COSATU Today, 13 January 2012
Patrick Craven
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Our side of the story
Thursday 12 January 2012
Contents
Ø COSATU welcomes e-toll postponement
Ø COSATU NW to stage protest at Sun City
Ø We are satisfied with progress on corruption in Department of Education
Ø Demand Justice for Jason Wessenaar
Ø Drop charges against Ayanda Kota
Ø Launch of Green Paper for post-school education and training
Ø Message of solidarity from Communist Party of Swaziland to workers of Nigeria
Ø Centenary of ‘Bread and Roses’ strike
South Africa
COSATU welcomes e-toll postponement
Patrick Craven. COSATU National Spokesperson, 13 January 2012
COSATU has warmly welcomed the news that e-tolling in Gauteng will not commence during February 2012.
This is a significant victory for the millions of residents of Gauteng who have expressed their total opposition to this attempt to force them to pay huge amounts of extra money just to travel on the province’s highways.
It is a victory for COSATU and its affiliates whose members faced the prospect of paying out hundreds of extra rands just to travel to and from work.
It is victory for Gauteng consumers who faced massive increased prices as a result of the extra cost of transporting goods to the shops being passed on to shoppers.
The decision follows a meeting between Transport Minister Comrade Sibusiso Ndebele and the board of the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral).
Sanral agreed to “address the current stakeholder concerns and issues raised in the petitions submitted to the Minister”. It says it is “committed to meeting all its obligations to the stakeholders, and is exploring different modalities”.
The Sanral Board will present their findings to the Minister, following which the Minister will present a report to Cabinet. We urge the minister and cabinet to take note of the mass opposition to these tolls and instruct Sanral to abandon them for good.
Meanwhile we continue to urge motorists not to register with Sanral or buy e-tags, and our members remain mobilised for a campaign of mass action if today’s decision is reversed.
The federation calls upon government to prioritise the roll-out of efficient, reliable, affordable and safe public transport for all the people of South Africa.
COSATU NW to stage protest at Sun City
Solly Phetoe COSATU NW Provincial Secretary, 13 January 2012
COSATU in the North West will tomorrow, 14 January 2012, embark on a protest action at the Sun City resort in the Moses Kotane municipality.
This action is prompted by the barbaric racial activities of the 24/7 security company which is contracted to Sun City to provide security services.
Officials of the 24/7 security on the 1 January tortured guests of Indian origin, accusing them of sexual harassment, without involving the police.
This kind of activity has been taking place at Sun City since 2008 when the security company was still Falcon before it was taken over by Fidelity and 24/7 without changing the management; that is why we still see racial activities taking place at the resort.
COSATU calls on Sun International to terminate the contract of the security company with immediate effect.
The protest action will be on 14 January 2012 at Sun City from 12h30 until 16h00.
We call on the people of the Moses Kotane municipality to support our action to root out racism in our province.
We are satisfied with progress on corruption in Department of Education
Solly Phetoe COSATU NW Provincial Secretary, 13 January 2012
COSATU in the North West would like to take this opportunity to applaud the North West provincial administration, in particular the premier, on their efforts to fight against corruption.
COSATU has learned of the arrest of the former MEC of education, Reverend Johannes Tselapedi, the Acting deputy director general of basic education, Matanzima Mweli, and suspended North West head of department, Charles Raseala, for alleged corruption.
They have briefly appeared at the Mmabatho regional court on allegations of corruption and have since been granted bail of, respectively, R500, 000, R250 000, and R200 000.
COSATU is also informed that a certain businessman, Dr Tibane, is allegedly implicated. For us this is confirmation that corruption is not only in government but also in the private sector; hence we call on the business community to join us in the fight against corruption.
In our view this is good progress made in the fight against corruption and it is a confirmation of what we said in the past two years - that there is corruption in that department and we believe that corruption is still continuing. We congratulate all COSATU members who played a role in exposing the enemy of our young democracy and we hope that the police will protect our members and that they will be no selling out on this case by our own justice system.
