Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 30 June 2025
Norman Mampane
|
COSATU TODAY #CosatuCallCentre number is 010 022 2590 #DecentWork #DecentLives #SACTU70 #ClassStruggle “Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism” #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness |
Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin
‘Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense’-Maoo
Our side of the story
30 June 2025
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
Organize at every workplace and demand respect for labour rights Now!
Defend Jobs Now!
Join COSATU NOW!
Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- DITSELA Institute holds a Siyakhuluma Seminar in July-Is the Challenge on Employment Equity an assault on Transformation?
- SADTU NW Statement on the Appointment of the Superintendent General
- Proud of Our History, Confident of Our Future – NEHAWU 38th Anniversary
- Labour court rules in favour of SAMATU members
- Media Statement: SAMATU's response to an open letter addressing the challenges faced by doctors in public healthcare system
- South Africa
- SACP statement on the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Statement of the WFTU on NATO Summit 2025
- Under neoliberal fire, the right to strike is waning, globally, after years of premeditated attacks to limit it
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
DITSELA Institute holds a Siyakhuluma Seminar-Is the Challenge on Employment Equity an assault on Transformation?
Dear Comrades
You’re cordially invited to DITSELA’s National Siyakhuluma Seminar.
Topic: Is the Challenge on Employment Equity an assault on Transformation?
Date: 08th July 2025
Time: 11H00AM- 13H00PM
Venue: ZOOM
https://ditsela-org-za.zoom.us/j/94152009081...
Meeting ID: 941 5200 9081
Passcode: 620707
Contact: nele...@ditsela.org.za or ma...@ditsela.org.za for any enquiries.
See you there!
_____________________
SADTU NW Statement on the Appointment of the Superintendent General
George Themba, SADTU North West Provincial Secretary, 30 June 2025
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) in the North West extend its congratulations to Mr. Lengane Bogatsu on his appointment as Superintend General in the North West Department of Education.
We are confident that he brings the leadership and dedication needed to steer our education system towards excellence. We are hopeful and confident as the union that under his leadership and extensive background as a teacher by profession, he will add value to the system.
As the Superintendent General, we urge you to prioritize the following:
➢ Enhancing quality teaching and learning: Champion ongoing support for educators and impactful programmes aimed at improving learner outcomes including safety initiatives such as “I Am a School Fan.”
➢ Strengthening Stakeholder partnership: Deepen cooperation with unions, school governing bodies, educators, and communities to foster collaborative solutions.
➢ Improving Working Conditions: Commit to filling teaching and support staff vacancies, ensuring fair and respect collective bargaining, and create a safe, motivating environment for staff and learners.
➢ Accelerate Infrastructure Upgrades: Address maintenance backlogs and enhance classroom quality and resources across all schools.
➢ Embracing Innovation: Support digital learning and contemporary teaching methods, while aligning with curriculum requirements and global best practice.
SADTU stands ready to support Mr Bogatsu through active engagement, collaborative dialogue, and shared commitment to transforming public education. We look forward to a constructive partnership focused on achieving excellence and equity for all learners. Wishing him all the best in his new responsibilities.
Issued by SADTU NW Secretariat
__________________
Proud of Our History, Confident of Our Future – NEHAWU 38th Anniversary
Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, June 27, 2025
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] celebrates its 38th anniversary since its formation on the 27th June 1987.
Indeed, we are proud of our history, confident of our future as a beacon of hope for workers in their unwavering struggle to transform the workplace and the broader society.
The union was established at the height of the liberation struggle out of the merger of three unions namely; the South African Allied Workers’ Union [SAAWU], Health and Allied Workers’ Union [HAWU] and General and Allied Workers’ Union [GAWU], who responded to the clarion principle call of the Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU] of “One industry, One federation”.
Indeed, the union has stood the test of time and continues to grow from strength to strength, having been once regarded as a project of the COSATU with a membership of 5 000 members, but to date it’s one of biggest, militant and radical affiliate of the federation, COSATU and this we owe to our forbearers.
