Taking COSATU Today Forward, 8 Dec 2014
Norman Mampane
Taking COSATU Today Forward
‘Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense’-Mao
Our side of the story
Monday 8 Dec 2014
‘Strengthen COSATU for total emancipation.....The Struggle continues’
Contents
Workers Parliament
Ø Zwelinzima Vavi to address 4th UNI World Indaba
Ø Jennings tells Congress: “forward ever, backward never: onwards with Breaking Through”
Ø COSATU Free State Congratulates SATAWU on hosting a successful Provincial Congress
South Africa
Ø ANC takes forward Madiba`s legacy
International
Ø Honda Mexico – reinstated worker fired again
Ø Nobel champions join forces to help children hit by Ebola
Ø Continued strike at Glencore’s Koornfontein mine
Workers’ Parliament!..UniGlobalUnion Congress World Congress underway in SA!
Zwelinzima Vavi to address 4th UNI World Indaba
Patrick Craven, National Spokesperson, 8 December 2014
COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, will be addressing the 4th UNI World Indaba tomorrow, 9 December 2014.
The media are invited to attend and report.
The details are:
Date: Tuesday 9 December 2014
Time: 09h00
Venue: Cape Town International Convention Centre
- See more at: http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=9829#sthash.aOs4NfXg.dpuf
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Jennings tells Congress: “forward ever, backward never: onwards with Breaking Through”
UNI Global Union, 8 Dec 2014
UNI Global Union General Secretary, Philip Jennings, in a rallying call to the 2000 UNI delegates gathered in Cape Town, said UNI was sticking with its “Breaking Through* mission “no ifs or buts”.
Jennings said that “Breaking Through” which began life at the last world congress in Nagasaki 2010 would continue to be the road map UNI would follow all the way through Cape Town to Liverpool 2018:
“Our Breaking Through plan was a call to action to build our organising power.
A call to action:
- Change the rules of the game in the global economy, from financial regulation to supply chains.
- Commit to union growth in the growing services economy.
- Grow union rights and influence in business.
- Win the fight for gender equality in our own UNI Global Union.
The call to action was adopted.
We have put it to work.”
Jennings paid tribute to the UNI family, “The World Executive, UNI Africa, UNI Americas, UNI Asia & Pacific, UNI Europe, each of our Sector Global Unions – are all working in alignment. Single minded. Focussed on specific goals.”
Quoting Martin Luther King Jennings said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Breaking Through lives in that ambition. At a time when the corporate world is coming out of hiding, crawling out of the “swamp”, stock market casino fever is back. Do not bend. Do not submit to resignation or despair.”
Jennings called the theme of the Cape Town Congress, “Including You” as UNI’s alternative vision for a more just world.
“Our approach with Global Unions was to say: learn from the crisis, to drive home the message our democracies are not here just to serve the wealthy. The coin has dropped. Tickle down is economic fraud. Neo-liberalism is economic and social fraud.
Neo-liberalism: market failure, financial failure, climate failure, equality failure.
Our theme “Including You!” is our alternative.
We focussed on inequality. Drew attention to the falling share of wages in wealth produced. Helped create sense – economies wage-led. Relentless in using the evidence to show income inequality is bad for our economies, is bad for growth, is bad for communities, is bad for people.”
Jennings rounded off his address by quoting from a recent encounter with a SABC television producer who had neatly summed up the challenge for UNI and all of us: “Share the wealth more evenly or the world will burn.”
Jennings rounded off his address with a reminder of the old African saying, “Forward ever, backward never.”
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COSATU Free State Congratulates SATAWU on hosting a successful Provincial Congress
COSATU Free State Provincial Secretary Monyatso oa Mahlatsi, 5 December 2014
COSATU Free State congratulates SATAWU Free State Province on hosting a very successful Provincial Congress.
The congress was held at Ventersburg and messages of support were delivered to the congress by the Alliance partners as well as the Federation.
The messages were quite clear that there is a need to consolidate the organization and to fight for the Unity of the workers and the working class. The delegates displayed high levels of maturity when dealing with pertinent issues facing the workers and the working class.
The membership of SATAWU is drawn mainly from the sectors which the Federation has classified as vulnerable. We are confident that SATAWU is on the right track to protect and advance the interests of its members and those of the Federation.
We welcome the new leadership of SATAWU into the COSATU Free State PEC and are looking forward towards a comradely relationship with them as representatives of the mostly vulnerable workers from across the FS Province. As COSATU we would continue to support all the efforts by the Affiliate aimed at ensuring that a SATAWU member remains a central focal point of all such efforts.