We will demand a public apology by all three men who are arrested on the same matter they denied in 2009 and 2010 when we went to the streets against corruption in the same department. Some tried to kill the case with their friends of investigators but they could not win the biggest federation in the country. Some call themselves the son of God but they betray the poor people under the name of our God.
COSATU will continue to support the premier and anybody who is committed to fight against corruption.
COSATU once more we congratulate the premier and the police for the good work they are doing to fight against corruption. We shall be there on the 20 February when they appear in court for trial.
Justice for Jason Wessenaar!
Justice for Jason, 13 January 2012
On 18th December 2011 Jason Wessenaar died after being stabbed seven times in the neck. It was 3am in the morning. He was 39. He had spent the night at his home in Pretoria West with friends. Nothing was stolen from his house. After crying out for help, and being heard by his neighbours, he died almost immediately. His murderers are still out there. The murder is being investigated by officers at Pretoria West police station. But so far there appears to have been no progress, and Jason’s family is not being kept informed.
Below are the Closing Remarks made by Mark Heywood, the Deputy Chairperson of SANAC and Director of SECTION27, at a Memorial Service for Jason held on 23rd December 2011.
In the last two hours we have heard moving testimonies and memories of Jason from his friends and family. We have seen pictures of him, projected onto the wall of the Church. What we have seen and heard confirmed something that I have always suspected about Jason: he loved life and being alive, his beauty was matched by his personal warmth and integrity.
Every picture captures him with that warm grin and often with his arms around people. He was a beautiful man and he also loved himself. He took joy in travel, places and people. You might say this of many people in the world.
But what made Jason unusual was that he was able to combine this joy of living with a conscience and a commitment for equality and to fighting for other people’s dignity. He was able to combine his love of life with a passion for social justice and other people’s rights. That is what made him unusual.
Unfortunately, most people in the world who have the opportunity to enjoy life, use that opportunity in a selfish way. Jason demonstrated that it’s possible to do it the other way, and as such he should be a model for millions. Jason showed that it’s good:
To love life
To love good food and even wine
To love people and to enjoy responsible sexual relationships
To joy in places
But that you can do all of this in a way that tackles the world’s problems rather than deepens them. In a society as full of blind selfishness as South Africa’s that’s a salutary lesson. Indeed it’s an indictment on the selfish elites of our country. It is possible to live responsibly and in solidarity with others.
This afternoon Jason’s’ friends and comrades have spoken about how:
- Jason first disclosed his HIV infection to a small circle of trusted friends, but later became open about his HIV infection to a much wider public, using his own body and life to try to break the stigma around HIV; bringing his passion and self-knowledge to often dry and tedious workshops about stigma.
- Jason was open and unashamed about being gay and able to make jokes of the prejudices of others as well as to challenge them. He did small ‘invisible’ things that made a difference to others, like hosting Christmas lunches and dinners for those many people who were estranged from their families because of their sexual orientation.
- Jason was an activist for ARV treatment access, continuing to fight for treatment for others even though he himself did not require treatment yet. He was a quiet, unassuming part of a movement that has bettered and saved the lives of millions of people with HIV.
Jason’s brutal murder should remind us that it was the end-of-year murder and preventable death of two other people that led to the treatment access movement in South Africa. In November and December 1998, the deaths of Simon Nkoli and then Gugu Dlamini propelled many of us into action, leading directly to the formation of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
It is rare that we all find ourselves in the same room any more. But today – 12 years later -- many of us are gathered in this church to remember someone else that we did not expect to die. Here today are Mercy Makhalemela, Prudence Mablele, Revd J P Mokgeti Heath, Sharon Ekambaram, Pholokgolo Ramothwala, Criselda Kananda,Belinda and activist comrades from TAC and Beat it!, Yvette Raphael, Phindi Malaza, Luckboy Mkondwane – people who have travelled a long road together and have shown that it is possible to move mountains if we get organised to fight for life.
We should not be here.
Some people have spoken today of God’s will and greater plan for Jason. But, as Masi has said, it cannot be any God’s will that a person is brutally stabbed to death in the prime of his life.
