Taking COSATU Today Forward, 4 July 2024
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #MandelaMonth |
Taking COSATU Today Forward
‘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
Thursday, 4 July 2024
COSATU Call Centre Number is 010 219 1342
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
Organize or Starve!
Contents
o Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU bemoans the Sibanye retrenchments
o South Africa
- COSATU General Secretary Solly Phetoe Address: SAMWU Central Executive Committee
o International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- IndustriALL affiliates address organizing challenges in wind energy-IndustriALL Windpower Organizing Conference
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
COSATU bemoans the Sibanye retrenchments
Zanele Sabela, COSATU National Spokesperson, 03 July 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) along with its affiliate, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), is aggrieved that despite extensive consultations, Sibanye Stillwater has cut 2 000 jobs in the latest round of retrenchments.
In April Sibanye gave notice of its intention to retrench 3 109 workers and 915 contractors under Section 189 (A) of the Labour Relations Act. The multinational was compelled by law to hold consultations with labour to explore job-saving mechanisms. It is disheartening to note that after two months of talks, Sibanye is still intent on offloading its workers.
There is slight reprieve in that worker representatives were able to stop Sibanye effecting the immediate closure of Beatrix Shaft 1, on condition it does not incur net losses for the three months starting June 2024. COSATU hopes that Sibanye keeps to its word.
The metal producer targeted its gold operations in the latest round of job cuts even though the price of the precious metal has been on an incline this year and is hovering around R1 387 454 per kilogram today.
Sibanye is the scene of a jobs bloodbath after the multinational confirmed it had cut a staggering 11 500 jobs from its workforce in the past 18 months, from 81 500 at the start of 2023 to 70 000 now.
South Africa’s unemployment rate at 42% is among the highest in the world. Recent data from Statistics SA not only revealed a drop in the GDP growth rate but also reflected an uptick in unemployment. It is obvious we cannot afford to lose a single job.
It is critical that the Minister for Mineral Resources, Mr. Gwede Mantashe, ensure that the new mining rights application system comes into operation as a matter of priority to help unlock investments in one of the most important sectors and sources of jobs and revenue for the economy.
This must be one of the most urgent priorities for the 7th administration.
We simply cannot afford any further retrenchments in the mining industry.
Similarly, Transnet must be given more support to ensure the mining industry is able to export its minerals quickly. Government too must work with industry to beneficiate and not simply export raw minerals to maximise returns for the economy and create badly needed jobs.
Fixing the economy is undoubtedly an urgent priority for the incoming government of national unity (GNU) led by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC.
For its first order of business, the GNU must stimulate the economy, ensure inclusive growth that creates decent permanent jobs, in addition to reducing poverty and inequality. However, government cannot do it alone, as a social partner big business must come to the party and take the first step by halting retrenchments.
To demonstrate workers’ rejection of rampant retrenchments, COSATU and its affiliates will exercise their rights under Section 77 of the LRA by embarking on a National Day of Action in defence of jobs, workers’ hard-won constitutional and labour rights, as well as collective bargaining in both the public and private sectors. The National Day of Action will be held on a date to be determined between August and September.
Issued by COSATU
South Africa
COSATU General Secretary Solly Phetoe Address: SAMWU Central Executive Committee
Solly Phetoe, COSATU General Secretary, 03 July 2024
Comrade President
National Office Bearers
CEC delegates
Leaders of the Alliance, SACP, ANC
Leadership of our militant SAMWU,
Thank you for inviting COSATU to join you for this important CEC in these turbulent times.
Your theme of “advancing the interest of municipal workers by going back to basics” could not be more appropriate given the very real and daunting challenges facing the trade union movement and the working class.
Before we engage on the political challenges facing the liberation movement, allow me to thank each one of you for your tireless efforts over the course of the past six months from crisscrossing Mpumalanga and KZN, to filling Mbombela and Moses Mabhida stadiums for the January 8th and Manifesto launches, to more recently filling Athlone Stadium for Workers’ Day and FNB for the Siyanqoba Rally.
Indeed, this was our hardest fought election campaign since the 1994 elections. Whilst we are all disappointed and pained that for the first time since the democratic breakthrough, we did not achieve an outright 51% majority, we nonetheless applaud your tireless efforts to mobilise workers and the working class to come out in their numbers in defence of our ally, the African National Congress, and the Alliance on election day.
