COSATU Media Monitor 2 September 2011
Patrick Craven
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Contents
1.1 Still, no learning at Soweto school
1.2 Barclays's Absa challenged by union over possible job cuts
2.1 Money at the centre of unions' woes: Dlamini
2.2 COSATU call to dismiss leaders who mobilised league
2.3 SOS to meet minister over SABC’s mandate
3.1 A planned national stoppage and ‘strike fatigue’
3.3 Julius Malema's hearing cuts to the heart of the ANC's internal conflict
1 Workers
1.1 Still, no learning at Soweto school
Sibongile Mashaba & Tebogo Monama, Sowetan, 1 September 2011
TEACHERS at Meadowlands Senior Secondary School in Soweto yesterday sat in the staff room while pupils were in classes.
Fewer pupils turned up at the school. Of those who came, some were not wearing uniform and many did not bring their books.
A group of pupils stormed out of the school at about 10am, saying they were going home because there "was no teaching and learning". Some refused to go into the school, forcing department officials to chase them away.
"We are not going to sit in class because the teachers are not in class," a Grade 10 pupil said.
The pupil said he was worried about exams. "In a few months we will be writing exams. What is going to happen to us if this matter is not resolved?" he asked.
The pupils have not been in class since last week.
The school governing body and parents barred pupils and teachers from entering the school, demanding the reinstatement of principal Moss Senye, who was suspended in February.
Senye and another teacher, Fancy Phehle, were suspended after their arrest for allegedly assaulting a 17-year-old pupil.
While Gauteng MEC for education Barbara Creecy said the department was still waiting for advice on whether Senye should be declared "unfit to work", the SA Democratic Teachers Union said it was considering suing the department for the "insult on the union's employees".
Senye is said to be diabetic.
Sadtu regional secretary Ronald Nyathi said: "An employee's medical record is not for public consumption. The department has damaged comrade Moss's reputation. His dignity and profession were attacked in public. Our lawyers are looking into the matter."
Creecy said Senye had never attended a disciplinary hearing and had missed several court appearances (because of sickness).
"I do not understand how the parents can say that they want the principal back because he is clearly unwell. Dissolving the school governing body is also an option. I need to ask the head of department Boy Ngobeni to look into that," Creecy said.
1.2 Barclays's Absa challenged by union over possible job cuts
San Francisco Chronicle, 31 August 2011
South Africa's Solidarity trade union said it is applying to the country's Labor Court to stop planned job cuts at Absa Group Ltd., the bank controlled by Barclays Plc.
Some staff at Absa have been asked to relocate from Pretoria to Johannesburg and may lose their jobs if they don't move as the bank tries to centralize some of its functions, Ilze Nieuwoudt, a spokeswoman for Solidarity said by mobile phone today. "At this stage information is very scarce, but if on a small scale we're already seeing events like this, maybe there's more to come."
On Aug. 2, Johannesburg-based Absa said first-half profit rose by almost a fifth to 4.58 billion rand ($650 million) as bad loans declined and costs as a proportion of revenue fell to 54.8 percent from 56 percent a year earlier. While Standard Bank Group Ltd. said it was cutting more than 2,000 jobs last year as its growth slowed, Absa and Nedbank Group Ltd. have increased profits and have not announced staff reductions.
Three representatives of Sasbo, a South African labor union which acts for workers in the financial services industry, were not immediately able to comment because they were in meetings with Absa today.
John Dludlu, a spokesman at Absa, didn't immediately respond to a call requesting comment. Patrick Wadula, part of the bank's communications team, said the bank may make a statement later today.
2 South Africa
2.1 Money at the centre of unions' woes: Dlamini
Anna Majavu, Times, 1 September 2011
Cosatu president Sidumo Dlamini has warned union leaders to stop using the unions as their own "cash cows".
Speaking at the Chemical, Engineering, Pulp, Paper, Wood and Allied Workers' Union (Ceppwawu) in Durban on Wednesday, Dlamini warned that money was at the centre of the problems facing many unions, including Ceppwawu.