Our 38th anniversary occurs against the background of significant developments that are taking place internationally and domestically which indicate that the balance of class forces is heavily stacked against the working class and in favour of the ruling capitalist class. It is the working people and the working class in general that has been subjected to suffocation, pains and miseries as a result of the barbaric capitalist system.
Our anniversary takes place a day after the nation had commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, a revolutionary document that enshrines the popular aspirations as it gives expression to the people’s socioeconomic demands, political rights and principles upon which a democratic system of governance would be built as part of an overarching vision for the immediate outcome of the national liberation struggle.
It’s rather unfortunate that we celebrate these historic milestones amidst the current socioeconomic crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality confronting our country, which are as a result of the implementation of neoliberal policy trajectory and the imposition of austerity programme. The current crisis confronting our country is an opportune moment for our union and revolutionary forces to lead and provide a strategic wayforward out of this quagmire.
As radical and militant trade union, we have been a vehicle to take forward the struggle of workers and the working-class in general by championing their interests and aspirations.
This is largely informed by the character of our union that is rooted in the traditions of political/ community trade unionism that links workplace struggles and broader struggles of the working class in society.
Indeed, we are proud of our history and confident of our future. We proudly declare that NEHAWU will continue being a campaigning, fighting and militant union for the transformation of society.
We will continue leading workplace struggles, waging a struggle to defend the rights of workers and collective bargaining.
Happy Birthday NEHAWU!!!
Long Live NEHAWU!!!
Amandla!!!
END
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.
_____________________
Labour court rules in favour of SAMATU members
Bokang Motlhaga, SAMATU Media & Marketing Officer 23 June 2025
Dear
Members
During the previous week the South African Medical Association Trade Union (SAMATU) represented eight doctors who faced unjust demotion due to a failure by the Eastern Cape Department of Health (ECDoH) to process their grade progression accurately. The affected
doctors received alarming notifications indicating that they owe the state amounts ranging between R100 000 and R500 000 each, a situation that is a direct result of maladministration by the ECDoH.
In response to this distressing situation, SAMATU took decisive action and represented the affected doctors at the Labour Court in Gqeberha. We are pleased to announce that the Labour Court ruled in favour of our members, issuing a restraining order against
the ECDoH. The court has interdicted the department from proceeding with the salary adjustments for the affected members, while the matter is being referred to the bargaining council. Additionally, the court has ordered the reversal of the wrongful demotions,
all salary adjustments, and any deductions related to the perceived debt.
This ruling is a significant victory not only for the affected doctors but for all SAMATU members as it emphasises our commitment to protecting the rights of doctors and advocating for fair treatment in the workplace.
We urge all doctors to remember that you need not face these challenges in isolation. Please contact SAMATU for all labour issues, as we are here to support you. Let us stand together, united in our commitment to making our voice as doctors lounder and stronger.
Together, we can ensure that our rights are upheld and that we continue to advocate effectively for our profession.
______________________
Media Statement: SAMATU's response to an open letter addressing the challenges faced by doctors in public healthcare system
Bokang
Motlhaga, SAMATU Media & Marketing Officer 19 June 2025
The
South African Medical Association Trade Union (SAMATU) has received an open letter signed by 126 doctors, of whom 15 are members of SAMATU, elucidating their grievances regarding the failings of the public healthcare system and stating their dissatisfactions
around the work that has been done by SAMATU to address some of these issues. We take note of the 15 who are members, not to discount the views of those who are not, but rather to highlight the importance of all public sector doctors being in unison to address
the consistently arising challenges in the public healthcare fraternity.
Without a doubt, SAMATU acknowledges the complex challenges besieging public healthcare facilities across South Africa. We have not only been aware, but have remained the vanguard of addressing these arising challenges on behalf of doctors, advocating relentlessly
for just and equitable working conditions for doctors.