Many doubted workers would come out in their thousands for May Day, yet we defied our critics when we filled stadiums across all nine provinces on Workers’ Day. This shows a COSATU that is alive and that leads. It shows a SAMWU that is on the ground with municipal workers from Cape Town to Musina.
None of us should be surprised that voters did not give us a majority on election day. Voters are right to be angry and to hold us accountable after a decade of state capture and corruption, slow economic growth and record unemployment, entrenched poverty and inequality, loadshedding and cable theft, struggling public and municipal services and a political leadership that is all too often out of touch with society.
The recent election of comrade Zizi Kodwa to Parliament whilst he is on trial for corruption, is a shocking reminder of how out of touch our comrades are.
As much as we are disappointed that we did not reach 51%, we should be proud that despite the massive odds against us, we ensured that the ANC remained the largest party nationally and provincially, including with outright majorities in five out of nine provinces.
COSATU has had some engagements with the ANC and the Alliance on the establishment of the Government of National Unity (GNU). Whilst the Alliance Secretariat and the Alliance Political Council met to discuss the various options and modalities for the composition of the 7th administration, we have been disappointed in how the ANC moved very far ahead of the Alliance and failed to always keep us abreast of discussions.
We had preferred an ANC-led minority government, with an opposition, taking leadership in Parliament given how toxic and hostile the opposition parties are to the Alliance.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has a history of opposing workers’ rights, labour laws and transformation, and for harbouring racists. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has brought violence and anarchy to Parliament and been deeply implicated in the VBS looting where SAMWU shop stewards were assassinated. The MK Party is led by the very people who brought us state capture and corruption and are now trumpeting ugly tribalism.
The ANC has established a GNU with the DA and nine other parties from the PAC to the FF Plus. The results of the elections and the GNU modalities have meant that the ANC is now sharing power including key portfolios in Cabinet with the DA such as Basic Education, Agriculture and Public Works or Land Reform with the PAC or COGTA and DPSA with the IFP.
This will have real implications for workers in those sectors and the movement. It is even worse now because many municipalities are in real trouble, and we have local elections in 2026.
These challenges require us to adapt and to ensure we defend workers in these dangerous times for the working class.
SAMWU has a key role to play in these difficult times.
We have seen the Auditor-General’s reports that paint a horror story on the state of local government with many municipalities failing to provide basic services or pay staff.
We celebrate our victory against the Municipal Structures Amendment Act at the Labour Court and look forward to its ratification by the Constitutional Court. Yet we must remain vigilant throughout but must commend SAMWU for leading us in this historic fight.
We must ramp up our campaigns and engagements to support the three dozen municipalities who continuously struggle and fail to pay staff their salaries and third-party deductions.
Simultaneously, we must also work on plans to ensure these municipalities can be rescued and placed upon a path to financial recovery as bailouts are not sustainable. Again, we commend SAMWU for its leadership in these struggles.
Our communities are aggrieved by the deteriorating quality of municipal services they receive, particularly in townships. We must ask how we can assist in resolving this crisis as SAMWU and COSATU.
If we don’t, we will continue to see companies close and retrench workers as we saw in Lichtenburg and Frankfort, plunging those communities into absolute poverty.
One of the major reasons for the crises facing local government is the cancer of corruption facing municipalities. We need to take up tackling corruption as a major campaign for the Federation. This includes engaging our members who are supply chain officials to blow the whistle on corruption.
We are pleased that this NEC is highlighting the crisis of water. South Africa is a water scarce country. We are witnessing this increasingly from Cape Town to Gauteng. Key to resolving this is to invest in our water infrastructure, fix leaks, train plumbers and conserve and recycle water. Here we once again need SAMWU to lead us.
As we navigate these difficult times, we must invest more in our engines as the trade union movement. This means that we must be united. We must stop the culture of purges and factions.
It means we must be on the ground servicing members and addressing workers’ grievances, defending collective bargaining and improving the wages and workings conditions of workers.
It requires us to train and empower workers, members, shop stewards, organisers and leaders to ensure that they are able to exercise all their labour rights.
We should not simply pass progressive labour laws like the Occupational Health and Safety Act or the National Minimum Wage Act and then fail to ensure employers abide by them at all times. We must report those employers who break the law to the Department of Employment and Labour.
These challenges require us to reconfigure the Alliance, including our relationship with both the ANC and the SACP. The Alliance must be biased towards the working class and provide political direction to government at all levels.