He did not go into details, but Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi wrote recently in an internal report that Ceppwawu had spent R11-million on internal court battles over control of the union investment company.
"At the centre of all these divisions is money. There is too much money in the union investment company which is at the centre of the latest divisions... the union is in trouble," Vavi wrote.
Dlamini said elections in unions were being "driven and dictated to by service providers based on financial interests".
Factions in unions were labelling each other corrupt in a bid to get elected and carry out the very same corruption, Dlamini said.
"Elections are more about a clarion call that 'it is our time to eat' than a call to battle against capital," Dlamini added.
He cautioned union delegates that union investment companies were not there to provide perks for leaders but were supposed to generate an income to fund the unions' activities.
Dlamini warned that if union leaders did not stop fighting over money, their members would become disillusioned and turn to the DA, and the "demagogues".
Without mentioning the ANC Youth League by name, Dlamini referred to Tuesday's protest outside Luthuli House and said that the country's youth had been "pulled by all sorts of questionable forces".
2.2 COSATU call to dismiss leaders who mobilised league
Mpho Dube, The New Age, 1 September 2011
2.3 SOS to meet minister over SABC’s mandate
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Chantelle Benjamin, Business Day, 2 September 2011
THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and civil society are to meet Communications Minister Roy Padayachie today and will argue for more restrictions on who may be nominated to the SABC board, including that nominees should not be political office bearers .
The organisations — operating as the SOS: Support Public Broadcasting coalition — have been lobbying government for an urgent review of the public broadcasting policy since the withdrawal of the controversial Public Service Broadcasting Bill.
SOS believes a review would go some way towards addressing the problems experienced at the SABC and by cash-strapped community broadcasters.
Of chief concern to SOS is the lack of coherent vision for public broadcasting, which has made it hard to hold the SABC publicly accountable since the required charter was scattered throughout the Broadcast Act.
One of SOS’s proposals is that the government craft a new funding model for the SABC that takes into consideration its mandate in the new digital, multichannel environment. Their suggestions on funding for the SABC resembles some of those put forward at the African National Congress’s 2007 Polokwane conference, which includes the possible decorporatisation of the SABC, and funding local content programming through public funds to ensure the SABC satisfies its mandate as a public broadcaster.
SOS recommends the SABC become a chapter 9 institution to protect its independence. Kate Skinner, spokeswoman for SOS, said: "If we can clarify the roles of the minister, Icasa (the communications regulator), Parliament and SABC management and the roles of the board, it would put us in a better position to avoid the problems of the past."
3 Comment
3.1 A planned national stoppage and ‘strike fatigue’
Terry Bell, Business Report, 2 September 2011
If Cosatu goes ahead with its planned one-day national strike on October 5 it could prove to be a major tactical blunder that will weaken, rather than strengthen, the labour movement. So say several senior trade unionists in the wake of the federation’s North West region announcing this week that it is starting a “mobilisation programme” to build support for the planned national stoppage.
The programme is based on 11 points adopted by the Cosatu executive as part of an anti-poverty drive. It deals with everything from concerns about electricity tariff increases to corruption, privatisation and job creation. However, the overall thrust seems likely to be the demand for a universal “living wage” and for the complete ban on labour brokers by year end.
Most of the labour movement supports these calls, with the exception of the ban on labour brokers. Cosatu is committed to this, while the Federation of Unions maintains that such a ban is unworkable and would merely drive underground a serious problem that should be regulated.
But the main concern among many Cosatu trade unionists is what one senior official referred to as “strike fatigue”. This applies particularly to members of the Cosatu-affiliated SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) whose three-week long strike among “non-essential” workers was called off this week.
Members of other Cosatu-affiliated unions that have recently been on strike or who have concluded double-digit wage deals, are also reportedly reluctant to “march to the top of the hill and then march back down again”.