One of the main concerns raised in the open letter is the implementation of downgrades of commuted overtime and shift work, specifically by the department of health in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and Gauteng provinces. When this change was implemented in Limpopo,
SAMATU acted swiftly, taking legal action against the Limpopo Department of Health. Our efforts culminated victory when the court ruled in favour of SAMATU, interdicting the department's unprocedural and detrimental implementation of shift work. When the same
challenge occurred in Gauteng, SAMATU immediately approached the Gauteng Department of Health, making the department aware of the detrimental consequences that this move would have on the effectiveness of the already ailing public healthcare system, and the
ripple effects that this would have on the individual public healthcare institutions, as well as the quality of healthcare care provided to patients. Subsequently, the Gauteng Department of Health issued a circular, retracting the downgrading of commuted overtime.
These are just a few amongst the many cases which are emblematic of SAMATU's resolve and effectiveness in combating unjust policies.
The open letter questions SAMATU for following due processes and protocols in addressing issues. It is important to note that in any situation, it is vital to follow the correct processes to avoid negative results that may not be favourable to our members resulting
from not following due processes.
SAMATU has remained steadfast in compelling the various governmental institutions to find a resolve to the increasing unemployment of qualified doctors. During the previous years, and earlier this year, we held demonstrations to various governmental institutions
to showcase the union's frustrations on this issue. The latest was a protest march to National Treasury, to demand that the Minister of Finance should increase the public healthcare budget and dedicate a specific portion of this budget to the employment of
healthcare professionals in various public healthcare institutions. On the 13th of June 2025, National Treasury responded positively to SAMATU's demand, indicating that the budget for staffing in public healthcare facilities would be increased by R20.8 billion
during the next three years. SAMATU has then prompted the National Department of Health to ensure that this allocation is used specifically for the purpose of increasing public healthcare workers. Similarly, through the elected leadership of SAMATU in various
provinces, SAMATU will ensure that where the provincial departments are deviating from this plan, they are engaged to account.
The open letter on its own is confirmation that the public healthcare system in its current form is failing. This is the exact reason that SAMATU stands in solidarity with the implementation of the National Health Insurance. The healthcare system in South Africa
needs a reform, and the current two-tier system will not enable formidable resolutions to the shortcomings of the public healthcare system. The non-implementation of this healthcare reform will only lead to an increase in the challenges faced by the public
healthcare sector, which can only result in more frustrations for doctors, and a continuous decrease in the quality of public healthcare. In so saying, this does not mean that SAMATU takes no cognisance of the challenges that would be faced whilst implementing
the NHI given the current governance issues that are faced in our country, but this reform should be seen as an opportunity to curb the governance issues that are apparent in the current public healthcare system.
In addressing the multitude of challenges faced by doctors in various public hospitals, SAMATU recognises the impossibility of providing instantaneous resolutions. Each institution grapples with unique dilemmas necessitating individualised strategies. Nevertheless,
this does not mean that SAMATU would leave such issues unresolved. SAMATU's stance towards resolving any of the issues faced by our members has always been to maintain an open dialogue, as we strive to foster cooperative resolutions that prioritise pragmatic
solutions over adversarial stagnation.
SAMATU remains at the forefront of safeguarding the rights and interests of doctors. Our mission is not to engage in empty rhetoric but to embody the unyielding pursuit of sustainable changes within our public healthcare system. SAMATU invites cooperation,
encourages constructive dialogue, and remains resolute in its mission to engender positive transformation within every corner of our healthcare landscape.
ENDS.
Issued by:
Dr Cedric Sihlangu
SAMATU General Secretary
Enquiries:
Bokang Motlhaga
Media & Marketing Officer
069 586 8430
SACP
statement on the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter
Mbulelo
Mandlana, SACP Head of Media, Communications and Information,
26 June 2025
The South African Communist Party commemorates the 70th anniversary of the People’s Congress which took place in 1955, Kliptown, Soweto, Gauteng province and its adoption of the Freedom Charter - the most far-reaching vision of national liberation. The SACP recognises the memorable contributions of the generation of activists and citizens who shaped the content of the people’s demands as embodied and articulated in the Freedom Charter. It is that vision and its inherent aspirations that have served as a guiding light to national liberation forces in their various representations throughout time leading to the people’s victory against the inhuman racist minority rule.