If we do these, and fix the state, deliver quality public and municipal services, ensure we enforce all our labour and other laws, tackle crime and corruption, grow the economy and create decent work, reduce poverty and inequality; then we will be on the path to renewal, recovery and a better life for all.
What we cannot afford to do is to continue business as usual. That will set us on a path to outright defeat and chaos in the 2026 local elections. That is something workers cannot afford.
Leadership, allow me to end here. These are difficult times that require us to be united, to work and deliver. I am confident that SAMWU and COSATU will rise to the occasion. We cannot afford to fail workers.
Thank you.
Matla!
International-Solidarity
IndustriALL affiliates address organizing challenges in wind energy-IndustriALL Windpower Organizing Conference
3 July, 2024
On 27-28 June, IndustriALL Global Union affiliates from across the globe met in Vienna to discuss an organizing campaign in the wind power sector.
The main objectives of the conference, organized by IndustriALL and Austrian affiliate PRO-GE, were to discuss the latest trends in the wind power sector and strategies to organize the workforce. Participants, both in-person and online, highlighted the situation of the renewable energy sector, particularly wind power, in their respective countries.
As countries strive towards achieving net-zero commitments, wind power is a sector that is expected to grow and attract significant government attention, including government-provided subsidies. However, the wind power sector presents both opportunities for organizing workers, as well as enormous challenges as companies in the sector continue to operate against unions.
Said Atle Høie, IndustriALL general secretary:
“There are a few big European companies that dominate in the wind power sector, and we see that these companies are not following the tradition of social dialogue. We have a huge task ahead of us in terms of organizing workers in this sector. IndustriALL has developed an organizing strategy, and we will use it to organize and democratize this sector.”
Christina Olivier, IndustriALL’assistant general secretary, presented the organizing campaign strategy approved in IndustriALL’s executive committee meeting in May. She stressed the need for robust union organizing to counterbalance the influence of multinational companies, their supply chains, and to protect the rights of workers.
“Organizing in wind power will take a cross-sectoral approach. In this conference, we have affiliates from material, base metal, energy and mechanical engineering sectors. As we develop our organizing strategy, it’s important that we involve our members, use international standards and institutions that can help in our organizing drive, and identify potential allies that can amplify our voice.”
Union representatives shared organizing strategies; the United Steel Worker’ discussed community-based organizing in the face of union busting at New Flyer, an American bus manufacturing company. In the collective bargaining negotiations in Austria’s metal industry last autumn, PRO-GE was forced to take industrial action after management refused to increase wages taking into consideration the current inflation. In the end, the union won a ten per cent wage increase, and PRO-GE also used the opportunity to organize more workers in the industry.
The big wind turbine manufacturers like Vestas, Siemens Gamesa and GE, have an anti-union approach and working conditions in this largely non-unionized sector require immediate attention. In this organizing drive, IndustriALL could target service providers, asset owners, component suppliers and turbine suppliers. Across these different categories, there are opportunities to organize workers along the entire supply chain in different parts of the world.
IndustriALL’s director for organizing and campaign, Walton Pantland, outlined different campaign strategies for the wind power sector that affiliates in different countries could pursue, like starting with project developers and work through the supply chain to the shopfloor.
Sadie Saunders from the International Federation of Transport Workers (ITF) shared their engagement with wind power project developers during their work with seafarers involved in building offshore wind farms. Participants indicated that an organizing campaign in the wind energy sector must be connected to Just Transition debates as multinational companies in the sector are benefitting from governments’ transformation-focused incentives while not providing decent jobs to workers.
Training of union cadre and solidarity between unions in the global North and global South are also fundamental to this organizing campaign, as is the gender transformative approach given the disproportionate representation of women workers in this sector. Participants also raised issues which require further discussion, like rising energy prices and energy as a public good.
Reinhold Binder, PRO-GE president and IndustriALL mechanical engineering co-chair, said in his closing remarks:
“We need to know which sectors and technologies are going to thrive in future and make sure that our union members are prepared for it. We need trainings of workers particularly more women workers. We need to sign good agreements and use all our leverage to make sure workers’ rights are protected in these sectors, especially the wind power sector.”
Following the conference, IndustriALL will continue to focus on strategic research in the sector, elaborating on opportunities and challenges, as well as further discussions with affiliates on different strategies to organize. A detailed report on strategic organizing campaign in the wind power sector will be submitted at the upcoming executive committee meeting of IndustriALL in November.
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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