds will no longer be used by companies like Edcon that seem determined to destroy workers' future.
 * Employers have sidestepped labour rights through casualisation and subcontracting, which let the actual employer avoid legal obligations. COSATU demands amendments to the LRA to compel the workplace employer to negotiate with subcontracted workers on any measures that could cause them to lose jobs, and ensure that temporary workers have the same rights and benefits as permanent workers.
 * COSATU demands an end to racial practices that remain prevalent in many workplaces. The CEC adopted a programme of action including:

June: Report-backs through provincial shop-steward councils and through affiliate structures; pickets at retailer on 18 June and strikes on 27 June.
 * 2005:**

July - August: Every week, one province holds a half-day stay-away while the other provinces hold pickets and demonstrations.

September: Demonstrations and pickets across the country in the first two weeks, leading up to half-day national stay-away on 19 Sept.

October - November: Every week, one province holds lunch-hour demonstrations over a week. December: COSATU anniversary and mass rally; continued demonstrations in the next two weeks.

January: Demonstrations and pickets continue, with lunch-hour demonstrations in KZN in the second week.
 * 2006:**

February: Sectoral half-day stay-away (manufacturing, mining, public service, services and parastatals).

March: Evaluation by first CEC in 2006.

The CEC spent a full day reflecting on ways to build the labour movement. This followed the presentation of a report by the COSATU General Secretary on his recent visit to workplaces and unions in four provinces, interacting and listening to workers. The report analysed organisational weaknesses, especially the need to improve service to members.
 * Build our organisations!**

The critical challenges are to strengthen representation of members in the workplace during grievances and negotiations. A key step is to reinforce the culture of reporting back and mandating at all levels. Perhaps the greatest task we face in going back to basics is to empower members and shop stewards to take charge of their destiny and keep leaders and officials accountable - that is a key tenet of workers' control. Only improvements in these areas will maintain workers' collective strength and unity, while enabling COSATU to organise the unorganised over the coming years.

The CEC concluded that strengthening our organisation requires greater effort to enhance morale and dedication across the labour movement, the allocation of more resources to serve workers in smaller employers and vulnerable sectors, and better strategies for implementing the labour laws, including the management of individual and collective disputes.

The CEC adopted a Programme of Action to improve service to members and strengthen implementation of the organisational development process adopted at the Seventh National Congress. Key elements include:


 * Visits to workplaces by national office bearers of COSATU and its affiliates, so union leaders can discuss challenges directly with members and shop stewards.
 * Radically improved training, resourcing and backup for shop stewards and organisers.
 * Expanding COSATU's capacity to assist unions to review their management systems and improve them.

As a first step in this programme, COSATU has published a booklet to help shop stewards and organisers fight retrenchments. We will publish further materials to help them improve their efforts to represent and protect workers.

COSATU's Central Committee (CC) on 15-18 August will evaluate our progress in implementing the 8th National Congress resolutions and 2015 plan, with a focus on organisational development. Some 500 leaders from COSATU affiliates and regions will attend.

The CEC considered the discussion documents circulated for the ANC National General Council (NGC) at the end of June. The CEC expressed shock that some elements within the liberation movement are determined to roll back gains workers have made in the past ten years in the transformation of the apartheid labour market. This is yet another sign of growing class contradictions within the Alliance.
 * No watering down of labour laws!**

"COSATU believes that the overwhelming majority of the delegates to the ANC NGC will never adopt proposals designed to roll back workers' gains," said the statement. "We are determined to fight proposals with everything in our power."

The CEC noted that the ANC document raises proposals on the labour market for discussion in the run-up to the NGC. It therefore resolved that COSATU will develop its own position and engage with these ideas at all levels, from local to provincial and national forums. In particular, COSATU will ensure discussions of the issues at its local Socialist Forums across the country in the coming month. It will invite all Alliance local structures to participate in these discussions, for which it will prepare a response to the ANC document.

COSATU will communicate to the ANC its concern that proposals that would undermine workers' rights could impose considerable political costs on the democratic movement, while the economic benefits will be non-existent.

The document suggests that a dual economy requires dual labour laws. But separate labour laws for different groups will just entrench exclusion and inequality. In contrast, the aim of the democratic movement has always been a single, integrated economy, with equal rights for all our people. COSATU will not let workers be pushed back into conditions where their rights depend on where they are from, their age or the size of their employer. In any case, the Constitutional guarantees of equity and labour rights should rule out any such proposals.

The CEC noted that in the past ten years, in economic terms workers have benefited less than business. The share of wages and salaries in the national income has declined steadily, while the share of profits has increased. These trends will only be aggravated by measures that effectively undermine workers' job security and their ability to organise and negotiate.

The CEC also noted that massive inequalities and low wages in important sectors, which the proposals in the discussion document would aggravate, actually slowed economic growth in the past ten years. Sectors that pay poorly and do not enforce the labour laws properly - agriculture, the informal sector and domestic work - are amongst the least dynamic in the country. In contrast, higher and more equitable pay stimulates domestic demand while providing the basis for a more skilled, stable and productive labour force.

The CEC agreed that there is a need to improve legal protection for casualised and temporary workers, since many employers use loopholes in the legislation around these workers to turn the clock back to apartheid days. COSATU will demand urgent action in this regard, as agreed with the government last year. Any other changes in the labour laws must be based on serious research, not on anecdotes and ideology from business. COSATU will resist any moves that undermine worker rights.