The working class as the leading revolutionary class in the struggle against colonial oppression and apartheid has particularly used the various expressions of the freedom charter as living tools in their daily struggles thereby giving the freedom charter a practical translation in their lived experience rather than an abstract idea. The South African Communist Party understands the Freedom Charter and its clauses as an effective summation of the aspirations of the people of South Africa from condition of oppression to a reality of total emancipation.
As such the freedom charter serves today as a barometer with which the people can measure progress and development in the post-apartheid South African society. In this manner the freedom charter is not an artefact that belongs to history, but it is a relevant document that is of immense value in understanding and analysing the present political situation with a sound and historically accurate understanding of the present social and political manifestations. Therefore, the commemoration of the Freedom Charter today must answer questions for the present generation of citizens and activists that were first asked by the generation of 1955.
The Freedom Charter declared that “The People Shall Govern” positing itself and the content of its ambition against a racist minority government of the time. The freedom charter also said “All national groups shall have equal rights” thereby stating a vision that was unimaginable for a ruling racist minority whose power was built on discrimination, white supremacy and legalised segregation. The freedom charter further said that “All shall enjoy equal human rights”; in doing so the Freedom Charter was articulating a vision of rights that the world was yet to bring to practicality the ideological proclamations of liberals at that time. These three clauses articulate a political vision of the Freedom Charter on the foundation of which the present national democratic system stands. These clauses of the Freedom charter, represent political and legal principles by which our democratic institutions are built. Political freedoms that flow from these clauses find expression in the rights to vote, the right to be equal before the law, right to fair treatment by the state, the right to stand for elections imbued upon every citizen, right and of freedom of expression, right to protest and the right equal citizenship. These rights are generally protected and available to citizens in the present-day South Africa.
However, these rights do not exist without threats of restriction or limitations, and it is upon an active citizenry to protect and guarantee the continuation of these rights through civil action and activism. The working class has more to gain in keeping these rights untainted by influence and power of the bourgeoisie whose interests always lean towards limiting these rights than expanding them. Overall, the democratic dispensation of the last thirty years has delivered equitably on political rights thereby nearly removing all the legal and political barriers or limits to democratic existence and full citizenship for the people.
On the other hand, the socio-economic rights that the Freedom Charter espouses have not been attained; on the contrary those that have been attained have been gradually reversed leading to deep seated grievance by the previously oppressed sections of the republic. The rights to work and security, right to shared wealth, right to housing, security and comfort as well as the right to sharing of the land continue to be inaccessible to the working class who face great hardships.
The unemployment rate in South Africa has deepened in the medium term and now stands at a staggering 43 percent, reflecting an economic crisis of great proportions showing for all to see that the neoliberal strategy has not borne any fruits as anticipated by the freedom charter. The unemployment among the youth is higher, placing before us a much gloomier outlook for the future of the country. This of course is not an accident but is intimately connected to a historically distorted economic structure that continues to exist and that does very little contain, let alone to reverse, the legacy of colonial economic ownership and control and its patterns that effectively relegate blacks in general and Africans in particular to subservience and conditions of economic exclusion. This of course favours the ruling class and negates the interests of the working class.
The land question continues to be a sore point for the country. The land ownership continues to favour a white minority while the majority continue to experience landlessness on a great scale that amounts to nothing short of a national crisis. 72 percent white ownership reflects abject failure to move policy in the direction of change on the question of land, among others. It is for this reason that the SACP has called for a referendum on land because it has become clear that the trajectory of land ownership and use is unsustainable for a country that has a vision for transformation and development.
The gap of wealth and control in the economy paints a picture of wealth concentrated on a minority in which it has always been concentrated in the Apartheid government.
South Africa is a country that generates immense amounts of wealth in the monopoly sectors such as banking, mining, real estate development sector, retail sector and private health all coordinated in the interest of monopoly capital and therefore guaranteeing South Africa the unenviable position as the most unequal country in the world. This of course stands opposed to the aspirations of the freedom charter.