We do not accept it.
It should not be that a person who has survived HIV and earned the right to life, should be murdered in the night and made to suffer the pain and brutality of assassin’s knives.
It’s for this reason that we should not just be here to lament Jason’s murder, but – as we did 12 years ago - to commit and say that this is one murder too many. The night of December 18th should be a turning point, we have the power in this room – we are activists, we know how to persuade, cajole, argue, research, organise demonstrations, use the media and courts - but will we use this power again and mobilise with it?
We must start by ensuring justice for Jason. We must make sure that his murderers are identified, convicted and punished. And we will.
But then we must understand that fighting HIV is not enough. We must work with others in other social movements to ensure that there is a broader justice and equality in our society, one that eliminates prejudice, suffering, brutality, and a resignation to the unacceptable.
That would be a fitting tribute to Jason’s life.
Please support our campaign for justice for Jason and many other victims of senseless murder. Call on the Minister of Safety and Security, the Gauteng Commissioner of Police and other leaders of government to ensure that Jason’s killers are brought to justice.
You can help by signing the petition and returning it to us at justice...@section27.org.za
Drop charges against Ayanda Kota!
Brian Ashley & Mazibuko K. Jara, DLF Spokespersons, 13 January 2012
The Democratic Left Front (DLF) calls for the immediate release and dropping of all charges against comrade Ayanda Kota, the Chairperson of the Grahamstown-based Unemployed People’s Movement. Kota is also a founder and member of the National Committee of the (DLF). Kota will appear at 9am this morning at the Grahamstown Magistrate’s Court to answer to charges of theft and assault of police. He has been in police custody from yesterday afternoon.
According to a UPM press statement issued yesterday, a certain Constable Zulu and other members of the South African Police Services (SAPS) savagely assaulted Kota at the Grahamstown police station. This assault took place in front of several witnesses including Kota’s 6-year old son. Kota was at the police station in response to charges laid against him by a controversial academic from Rhodes University. Ostensibly, Kota had not been returned a book he had borrowed from this academic. She then proceeded to lay a charge of theft against her. The police added the assault charge.
As stated in separate statements by the UPM and by the Rhodes University-based Students for Social Justice (SSJ), Kota’s treatment at the police station is consistent with increasing police repression against activists of social movements involved in social mobilisation challenging the neo-liberal and anti-poor policies of the ANC-led state. As the SSJ statement said “We have seen this behavior in Durban, when the ANC led an attack against Abahlali basemjondolo members in the Kennedy Road Settlement. We have seen this behavior when ANCYL members attacked DL and UPM activists (including Ayanda) at the international day of climate action during COP 17. We have seen this behavior when Rehad Desai was assaulted in front of Zuma”. At its most tragic, this led to the killing of Andries Tatane by the SAPS during a protest in Meqheleng in April last year.
The state’s increasing use of excessive force is reminiscent of the old apartheid police style tactics to suppress dissent and maintain social control. The more than 50 social movements that mobilise under the DLF umbrella have a list of at least 14 others whose deaths have been reported in the media since 2000 (seven of whom had their lives ended in 2010 and 2011). In addition, a much greater number of people have been traumatised by the use of rubber bullets fired at point blank range, and by improper use of live rounds, tear gas and water cannon. Taken as a whole, it is clear that there has been widespread intimidation of people wishing to take up their constitutional right to protest, and that this threatens our hard-won democracy. The DLF is extremely concerned about the sustained actions of Jacob Zuma’s ruling elite to enhance the coercive capacities of the state.
The DLF is not surprised by yesterday’s actions of the SAPS against Kota. For a number of months now, Kota has reported suspected surveillance of his movements and family home by the local SAPS. The DLF also recalls that over the last two years, several UPM activists including Kota have been subject to problematic arrests, false charges, intimidation and harassment from the local SAPS. These SAPS actions were in cahoots with local ANC politicians and councilors following sustained UPM social mobilisation in support of demands for service delivery and accountability by the Makana Local Municipality which is mired in inefficiency, failed service delivery and corruption.
