COSATU Weekly 08 Decemeber-14 December 2006
Kgomotso Sikwane
COSATU Weekly 08 Decemeber-14 December 2006
CONTENTS
- COSATU celebrates 21st birthday
2. Tracing the footsteps of COSATU: Achievements and challenges
- COSATU condemns rise in lending rates
4. COSATU pays tribute to Moses Mabhida
5. SADTU slams Department of Education
Across the border:
- PUDEMO and police violence
- Striking lab workers back on the job this morning
- Namibia: Nurses Could Face Criminal Charges
This week in history
1. COSATU celebrates 21st
birthday
Even though COSATU turned 21 years old on 1 December 2006, to celebrate this important anniversary a seminar under the theme Are we still on track for the next 21 years was held yesterday at the Boksburg Civic Theatre.
The seminar retraced the footsteps of COSATU over the past 21 years and critically assessed its achievements, strengths, weaknesses and challenges.
Some of the invited guests that attended the seminar and gave talks included COSATU General, Zwelinzima Vavi, Director of NALEDI, Oupa Bodibe, Ngoako Ramathlodi, Moeletsi Mbeki andDr Ashwin Desai.
These invited guests managed to give a critical overview of COSATU as an organisation highlighting both the flaws and untampered potential that the federation has.
The seminar was then opened to members who in turn asked questions that related to the future and way forward of the giant federation.
The day ended in a celebratory tone where guests and members shared the birthday cake over a glass of wine.
2. Tracing the footsteps of COSATU: Achievements and
challenges
By Zwelinzima Vavi, COSATU General Secretary
Comrades
We are gathered here today to mark the 21st Anniversary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions - COSATU. I join the COSATU office bearers to welcome you in today's activity to reflect on the achievement and challenges facing COSATU.
Normally humans are recognised as grown ups once they reach the magic 21 years of age. But COSATU is an extraordinary creature that was born extraordinarily big and became the fastest growing baby in the world.
In the years when it should have still been an infant, this giant baby fought some of the fiercest and hardest battles that helped defeat one the most feared oppressive and brutal governments in the world - the apartheid regime.
We were born in the middle of the state of emergency and the counter-revolutionary violence the regime has initiated against the progressive forces in KwaZulu Natal. COSATU received a baptism of fire. On the very day COSATU was born, four MAWU shop stewards were burnt alive. Warlords surrounded the venue where the Congress was held threatening to attack the delegates. Our people were being killed left, right and centre, their houses grazed on the ground, entire families - including children mown down by automatic weapons. Everyone was forced to be on the run.
This was followed by the most brutal attacks to be launched against the trade union movement and the democratic forces. The agents of the apartheid regime used warlords from the IFP, trying every trick in the book to intimidate members from being part of the COSATU unions. Warlords stood at the gates to check their payslips and assault and even kill those known to be activists of COSATU. Through the draconian state of emergency the regime detained thousands and thousands of activists of COSATU, UDF and other progressive formations activists throughout the country.
This "total onslaught" spawned formations like UWUSA, which worked with employers to try to undermine COSATU's phenomenal growth. They failed. UWUSA did not see its first five years of existence. Many other counter-revolutionary formations such as five madoda, mouthpiece, and others could not slow down unionisation and intimidate workers away from COSATU, their movement.
The process of reflection we undertake today is informed by and builds on the rich analysis contained in COSATU documents, in particular:
- COSATU's resolutions from Congresses and Central Committees over many years.
- The September Commission Report of 1997.
- The Organisational Renewal Reports to the various Central Committees and National Congresses.
- Secretariat Reports to all the COSATU Congresses.
- The history of COSATU we published on the occasion of our 20th Anniversary last year.
This body of knowledge generated over many years represents our own efforts to analyse our character and role in our society and internationally. Talking about COSATU also means talking about the history of trade unionism in this country, which goes back many years - at least since the beginning of industrial capitalism.
Today I want to focus on COSATU's key achievements both in the context of the struggle for liberation and in the post-apartheid society.
We need to start by understanding what COSATU is and where it comes from.
COSATU is a trade union movement drawing together workers from various industries and sectors of the economy. COSATU's foundation was laid by the 1973 Durban strikes that marked the re-emergence of militant trade unionism in this country. The roots of these 1973 Durban strikes can be tracked back to SACTU which was formed in 1955 and the ICU in the 1920s and even further, to the struggling unions that existed from at least the early years of the mines.