The government of the liberation movement has presided over this economic and political framework from which coexistence of extreme wealth and extreme poverty has occurred and deepened without effective intervention. At the centre of this outcome has been a consistent and uncritical reliance of the ANC government on neoliberal policies as anchor principles governing the national economy. This has led to a weakened state, the gutting of state enterprises, the increasing financialisation of the economy and failure to industrialise; all of which have combined to create a responsive economy that cannot meet social and economic demands for the country.
ISSUED
BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY,
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Media, Communications & Information Department | MCID
International-Solidarity
Statement of the WFTU on NATO Summit 2025
BY CENTRAL WFTU, 27 JUN 2025
The International Trade Union Movement strongly condemns the new decision to increase the military spending of NATO members to unprecedented levels. More specifically, the NATO summit that concluded on June 25th in Hague, resulted in the commitment of the NATO members to spend 5% of GDP on defence, which is more than double the current target of 2%.
It is announced, among others, that the countries are committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on core defence spending to buy military hardware and maintain troops, and another 1.5% on defence-related investments.
The World Federation of Trade Unions, the militant voice of 105 million workers, unequivocally condemns the new provocative soaring of military expenditures, the increase of the NATO budget, and their plans, which are deepening the confrontation and increasing the risk for a generalized imperialist conflict with disastrous consequences.
We demand full respect for the sovereignty, independence, and right of every people to choose their own path, present and future. We oppose the exclusions, discriminations, embargoes, and sanctions orchestrated by the USA, EU, and their allies against a range of countries, resulting in a direct and detrimental impact on the everyday lives of ordinary people. Low-income households, wage workers, poor farmers, and the broader vulnerable parts of society are disproportionately affected.
It is clear that both the spending of the war economy and the implications of the economic war negatively impact the standard of living of the popular strata are already burdened by the consequences of economic hardship, including soaring prices, rampant inflation, and the enduring effects of long-standing austerity measures, while the ordinary people pay with their lives for the wars conducted for the increase of multinationals’ profitability.
The international class-oriented trade union movement reiterates its firm demand for the immediate dissolution of NATO and all military coalitions, the complete abolition of nuclear weapons, and respect for the independence and sovereignty of all states.
The WFTU calls upon its affiliated and friends to intensify their struggles, initiatives, demonstrations, and strikes against the imperialists’ plans and wars. We demand the end of all existing military conflicts, the end of the genocide in Palestine, and we strengthen the struggle for lasting peace, for a world free of imperialist interventions and man-by-man exploitation.
______________________
Under neoliberal fire, the right to strike is waning, globally, after years of premeditated attacks to limit it
23 June 2025
Amid deliberate attacks by neoliberal employers and policies, the right to strike is being weakened, year on year, all around the world. Even in the most developed countries, the drive to neutralise this right in practice is succeeding, between constant violations and varying degrees of violence and repression.
The right to strike has been in the crosshairs of employers and neoliberal policies for more than a decade, and is coming under ever more alarming attack, globally, with every passing year. Until just over a decade ago, it was considered to be solidly protected by the conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) – an international consensus that had governed industrial relations since shortly after the end of the Second World War. In 2012, however, the employers in the UN body itself began calling it into question and have been engaged in a de facto boycott of the ILO’s internal workings that is without precedent since its creation in 1919 (within the League of Nations). This obstructionism is overlapped by an alarming increase in legal curbs and crackdowns on this right, the world over.
The right to strike and the right to collective bargaining are the most important tools workers can deploy to defend themselves against labour rights violations, and although these human rights used to be relatively well established in the more developed regions of the world, they have been under increasing pressure for some years now. This worrying reversal goes hand in hand with governments influenced by neoliberal ideology passing new legislation to hinder and limit the socially disruptive effects of strikes, the bedrock of their power as an instrument to apply pressure and defend the working classes.