The DLF strongly condemns the SAPS for its treatment of Kota. This attack on Kota is an attack on constitutionally protected human rights and the very essence of democracy itself. This attack is an attack on social movements and the DLF itself. No amount of police brutality will solve the mass misery and poverty inflicted on our people by the pro-capitalist ANC government. This attack is a direct call to all poor and working people to intensify their actions of disciplined social protest and mobilisation against the anti-poor policies of the ANC government and municipalities as well as against police brutality.
For all the above reasons, the DLF endorses the SSJ call for an investigation of, and action against those SAPS members responsible for yesterday’s assault on Kota. We also join the UPM and SSJ call on the Makana municipality and the ANC to condemn this action against Kota in the strongest possible terms.
This is the time to mobilise affected communities and organisations to bring evidence of police brutality into the public sphere. Poor and working people subjected to police brutality and other repressive action must be able to speak out and act on the violations of their rights. Such action must also send a strong signal to the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the Public Protector to undertake official investigations in terms of their constitutional and legislated mandates on cases of police violence directed at citizens engaged in protests. The DLF calls on the ICD, the SAHRC and the Public Protector to undertake statutory investigations of police brutality in a responsive and pro-active way that can also ensure that police brutality is exposed and declared a violation of, and a crime against the constitutional rights to speak and associate freely.
Beyond what these statutory institutions can do, the DLF also reiterates another call it made last year: the call for a People’s Tribunal Against Police Brutality. In the view of the DLF, such a Tribunal must hear evidence from affected communities, thus providing a voice for working class experience and anger whilst also building solidarity between organised workers, poor communities and others committed to human rights, social justice and freedom of expression. Such a Tribunal can also lay the foundation for a mass campaign that can mobilise poor and working people to speak out and act against police brutaliy, and challenge the increased militarisation and centralisation of power in an increasingly unaccountable security cluster of the state.
Finally, the DLF is extremely concerned at the failure of the Rhodes academic to take political responsibility for her action to lay charges against Kota. No matter whatever unhappiness and ill-feeling she has against Kota she is a politically mature and experienced enough individual who knows the struggles of the UPM and its harassment by the local SAPS. We are however not surprised by her actions as she has sustained an almost sadistic individual campaign against the UPM ever since it did not agree with her political views regarding participation in the May local government elections. Yesterday afternoon, our comrade Jane Duncan (a DLF national committee member and fellow academic at Rhodes University) spoke to this academic to no avail. In our engagement with her, it became clear that the actions of this individual unwittingly aid the efforts of the local ANC and SAPS to demonise Kota and his other UPM comrades. None of this will take UPM attention away from its programme of action.
Launch of Green Paper for post-school education and training
Dr BE Nzimande, MP, Minister of Higher Education & Training, 12 January 2012
I have the pleasure today to make public the Green Paper on Post-School Education and Training whose release was approved by Cabinet in November 2011.
The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) was formed in May 2009 as a new department, bringing together all post-school education and training institutions: all higher education institutions, colleges and adult education institutions, formerly with the Department of Education; and the skills levy institutions, formerly under the Department of Labour. This Green Paper aims to conceptualise the nature of the Department and to set out its priorities.
A Green Paper is not yet government policy. Its purpose is to present emerging thinking in the DHET and invite stakeholders and the general public to contribute their views in order to assist us to strengthen our vision. The comments received will be considered when a White Paper on the post-school system is drafted later this year, for approval and adoption by Cabinet as official government policy. Comments are welcome and will be accepted by my Department until 30 April 2012. This process is a critical step forward in the process of developing a comprehensive and coherent post-school education and training SYSTEM for South Africa.
This Green Paper aims to align the post-school education and training system with South Africa’s overall development agenda, with links to various development strategies such as the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Action Plan 2, the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa 2010-2030, and South Africa’s Ten-Year Innovation Plan. This will allow the department to contribute more effectively to the goal of inclusive economic growth and development, and to contribute fundamentally in reducing unemployment and poverty.