Issued by: COSATU Free State
- See more at: http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=9823#sthash.QeO6AIpe.dpuf
South Africa #16DaysofActivismAgainstWomenandChildrenAbuse
ANC takes forward Madiba`s legacy
Zweli Mkhize, ANC Treasurer General, 5 December 2014
As the world remembers and honours the memory and legacy of Isithwalandwe/Seaparankoe Former ANC and South African President Comrade Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress remains committed to carry forward the legacy of this gigantic icon of our struggle and father of our nation.
As an organisation, we will forever pride ourselves of the selflessness and unwavering determination to be in service of humanity that Comrade Madiba and his comrades dedicated their lives to.
We owe much to them and countless other peoples of the world for the freedom the people of South Africa enjoy today.
A product and maker of history, Comrade Nelson Mandela lived his life pursuing the values and principles of the African National Congress. Chief amongst these was the pursuit of equality, unity, reconciliation and nation building. It is these abiding and universal ideals that the ANC continues to aspire to in the promotion and protection of Madiba`s legacy.
We remain humbled that Comrade Nelson Mandela, in his last will and testament, bequeathed to this organisation, in word and in deed, the responsibility to continue to uphold the values that he lived his life for.
To this end, the African National Congress has begun work to establish a trust which will be formed from the bequest left to the organisation by Madiba.
The trust will work together with other sectors of society including academia and civil society to keep Madiba`s legacy alive through the education of generations still to come about the founding values of the African National Congress as lived by Comrade Nelson Mandela and his comrades.
Such work is important to ensure that those who will only read of Comrade Madiba through the annals of history, are provided an opportunity to critically engage on these values and how they should continue to shape and guide South Africa and the world in the pursuit of a better life for all.
There can be no greater honour to Madiba than for us all to come together and recommit ourselves to the fulfilment of his pledge to liberate our people from the continuining bondages of “poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
A united nation at peace with itself must be the inspiration that guides our people today and beyond.
Issued by
Zweli Mkhize
Treasurer General
African National Congress
International
Honda Mexico – reinstated worker fired again
IndustriALL, 5 Dec 2014
Honda Mexico has again shown its anti-union policies and readiness to violate the freedom of association and labour rights by dismissing for a second time Raúl Celestino Pallares Cardoza, Records Secretary of the Honda Mexico workers’ democratic trade union, STUHM.
After being unjustly dismissed in April 2010 and in resistance for the last four years, Pallares Cardoza returned to his job at the Honda plant in the El Salto industrial corridor, on 26 November. Four days later he claims to have been unfairly dismissed again.
The Second Collegiate Labour Court had ordered and implemented his legal reinstatement (case 1160/2010) but on 1 December, Alejandro Salaiza Rubio, Governmental Relations Manager, barred Pallares Cardoza from entering the company, saying he had “broken company rules” and added that he would be informed of the reasons for his dismissal through legal channels.
Although the court ruled that the company must reinstate the union official to the job from which he was unfairly dismissed, Pallares Cardoza says:
“I was practically isolated for four days in the administration offices.”
Honda Mexico also imposed an 8.20am to 5.40pm shift (hours usually worked by “protected/ managerial” white collar workers) and he had travel to work on the buses allocated for administrative staff and was kept isolated from his colleagues in the company’s offices. His lunch hour was also changed to 2.10pm to 2.40pm, a period reserved for only for suppliers. In other words, the company took every step to ensure that he had no contact at all with his co-workers.
It is useful to know that, despite its overt complicity with the “yellow” CTM union at the plant (SETEAMI), Honda Mexico has a “Code of Ethics”, in which the company says it will respect the law and a global framework for workers’ rights . However, Honda Mexico proves once more that the company has no desire or intention to observe this code or put it into practice.
IndustriALL Global Union and STUHM also denounce the anti-union and discriminatory stance of the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board, which, in complicity with the company, is taking an unreasonable amount of time to process the union’s application to represent the workers for collective bargaining purposes. Over a year has gone by since the union submitted an application but the board has not managed to reach an agreement with the company about the register of workers eligible to vote in the ballot. It has also failed to set a date for the ballot.
IndustriALL Assistant General Secretary, Fernando Lopes, says: “IndustriALL supports STUHM’s application for a union election at Honda Mexico and strongly denounces the continuing and unfair dismissals of workers who dare to stand up for freedom of association. We call on Honda Mexico to observe Mexican law and stop using obstructive tactics to delay the judicial process.”
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Nobel champions join forces to help children hit by Ebola
Education International, 08 December 2014
Nobel Peace Prize winners Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi have joined an urgent appeal to help five million children pushed out of school because of the Ebola epidemic.