According to the 2025 Global Rights Index of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the right to strike was violated in 131 countries (87 per cent of the 151 countries surveyed in the report), 44 countries more than in 2014, when the Index surveyed 119 nations. The trend is clear: as reported in the 2025 Index, the right to strike was violated in 95 per cent of countries in the Middle East and North Africa, 93 per cent of those in Africa, 91 per cent of those in Asia-Pacific, 88 per cent of those in the Americas and 73 per cent of those in Europe, where, despite being the region where this right was most firmly established, there is a trend towards the legal obstruction and criminalisation of strikes, along with the social stigmatisation of strikers themselves. Meanwhile, in 121 countries (80 per cent, and 34 nations more than in 2014), the workers’ right to collective bargaining regarding their working conditions was severely restricted or non-existent.
In Europe, the flagship of labour rights, the former ‘worker-centred’ social model is being actively dismantled by governments and corporations at an ever-faster pace. The legal protection of the right to strike has been markedly undermined in the UK, Hungary, Albania, Moldova and Montenegro, and the authorities in Belgium, France and Finland have led crackdowns on workers taking strike action. Meanwhile, the rise of the far right is increasing the risk of labour rights erosion as the years go by.
How the spirit of the right to strike is being ‘killed’ in Europe
It is, above all, Europe that has seen the worst deterioration in labour rights of any region in the world over the last decade and where there is a growing trend towards limiting the scope and conditions under which strike action is permitted. These new policies amount to legislative abuse, as they seek to limit the right to strike in practice by establishing an excessively broad definition of what is considered in each country to be ‘essential services’, so as to restrict or prohibit recourse to strike action in an increasing number of sectors.
The ILO defines essential services as those whose interruption would “endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population”. An increasing number of parliaments are, however, legislating to broaden this definition to sectors such as transport, education and health, and are extending the proportion of minimum services to be met to such an extent that the capacity for social disruption that underpins the power of strike action as a means to exert pressure is virtually eliminated.
“What determines the success of a strike is its ability to disrupt the economic system,”Stéphane Sirot, French historian, specialist in the sociology of strikes, trade unionism and social relations.
“If legislation is adopted with a view to making strike action as undisruptive as possible, it is basically as if its right to exist were denied, because although the letter of the law allows strike action to exist, it tends to kill it in spirit,” he adds.
This is worsened by legislation that is setting the tone for the conservative offensive against labour rights, such as the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act adopted in the UK in 2023, under which workers in certain strategic sectors can be forced to ignore the very strike they have called, on pain of dismissal, striking workers can be replaced by temporary employees, and labour protests and demonstrations can be repressed. The new British Labour government announced in August 2024 that it would repeal the law, but the minimum service levels compliance criteria remain in force, although they are expected to be repealed by parliament in July.
In the case of France, there has been a drastic turnaround since the November 1995 transport strike, which was called to prevent the Juppé government’s social security reforms that were to affect workers in the sector. “For three or four weeks there was not a train running in France, it was a complete shutdown,” Sirot recalls. The action was a success in the defence of labour rights but, from then on, “a very clear rhetoric developed about strike action, as if it were an inadmissible tool of disruption that had to be controlled, limited and contained at all costs”. In the years that followed, an increasing number of parliamentary bills were presented along these lines, trying to limit the right to strike and bring it ever closer to the ‘Italian model’, where “there are even periods when it is forbidden to strike, especially in the transport sector, during the Christmas holidays, for example”. Moving towards this model, however, carries the risk that the pressure escapes in other ways: “When the law restricts the right to strike to such an extent that it virtually blocks it,” what we see are ‘wildcat strikes’, with deliberate strike action breaking out without any willingness to abide by the legislation in force.
There is huge irony to this, the historian points out, as it takes us back to the situation at the beginning of the 19th century, when strike action was forbidden and protest was much more violent, and much more violently repressed. Resorting to this today is a “political, ideological choice”, yet one that “does not resolve social issues but masks them”. And this, Sirot insists, is “very dangerous, politically”, because “if social discontent cannot be expressed through mechanisms such as demonstrations or strikes, it ends up being expressed through the ballot box”, which, in his view, goes some way towards explaining the current rise of the extreme right in Europe.