“Of course we support the demands, but I don’t think our members will be prepared to come out again,” is a fairly common refrain. In any event, this year’s battle by municipal workers for better pay is far from over; the strikes have been suspended amid the promise of “a real storm” come wage and conditions negotiations in June next year.
But now another round of talks looms. Only they will take place in the context of an arbitration hearing and will deal with the wages and conditions for the 70 per cent of municipal workers who were not involved of the recent dispute. These are the men and women who are, for the most part, regarded as “essential service workers”, labouring at everything from fire fighting and water reticulation to sewage treatment.
In the process of these talks, the unions may again attempt to establish an agreed definition of what should be regarded as essential services and at what levels they should be maintained in times of industrial disputes. This demand for a minimum service agreement has been on the table for more than a decade but, as matters stand, a degree of organisational anarchy applies.
For example, “solid waste” workers — those who collect household rubbish — are, by law, only permitted stop work for up to 14 days. After that period, because of potential health hazards posed by uncollected garbage, they become essential service workers.
Anomalies such as these can be manipulated and abused and are, in any event, little understood, all of which creates problems in any negotiation process.
“There have also been a number of ad hoc arrangements (about essential services) with individual municipalities, but none of these agreements has been ratified,” says Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) general secretary, Johan Koen. The result is that some workers in one municipal jurisdiction may be regarded as part of essential services while their counterparts doing the same job in another region may be “non-essential”.
“It’s very complicated,” says Samwu general secretary, Mthedeki Nhlapo. “And what we don’t want is everything and every worker declared an essential service,” he says. Such a declaration would place even greater limits on the right of members to exercise the last resort of strike action.
The unions are only too aware that SA Local Government Association (Salga), together with the wider public service, is loath to negotiate a minimum service agreement. Some local government officials and politicians have also indicated that they would like to see all public service workers, including teachers, declared “essential” and forbidden to strike.
But while the essential services issue rankles, it is unlikely to be dealt with, let alone resolved this year. Instead, it will almost certainly feature prominently when the next round of wage talks start in June next year; talks which Koen says may take place “in the eye of a storm”.
It is likely then that the deep feelings of bitterness, especial among members who lost three weeks’ pay because of the recent strike, will come to the fore. And it is bitterness directed at government in general and Salga in particular.
“But we are tired now and need time.” notes a shop steward. So pay is to be the prime — perhaps only — focus in the essential services arbitration hearing , notice of which was posted this week by Imatu. Samwu will make its formal decision at an executive meeting next week.
The Samwu meeting will discuss the way forward and hear the advice of senior legal counsel who has been retained to look into the overall situation within the municipal sector. However officials have already stated that — “for tactical reasons” — the union will join the application. “We cannot stand outside, because any agreement will apply to all,” says Nhlapo.
Because of the anomalies that exist, any “essential services” arbitration award in excess of the 6.08 per cent imposed by Salga this week, will have to be applied across the board. And the unions are confident that they can make a good case for a wage rise of close to 10 per cent.
The municipal unions will therefore wait for the result of the arbitration hearing and this may only be available later in the year, certainly after the national one-day strike call by Cosatu. As a Cosatu affiliate, Samwu will pledge solidarity, but shop stewards and officials of the union agree that there is unlikely to be “much, if any, support on the ground”.
3.2 Julius Malema's hearing cuts to the heart of the ANC's internal conflict
Editorial, Guardian (UK), 1 September 2011
The South African youth leader has succeeded in keeping the pro-poor agenda alive in the African National Congress by putting land reform and mine nationalism in the limelight
South African ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, left, at a press conference in Johannesburg. He has been charged by the ANC for bringing the party into disrepute. Photograph: Paballo Thekiso/AFP/Getty Images
The flying bricks and icy sprays of water cannon outside Luthuli House on Tuesday were a distraction from the really nasty salvoes that must be flying this week inside the African National Congress's headquarters in central Johannesburg.