This paper sets out a broad policy for expanding post-school provision to improve access to education and training opportunities, strengthen the institutions to improve education quality, and build a post-school education and training system that is equitable, accessible and affordable to all sections of the population, including free education and training for the poor.
It aims to set an agenda for combating discrimination and providing equal opportunities for education and training for all irrespective of socio-economic status, race, gender, disability or HIV/AIDS status. In addition, it aims to expand opportunities for people in less developed areas, particularly rural areas and informal settlements, to especially cater for the previously oppressed and marginalized South Africans. Its particular focus is the youth who are currently the main victims of unemployment and at a point in their lives where education and training opportunities can make a difference between a life of fulfilment and success and one of misery and frustration.
The Green Paper identifies the key challenges facing the higher education and training system and sets out a path for overcoming these. It further provides a vision for a single, coherent, differentiated and highly articulated post-school education and training system. This system will contribute to overcoming the structural challenges facing our society by expanding access to education and training opportunities and increasing equity, as well as achieving high levels of excellence and innovation. Key problem areas which prevent the system from playing its potential role are outlined, and solutions are proposed. In some cases options are presented for discussion.
A major problem in the system as a whole is that provision of post-school education and training is inadequate in quantity, diversity and, in many but not all instances, quality. Approximately three million young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are not accommodated in either the education and training system or the labour market, thus preventing many of them from fully participating in shaping a democratic South Africa as informed citizens. This is an appalling waste of human potential, and a potential source of serious social instability.
By 2030, South Africa ought to have a post-school system that provides a range of accessible alternatives for young people. By 2030, we aim to raise university enrolments to 1 500 000 (a projected participation rate of 23%) as opposed to the 2011 enrolments of 899 120 (a 16% participation rate).
In terms of quality, our universities are the strongest and most stable component of the post-school system. However, even some of these institutions are beset by serious problems and are unable to fulfill our peoples’ expectations. They require special interventions. Even in the university system as a whole, many problems remain with regard to access, various forms of discrimination, staffing, curriculum, management, student funding, other forms of student support, and other areas. The DHET will work with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to ensure increased support for postgraduate study and for senior researchers, as well as a more stable funding model for all educational institutions that conduct research. Improving research capacity will be a major focus for universities, with a particular focus on research to meet our developmental objectives.
An important goal of government for the university sector should be to prioritise support to the previously-disadvantaged universities, especially those in rural areas. This support will include assistance to improve their infrastructure as well as the quality of their teaching and research. It is essential that, whatever else universities do, in today’s South Africa they must be at least able to provide a good undergraduate education to their students. Almost eighteen years after the end of apartheid it is disturbing that some of our universities still can’t do even this.
We aim for 4 000 000 enrolments (approximately a 60% participation rate) in colleges or other post-school institutions (both full time and part time), an approximately six-fold increase over the numbers in 2011. These post-school institutions will include a new institutional type, which we are provisionally calling Community Education and Training Centres (CETCs), to address the needs of out-of-school youth and adults. We propose to absorb and transform the existing public adult learning centres into this category of institution and believe that they will serve to strengthen significantly the provision of education and training to adults.
The key area of focus for expansion will be the public further education and training (FET) college sector. The greatly expanded FET colleges sector is envisaged to play the central role in expanding the development of artisanal and other mid-level skills for the economy. Such skills are in extremely short supply and colleges, working together with employers (both public and private), will be our spearhead in tackling this problem. Vocational education at the FET colleges must not be a dead-end; the Green Paper makes proposals to ensure pathways that allow students to move on to university education after completing their vocational qualifications if they wish to do so. A central part of our strategy for the FET colleges is to improve the quality of education they provide, especially by strengthening their management, qualification mix, the capacity of the teaching staff and the levels of student support.
An important initiative proposed by the Green Paper is the establishment of a South African Institute for Vocational and Continuing Education and Training (SAIVCET) as a key part of a long-term strategy to build institutional capacity. A study will be done soon to further conceptualise and make specific and concrete recommendations for the Institute. The Institute’s main function should be to strengthen the vocational and continuing education sector by playing a supporting role to existing institutions, especially the FET colleges and the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs).