In the meantime, “we are seeing very marked and very strong resistance on the part of the power systems in relation to social conflicts”, whereby they no longer need to use repression but simply “wait until the movements run out of steam”. “They no longer even negotiate. There is talk of ‘concertation’, of consultation, but much less so of negotiation,” notes Sirot. “They are much less willing to reach a compromise than they were a few decades ago. And this is very dangerous, I feel, as when there is no social compromise, what emerges is political discontent, and that is what we are seeing today.”
The drive to neutralise the right to strike from within the ILO
In recent years, the battle has spread to the ILO itself, which operates on a tripartite basis, with ongoing social dialogue between representatives of the governments of the 187 member states, employers and, also, workers. Every year, in June, the International Labour Conference is held, where the ILO’s policies for the following year are decided on. At the 2012 conference, during the discussions of the Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS), the Employers’ Group questioned something that ILO standards experts had been taking for granted for three quarters of a century: that the right to strike is implicitly recognised by its Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (C087) of 1948 and its Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention (C098) of 1949.
“It is impossible to understand freedom of association without the exercise of its three functions: the recognition of trade unions (and trade union activity), collective bargaining and the right to strike, as a tool of social balance that allows rights to be won,”Marcelo DiStefano, Argentinean doctor of labour law, one of the major international specialists in the field and professor at two public universities in Buenos Aires and member of the executive committee of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) representing the CGT labour confederation of Argentina.
“This is because freedom of association is a right to win rights, a tool that enables new rights to be won,” he insists.
When, in 2012, employers began to deny that Convention 87 implicitly guaranteed the right to strike, he explains, “that was the beginning of a process aimed at blocking one of the most important instruments of the [ILO’s] supervisory system, the Committee on the Application of Standards itself,” whose capacities, including the preparation of reports on compliance or non-compliance with ILO directives around the world, have been thwarted for around 13 years now.
This has meant that, as of 2012 to date, workers, employers and governments have been in the dark, with no unanimously established data or authoritative ILO interpretations of the legal limits on the exercise of the right to strike, which has increased political uncertainty for all parties. It also contributed to the decision of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to produce, as of 2014, its own annual report on the state of working conditions around the world.
As DiStefano explains, the CAS, in order to function, “requires consensus, but when one of the parties blocks the possibility of consensus, it’s impossible to reach an agreement, because what is being discussed here is whether or not Convention 87 recognises the right to strike. As they say in Argentina, you cannot be ‘a little bit pregnant’; you either are or aren’t.”
During this 13-year period of legal vacuum, which began just as a British trade unionist, Guy Ryder, former ITUC general secretary (from 2006 to 2010), became the ILO director-general, global employer representatives did everything possible to prevent the workers from filing a request for an advisory opinion with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
“They tried to have a specific strike protocol negotiated [non-existent until then within the ILO regulatory framework], but you either have the right to strike or you don’t,” says DiStefano. “In reality, they wanted to enter into a process of restricting the exercise of the right to strike, because it is not an absolute right, but a relative right, which can be regulated in certain circumstances...but in such cases, the ILO understands that these restrictions may occur to protect basic rights, that is, in the event that the safety or lives of people are put at risk.”
In the end, the workers and a large number of states, including members of the European Union and the USA, voted to refer the question to the ICJ, which has yet to rule on the matter.
Meanwhile, the representatives of employers’ organisations around the world seem intent on weakening the monitoring of ILO standards, to blur international protection of the right to strike and give way to more lax interpretations that would allow it to be limited in practice. The body bringing them together within the ILO, the International Organisation of Employers (IOE), declined to answer the questions put by Equal Times, but referred to a statement on the issue, expressing its view, and that of “many governments”, that the proper place to interpret whether or not the right to strike is recognised by the ILO is not the ICJ, but the annual meetings of the ILC – which the employers themselves have been obstructing for 12 years by blocking any move that might confirm that the UN body recognises the right to strike, as had been implicitly understood, until 2012, for three quarters of a century.
______________________________
Norman Mampane (Shopsteward Editor)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Street, Braamfontein, 2017
P.O.Box 1019, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa
Tel: +27 11 339-4911 Direct line: 010 219-1348