What is at stake at the disciplinary committee hearings of the six leaders of the ANC Youth League goes far beyond the firebrand personality of its president, Julius Malema. The outcome of the hearings may affect Jacob Zuma's game plan to remain president past the 2014 elections. But beyond that, the fate of the Youth League leadership cuts to the heart of the ANC's internal conflict over how it should graduate from being a liberation movement and whether it should be a pro-poor or a pro-investor party.
Those who would like to be rid of Malema charged the 30-year-old populist with bringing the party into disrepute after he made the diplomatic faux pas of insulting the democratically elected government of neighbouring Botswana. It's a limp charge that no one really cares about, but it spares Malema's enemies from publicly addressing the real issues at the heart of the showdown.
Those issues are not, as one might think, Malema's alleged ill-gotten gains – such as six houses bought mainly for cash. If the disciplinary committee raises them, or mentions Malema's company directorships, the youth leader's legal team can almost certainly come back at them with the names of other ANC leaders with dodgy portfolios. No, the issues that scare the ANC are ideological, namely his calls for the nationalisation of the mining sector and the confiscation of white-owned land. They have a huge and enthusiastic audience because South Africa remains shockingly poor.
Using conservative measures, a quarter of the population is unemployed and two-thirds of the jobless are under 35. Even in the year leading up to the 2010 World Cup, 959,000 jobs were lost, according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Schools are ill equipped and, 17 years after the end of apartheid, the drop-out rate before matric (A-levels) is 64%. According to the 2007 General Household Survey, 11% of South Africans are "sometimes or always hungry''. The healthcare system is failing: counter to the global trend, maternal mortality has increased since 2000. With 1,000 people dying every day from HIV-related illnesses, South Africa's death rate resembles that of a country at war.
These are the coalface realities that dwarf the ANC government's development successes so far: nearly 3m houses built; social grants extended to 12 million citizens; 90% of households with access to clean water within 50 metres; and more children at school than ever before.
The energetic health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, wants to create a national health insurance system to democratise healthcare, but the middle classes are afraid it will cost them too much. Wednesday saw the release of rural development minister Gugile Nkwinti's land reform green paper. It proposes the creation of a land management commission with the power to invalidate ownership where land is unproductive. But such proposals have a track record of falling by the wayside in the face of the powerful investors' lobby. Finance minister Pravin Gordhan's New Growth Plan ambitiously promises to create 5m jobs in the private sector in the next 10 years, but no one can work out where they are going to come from.
Meanwhile, South African cities have the largest wealth gap in the world, according to UN Habitat. South Africa has four dollar billionaires on Forbes's rich list and a growing class of "black diamonds'' whose wealth is not, as was promised, trickling down.
Malema knows his ANC history well enough to quote Nelson Mandela calling for the nationalisation of mines when the Youth League was founded in 1944. He is also not the lone voice he might appear to be. Cosatu, which is a partner in government, regularly argues that the apartheid economy – based on cheap labour and a heavy reliance on mining – has never really been dismantled. Last week, former Archbishop Desmond Tutu expressed his frustration at the lack of transformation by calling for a "wealth tax'' on whites.
Malema, a domestic worker's son from Limpopo, has built his political career on going back to ANC basics. He helped Jacob Zuma unseat President Thabo Mbeki in 2007. Then he deployed his followers ahead of the 2009 elections to campaign enthusiastically for Zuma in poverty-stricken townships where government ministers fear to tread. In return, he expected some concessions to his revolutionary agenda.
The green paper on land reform is one. But it has been released without much fanfare. On nationalism he has achieved more, with senior figures in the ANC now increasingly seeing some form of public ownership as a remedy for economic ills. Whereas the Youth League wants the state to take a 60% ownership in private mines, Cosatu would settle for a 50-50 arrangement, similar to that in Botswana. In September last year, after pressure from the Youth League, the ANC appointed a team to investigate the issue. It will report back to the party leadership next year.
Whether or not one likes Malema, he has succeeded in keeping the pro-poor agenda alive by putting land reform and mine nationalism in the limelight. He claims that whether or not he is suspended at the end of the disciplinary hearings, those issues will not go away.
Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
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