The SETAs have a key role to play in strengthening vocational education and skills training and in promoting and funding partnerships between educational institutions and employers. They have a particularly important role to play in promoting the revitalisation of the artisan training system and in building linkages between theoretical education in colleges and universities on the one hand and practical workplace experience on the other. This will build on the National Skills Accord in which government, business and labour have made commitments, to expand the numbers of apprenticeships, learnerships and internships.
A central role in this regard will be made by the state-owned enterprises whose training activities are to be revived to reverse the decline which has taken place since the mid-1980s when they were being commercialised (and some were actually privatised). Government departments and agencies as well as municipalities will also be expected to increase their intake of various types of trainees who are either still studying or have recently completed their studies. All major government infrastructure programmes will be expected to take on trainees in order to develop the country’s skills base.
The Green Paper makes proposals to improve the performance of the SETAs, to increase their cooperation with the public post-school institutions and to clarify their role as facilitators of training and the development of the skills of the workforce. The Green Paper also proposes that SETAs must become the pre-eminent experts on the labour market and its need in each sector.
Another problem area addressed by this Green Paper is the existing regulatory system which is complex and difficult to understand. The regulation of post-school education in South Africa is governed by an array of legislation and statutory bodies. There is duplication, overlap and, at times, incoherence and inconsistency in the functioning of parts of our system. We must overcome these challenges and the Green Paper outlines key proposals and options in this regard. An important starting point is simplifying the National Qualifications Framework; clear options are outlined.
One of the central themes running through the entire Green Paper is the need to build coherence within the post-school system as a whole, between basic education and the post-school system, and between the post-school system and the labour market. There is inadequate information about labour market needs and future growth possibilities, and this makes planning and targeting of provision difficult. The levy-grant institutions – the (SETAs) and the National Skills Fund (NSF) – are poorly coordinated with public provision, and very little of the skills-levy funding has been used to pay for education in the public universities and colleges.
Our educational institutions must work more closely together and support each other. Levy-grant institutions must fund and support provision to much needed programmes in public FET colleges and universities, especially universities of technology. SETAs must also play a crucial role in building relationships between education and the labour market. Improving relationships between education institutions and employers is a priority.
The DHET will work to strengthen collaboration between the private and public sectors where appropriate, and between the three spheres of government. It will improve co-ordination between itself and other government departments that are critical to delivering improved post-school education. These include the Departments of Basic Education, Labour, Science and Technology, Trade and Industry, Economic Development and the Treasury.
The Green Paper also provides for the expansion of distance education, using appropriate ICT and other technologies and methods, as part of expanding access for youth and especially for working adults to improve their qualifications and knowledge.
I believe that addressing the key challenges outlined in the Green Paper will enable us to address ongoing inequalities and raise the quality of post-school education and training. This would also ensure that the post-school system contributes to changing the economy to one that relies more on the value-adding skills of its people than on easily replaceable and cheap unskilled labour.
I also wish to thank President Zuma for his unstinting support in this process, my Cabinet colleagues for their inputs and comments, my special advisor, John Pampallis for leading the team that consulted and drafted this document. I also wish to thank our Director General, senior management and all the staff in DHET for their support, the main researchers and drafters and all other stakeholders who contributed towards the document.
Working together, we can create a post school education and training system to meet the needs of all our youth and adults!
Thank you.
International
Message of solidarity from Communist Party of Swaziland to workers of Nigeria
Kenneth Kunene, CPS General Secretary, 12 January 2012
The Communist Party of Swaziland extends its solidarity and militant greetings to the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress and through them to the workers of Nigeria on their important mass actions.
The workers involved in strike action, and supportive measures for it, cover a broad spectrum of the working population. Their actions come at a time of heightened tension and struggle in Nigeria in which the main victims of violent sectarianism and worsening instability are the workers and the poor.