Still, above all COSATU draws from and is informed by the positions that shaped the radical trade union movement spawned by the 1973 strikes. Workers in those days knew that improvements in the workplace by themselves would never be enough. They saw the need to end the apartheid system and the deep-seated inequalities, mass poverty and mass unemployment to which it gave birth.
It is this history and our daily experience that underlies our deep-seated belief in the dialectical relationship between workplace and community struggles. We know that we cannot hope to win a better life for our members while we still face a crisis of unemployment and deprivation. We need unity, not just of workers, but of the working class to transform our society - to bring about a better life for all.
COSATU believes in the radical transformation of society and ultimately the building of a socialist society as an alternative to the exploitative and unfair capitalist system that now reigns in our country. In that respect, our vision only starts by our demands for improved conditions for workers in the capitalist society. Ultimately, we also work to build a new society to replace capitalism, one where the needs of our people shape our economy and not the drive of a few to make even more profits.
This militant and radical approach to politics and society distinguishes COSATU from many other unions in South Africa and in the world. It provides the standpoint from which COSATU engages with the state and capital and broader mass democratic movement.
Since the ending of apartheid, the question of how to take forward the positions of the working class has undoubtedly become more complex. On the one hand, we have seen an attack on workers' traditional strongholds in manufacturing and the state-owned enterprise. The results have included mass retrenchments, which have had devastating effects on some unions. On the other hand, we have to engage on a host of complex policy issues, as well as contesting with capital for influence on the state and indeed in some of our allies, a far more complex than it was in the past.
COSATU's own articulation of its role has undergone important adaptation particularly since the defeat of apartheid. This continues to be a subject of debate within our society and the broader movement. We hear different demands on COSATU from both inside and outside our movement.
- Some people argue that COSATU must retain its militant posture of combining political and workplace struggles. In that vein, it must aim to shape the trajectory of democracy in favour of the working class at both the societal and workplace levels. This is fundamentally the position of COSATU itself.
- A second position, that is articulated more vigorously these days, is that COSATU must concern itself with purely workplace issues and in that respect serve as a cork in the industrial relations machinery of the country. According to this perspective the trade union movement must return to the workplace 'barracks' and leave political issues to political parties.
- A third perspective, pushed most particularly by free market ideologues, is that trade unions should be dismantled or severely weakened, as they interfere with the 'normal' operations of the market by unduly raising the price of labour. This is, of course, both unrealistic and ahistorical.
From both a historical and contemporary perspective, separating workplace struggles and broader political and societal struggles is untenable for the working class. We cannot do that but we must openly confront and debate this. Even conservative trade unions in other countries have political ambitions to ensure that those in control of the state favour workers. Democracy has also become much more complex, and trade unions have a stake in the character of democracy and represent and important constituency.
All over the world, trade unions play a vital role in the struggle for democracy and broadening democratic space. Liberal democracies have inherent limitations and society cannot rely on political parties only to deepen democracy, particularly to realise the vision of a participatory democracy. Power in a class-based society is uneven; even if people have the vote, it does not guarantee them power. If ordinary people do not organise - if workers in particular do not organise to engage on key strategic issues - the democratic space would be monopolised by the rich and wealthy. In the absence of trade unions the political space inexorably will be dominated by those with money and consequently access to the media, 'on the golf course'. That is where the power is.
In short, comrades, trade unions are critical in a functional democracy because they give workers - the majority of our people - a voice. Workers and trade unions have a stake in the shape and direction of society, especially one as unequal as ours. A revolutionary trade union movement also has interest in deepening and opening the democratic space as a means to counter the hegemony of capital. This reality forms the background for COSATU's role and its contribution to the South Africa today.
From its inception COSATU played a critical role in the struggle for the democratisation of South Africa. COSATU also articulated a vision of a democratic society both at the political and workplace level. We must remember that COSATU fought for the current Constitution and articulated a vision of a thoroughgoing democracy with a strong participatory element. In addition we fought hard for the inclusion of socio-economic rights as a means of ensuring substantive equality. It is in this respect that we should understand COSATU's insistence of the inclusion of workers' rights in the Constitution.
Today we all appreciate the vital role of the Constitution in providing a framework for the radical transformation of our society. COSATU's contribution should not be underestimated; neither should it be forgotten.
Trade unions are but one of the actors in society and of necessity have to galvanise and work with others. COSATU has mastered the politics of coalitions, building with progressive social movement, the democratic state and left political parties across the globe.