The two children's champions, who will collect their shared 2014 award in Oslo on Wednesday, have linked up with United Nations Special Education Envoy Gordon Brown to plead for safe schools in three of the worst-affected countries - Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone - and to call for round-the-world signatures for a new, already one-million-strong #UpForSchool petition, a joint initiative of A World At School and Education International (EI) to ensure every child receives a quality education.
Many of the schools in the three African countries have been closed as a preventative measure to stop the spread of the epidemic, while other schools are being used to care for Ebola patients.
The closures have led the education system to come to a screeching halt. Young people are not being taught, leading many of them to pass their time in the streets or other public places, completely at odds with the public health rationale for closing schools. With five million currently locked out of the classroom, by years-end the number of children out of school worldwide will reach 63 million.
Now the two Nobel winners are joining the #UpForSchoolcampaign to urge millions across the globe to sign the youth-led petition, which demands an end to child labour, child marriage and discrimination against girls. More than a million have already signed or pledged to sign.
"On the eve of their Nobel Peace Prize award, two of our greatest-ever children's champions - Malala and Kailash - have today agreed to call on their supporters around the world to sign our Up For School petition, with a demand that nothing stand in the way of every child going to school,” said Gordon Brown.
Malala and Kailash will rally millions more to sign up and press for Ebola-related school closures to end and the schools to be reopened as safe schools with teachers given basic training in public health. There should also be twice-daily thermometer check-ups of local pupils as recommended by health experts.
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Continued strike at Glencore’s Koornfontein mine
IndustriALL, 5 Dec 2014
800 workers at the Koornfontein mine in Mpumalanga, South Africa, have been on strike since 17 October, protesting against substandard severance payments.
Mining giant Glencore had offered the workers one week of service per year in the Koornfontein mine, and in other operations it would pay three weeks. Workers in Koornfontein not only have to deal with losing their jobs but also an unfair settlement for the many years they produced coal for Glencore.
IndustriALL Global Union affiliate National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) General Secretary Frans Baleni says Glencore refuses to pay a decent retrenchment package:
“Contrary to the practice in the industry of two weeks for each completed year of service Glencore wants to pay one week for each completed year of service. We are mobilising our international unions affiliated to IndustriALL to join us in attacking this unacceptable conduct.”
In an effort to find a solution and end the strike, the NUM has involved a mediating party. But at a meeting on 24 November Glencore failed to meet the union’s revised proposals.
"Today marks the 49th day of the peaceful strike fighting a multinational company refusing to pay a decent retrenchment package to workers, claiming that it does not want to set a precedent," Frans Balen continues.
"The retrenched workers have zero chance of employment post retrenchment. This is an essence a death sentence and the NUM will fight tooth and nail to make sure our members get what they demand.”
IndustriALL Director of mining Glen Mpufane says:
”Glencore’s refusal to work with trade unions to find a reasonable solution to this conflict is outrageous. We fully support the fight of the miners and urge Glencore to settle this matter urgently.”
The NUM conflict is one of five conflicts currently running at Glencore operations in Peru, Colombia, Australia, and the USA. IndustriALL will mount a global response to Glenocore's union busting agenda.
Announcements
Enabling COSATU Members to Tweet Effectively
NB: @cosatu2015 has been revamped and now it’s @COSATU2015_
Introduction to COSATU Official Twitter Accounts
Ø @COSATU2015_
Official tweets on current affairs, ideological disposition and for a Question & Answer platform
Ø @COSATU TODAY @_cosatu
Seconds- COSATU roving official tweets on events, quotable sound-bites on speeches/interviews, newsflash etc.
How to Register a COSATU Member Twitter Account
Ø Go Google and type twitter/sign up
Ø Versions of name/surname must be completed
Ø Choose a username/password and don’t forget them
Ø Update your profile; picture, bio
o Picture size should be 700k
o Bio-short narrative who you are
Ø Examples of Bio; Africa's largest Federation Official tweets, the home of the toiling classes across the world, with more than 2million membership...Amandla! Johannesburg, South Africa · http://www.cosatu.org.za
Ø Choose who to follow and type @COSATU2015_ and @COSATU TODAY @_cosatu
Ø And you’re skinning in the game through COSATU tweets
Communicating messages that matter is like artwork
Social Media generation is here and is unavoidable
‘Let’s skin in the game of COSATU Tweets’
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Ntai Norman Mampane (Communications Officer)
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 or Direct: +27 10 219-1342
Mobile: +27 72 416 3790
Twitter: @_cosatu / @COSATU2015_
Web: www.cosatu.org.za
‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’-The Communist Manifesto
