Unions+need+to+draw+a+new+line,+Mpumelelo+Mkhabela,+City+Press

City Press, Johannesburg, 07/04/2007 18:00 - (SA)
=Unions need to draw a new line=

As business goes global, SA's unions need a new strategy, says **MPUMELELO MKHABELA**

THE general secretary of Cosatu, Zwelinzima Vavi, said this week that worker solidarity “knows no boundaries”. He was addressing a rally in Johannesburg in support of Zimbabwean workers whose rights had been violated by President Robert Mugabe.

Vavi may have easily claimed worker solidarity beyond the Limpopo. But a more crucial need – an almost impossible one – is to design new forms of unionism in line with transnational corporations whose operations “know no boundaries”.

How do unions respond to demands by global companies for cheap unprotected labour?

How does the government implement labour laws to protect vulnerable workers in the face of pressure from multinational corporations to make it easy to hire and fire?

Cheap, skilled labour now ranks among the top requirements of companies deciding on comparative advantage and location.

They locate production and assembly facilities in countries after striking bargain deals with governments. Labour unions cannot globalise in accordance with the transnational production chain except through “solidarity”, which is rhetorical.

They can put pressure on the home government, which also consistently gets lobbied by the multinationals. President Thabo Mbeki has held several meetings with chief executives of multinational companies who seek to invest in South Africa – but he has not and is unlikely to – seek one with the trade union leader of another country.

His advisers, the International Investment Council, are made up of executives from global companies who notch up profits that exceed the gross domestic products of many countries.

The political influence the corporations have on governments is huge.

Governments are more wary if transnational companies threaten an investment strike than if workers down tools. This does not mean that strikes are not effective – the huge protracted strike in France last year led to the reversal of reforms that would have created a two-tier labour market system with a youth component that was easy to hire and fire.

Several companies are now casualising workers (employing them without job guarantees, benefits and often for long hours) while their profits soar. These workers find it hard to bargain and trade unions find it difficult to organise them.

Last week, Vavi was among several union leaders who met cabinet ministers in a “trade union working group” in Cape Town to discuss issues affecting jobs and poverty.

Trade union leaders and cabinet ministers presented papers that discussed, among other things, the effect of globalisation on jobs and working conditions.

After the meeting, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin and Vavi said there was a “high degree of common ground” between government and labour on the challenges facing workers and the effect of globalisation on organised labour. Erwin said there was also agreement about the notion of “decent” and “secured” work.

The meeting also decided to set up a joint task team to investigate whether there was flexibility in the labour market system, a debate that has been going on since the mid-’90s.

When business meets government through the presidential working group on business, it lobbies for the softening of the labour market. When government complains about business’s low levels of investment, stringent labour laws making it difficult to fire workers are often cited as the reason for low levels of investments.

This issue has caused divisions in cabinet and the ANC.

There was an uproar two years ago when Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi penned a discussion paper for the ANC’s National General Council (NGC) proposing a two-tier labour market system with a youth component that would make it easier for companies to hire and fire. It was believed this would encourage employment creation, especially among unskilled workers.

Among others, Moleketi was supported by his boss Trevor Manuel. He told City Press in 2005 that the need for a two-tier labour market system should not be swept under the carpet. “What I am saying is very controversial. Part of it is that people must pause and say: ‘Either you deal with a small number of people or you are going to deal with the reality of too many people who want to be part of an active labour market. ..

“Relaxation (of labour laws) is part of it. . . what are we going to do about the rate of young people who want to come in? They are young and inexperienced. They have never worked. How do we deal with that separately?” Manuel asked.

“The proposals should not be swept under the carpet as they were part of the solution to unemployment. There is a notion that the NGC rejected that. It didn’t. The only thing was that unions said, ‘let us research’. But what is there to research when empirically you can see?”

A new discussion document on the working class prepared for the ANC’s policy conference in June has conceded that there are increasing levels of casualisation of workers, a decline in wages and a steady decline of union members in the past few years.

It then concludes that “in the big scheme of critical challenges facing the movement, legislative change [on the labour issues] is unnecessary”.

The document does not say what this “big scheme of critical challenges” are in the “movement”. It is an easy guess that there is first a need to nurse the fractured alliance.

despite the dwindling numbers – unions are still powerful and Vavi Second – will often say “there will be blood on the floor if anyone threatens the hard-won gains of workers”.

Third, with the succession debate getting dirty in the alliance, Mbeki’s lieutenants are treading carefully on this sensitive issue: there is a disincentive to drive workers to militantly support ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, who has cleverly positioned himself as a reliable friend of the workers.

In another document on the transformation of the economy, the labour market issue is only referred to in question form: “Should we make compromises in the labour market to maximise absorption of unemployed skilled labour?”

While this question will no doubt occupy much of the discussion in the conference’s economic transformation commission, it appears as though there is a shift in government thinking about this. Whereas labour flexibility was once proposed forcefully, it now appears to be vaguely discussed.

Cabinet ministers – including Manuel, who once said there was no need to research the issue – have decided to form a task team to investigate the matter further. But divisions among cabinet ministers have also helped stall any reforms. Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana has consistently and publicly stated that government’s labour laws were correct and that the idea that they were not flexible was false. He once told Parliament the reason “every Tom, Dick and Harry” of a company fired workers was because labour laws were flexible.

In March last year, after Stats SA issued statistics showing a marginal decline in unemployment figures, Mdladlana issued a statement saying that government’s policies were vindicated.

“This is an indication of how well our labour market policies are functioning. Also critical are the key findings that the number of people who are actively seeking employment has increased. [This is] accompanied by a decline in the number of discouraged work-seekers who did not actively seek employment,” he said.

“This reflects the confidence shown by job seekers in our policies.

“Interestingly, there is also an increase in agriculture employment despite an attack on the regulatory stance of the department in that sector through the promulgation of the sectoral determination.” The findings of a study commissioned by Mdladlana’s department has been a subject of discussion in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) over the past two years.

The document concluded that many employers were now sub-contracting labour in such a way that workers had fallen out of the definition of employment. In essence, this implies that companies have created their own flexibility outside the regulations of government.

The question in the Nedlac debate is whether government should legalise this flexibility or extend the current labour laws to cover vulnerable workers.

The research estimated that the number of Temporary Employment Services (TES) in the formal economy is more than 3 000. If TESs operating in the informal economy were included, this figure would be substantially higher. The document says researchers found that labour legislation has provided the impetus, rather than restricted, sub-contracting.

It recommended that the definition of “workplace” in the Labour Relations Act be amended to make it clear that employees can exercise rights against an employer who “controls” the workplace. This would address a situation in the service sector where there is virtually no territorial workplace – workers move from one place to another.

These findings did not arouse as much public debate as the Moleketi document.

However, Manuel said last week that casualisation in the construction and retail sectors – the most profitable sectors – has resulted in difficulties in determining those who are expected to pay income tax and those who qualify for exemption.

Manuel said that in the next two years, government might have a good picture about casualisation as it seeks to register workers for the mandatory state-assisted pension he proposed in his budget.

Even with the appointment of the joint task team, debates about the flexibility of the labour market will not stop. In any event, it is a debate that “knows no boundaries”.


 * From: http://www.news24.com/City_Press/Features/0,,186-1696_2095272,00.html**

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