The hike in petrol prices represents an anti-working class and anti-poor imposition, the context of which is pressure from the anti-people International Monetary Fund and World Bank to remove the fuel subsidy that had kept petrol prices affordable for ordinary people.
This struggle of the Nigerian labour movement must necessarily draw the solidarity of progressive organizations and individuals from across the African continent and beyond. The success of the workers in Nigeria is of crucial importance to the success of parallel anti-capitalist struggles in Africa, which is increasingly a terrain nowadays for intensified imperialist intervention, exploitation and manipulation.
The CPS calls on communist and workers parties in other countries, particularly in Africa, and on all solidarity organizations to add their voice to the struggle of the Nigerian labour movement at this critical time.
Love live the Nigerian labour movement!
Long live African unity for socialism!
Long live working class internationalism!
Centenary of ‘Bread and Roses’ strike
Liana Foxvog, SweatFree Communities, International Labor Rights Forum, 12 January 2012
One hundred years ago today, on January 12, 1912, thousands of workers at a textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts, shut down their looms and walked out on the job. Half of the workers were girls between the ages of 14 and 18. They were barely getting by on $8.76 a week, when a new state law that reduced the workweek for women and children from 56 to 54 hours went into effect, resulting in a paycut. This meant that workers could afford even less bread than before. The strike quickly spread to mills across the city. By the end of the week, more than 20,000 textile workers were participating in the historic stike.
The workers organized across ethnicities and languages to take concerted action. They persisted despite violent strike-breaking by management and the state. After two months on strike, the workers won their demands of a 15% pay raise, double pay for overtime, and no discrimination for strike activity. To avoid similar confrontations, textile companies throughout New England followed suit by granting similar concessions. Later, the strike was coined the Bread and Roses Strike, referencing a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim, which originated the now-famous words: "Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!"
Today the production of textiles is a more automated industry, but the sewing of garments remains nearly as labor-intensive as one hundred years ago. Most of the production now takes place in countries all across the globe where labor costs are low and regulations weak. Today's working conditions in the global garment industry are all too similar to the conditions of a century ago. And yet, against all odds, workers continue to organize. Most workers in the globalized garment industry are far from having the dignity and respect that roses represent; they are still fighting for their bread.
To learn more about the history of the strike and about the parallels with today's garment industry, check out our new flier, "Bread and Roses: Garment and Textile Worker Organizing, Then and Now." Download, print, and make copies to bring to events in your community. Share it with history teachers and students.
While garment workers' struggles are ongoing, the lessons of the strike ring true today: when workers fearlessly stand up for their rights and receive solidarity support from the broader community when necessary, they can win change. As an example, we're happy to share that one of the campaigns that we've been supporting since the fall reached a victory this week.
In Haiti, almost immediately after workers announced a new national garment workers’ union (the organization’s name in Haitian Kreyol is Sendika Ouvriye Takstil ak Abiman, or SOTA), a factory named Genesis that employed four leaders of the national union responded by forcing one worker to resign and firing the other three. Genesis produces almost exclusively for Gildan, the leading producer of blank T-shirts for the North American market, which are used by universities, public entities, and groups buying in bulk.
ILRF called on our supporters to take action; nearly 5000 of you sent letters to Gildan, urging reinstatement of the four workers. While there were unfortunately delays in getting the workers reinstated, the successful remediation of code of conduct violations at Genesis represents an important labor rights breakthrough in the growing Haitian apparel industry. ILRF will continue to monitor the case, to ensure that Gildan maintains its orders in the factory and that the workers are freely allowed to speak out for their rights on the job.
Please support ILRF in our work this year - both with your donations and with your activism. Join our SweatFree Communities campaign by urging your city or state to stop buying public employee uniforms made in sweatshops, and ask groups that you're part of to buy union-made living-wage clothing.
Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets
Braamfontein
2017
P.O.Box 1019
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24
Fax: +27 11 339-5080 / 6940
Mobile: +27 82 821 7456
E-Mail: pat...@cosatu.org.za
Patrick Craven
Friday 13 January 2012
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