Naturally, COSATU is part of the tripartite alliance with the SACP and ANC. This alliance is born out of the common experience of oppression and determination to eradicate the legacy of racial capitalism and build a new non-racial and democratic society. COSATU considers the alliance as but one terrain and instrument of change and part of the democratic forces fighting for change.
However, the Federation understand only too well the need to maintain its inpendence even in the context of alliance politics. This goes back even to the days of the UDF where COSATU maintained a strong independent posture while forming part of the mass democratic movement. If you do not have a strong trade union movement then democracy itself is in danger. Independence starts with the right to think independently.
COSATU and its predecessors have been at the forefront of changing labour regulation in this country. The Wiehahn Commission in the late 1970s was a direct product of the 1973 Durban strikes. COSATU challenged the apartheid regime's attempt to reform labour legislation towards the late 1980s in the form of a revised LRA. The apartheid regime was forced to grudgingly accept and recognise the need for, and the role of, black and non-racial trade unions. Before the Wiehahn Commission black workers did not have the right to collective bargain and freedom of association to form and join unions. It was only in 1979 that Africans were recognised as workers.
The new raft of labour laws introduced after apartheid was pioneered by COSATU and the liberation movement. We often forget that these laws had to be fought for and these battles shaped a broadly labour friendly labour regime.
We are painfully aware however that workers' rights are still constantly under threat. Capital has not given up its demand to dilute the labour laws and important sections of the state share the notion that our labour market is too rigid. New forms of work undermine the progressive labour legislation by removing a large chunk of the working class from the purview of the labour laws. Poor enforcement also undermines the rights of workers, especially the unorganised and those in vulnerable sectors such as domestics and farm workers. They cannot access these protections because thy do not have organisations
Many studies show that it pays to belong to a union. It is only when workers organise that they realise the full benefits extended by the law. For that reason, unions are important to realise the many rights entrenched in the Constitution and to improve workers' lot at the workplace.
COSATU also plays an important role in the international trade union movement. It is held in high esteem on the international scene and many look to COSATU for answers to the crisis of globalisation. COSATU with its allies are gradually shifting the international trade union movement towards a more progressive platform.
Our major weakness is in driving this project consistently, particularly in the African continent. Trade unions in Africa are weak and COSATU has a role to strengthen the trade union movement, particularly in the SADC region. Above all this requires a sea change in how we understand and conduct international work
It goes without saying that the Federation has weaknesses and we are the first to acknowledge them. The Secretariat reports to the 9th National Congress point exhaustively some of the weaknesses of the Federation. Chief among these is failure to implement our own decisions - particularly as they relate to building strong unions and recruiting the unorganised. The coherence of the Federation at times is put under enormous strain. In part this is attributable to divergent messages and pursuit of contradictory agendas that at times work against each other. The Federation faces a plethora of demands and this affects its priorities. As a casualty, many of our programmes are implemented in a piecemeal and ad-hoc fashion.
Looking to the future we can say without any fear of any contradiction that COSATU remains the biggest trade union movement in South Africa and the second largest in the entire continent. In this Congress we definitely entered a new era compared to our previous Congress. The modest membership increase over the past few years is something that we must celebrate, while at the same time ensuring that all our affiliates increase their membership. Due to the struggles we have waged, there are indicators that show that relative shift in government willingness to engage and alter its policies. Remember that in 1996 we were told that GEAR was non-negotiable!
Capital however remains entrenched in its dogmatic approach of free market fundamentalism. Nevertheless there is a growing realisation that our developmental challenges run deep and that the state, in particular, must take a more active role to ensure shared growth.
COSATU's clearly has many strengths and weakness the other inputs will pick up on these themes. I have tried to set a context within which today's discussion should be located. However we must not lose sight of COSATU's own self-reflection and resolutions when we analyse where we are, who we are and how we should move forward.
3.COSATU condemns rise in lending
rates
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is appalled by yesterday's decision of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank to raise base lending rates by yet another 50 basis points, to 9%.
COSATU sees the Reserve Bank inflation targeting policy, through the use of the interest rate tool, as a major deviation from the developmental agenda that South Africa needs. The imprudent policy of dealing with inflation as a key economic challenge remains problematic for a developing country that faces major problems such as high unemployment, mass poverty and sluggish growth. Inflation targeting is a policy adopted by countries with developed economies and unemployment below 10%. It is totally unsuitable for a developing economy like South Africa, which has massive problems of unemployment and poverty.
While it would be crucial to have a macro-economic strategy that ensures an appropriate mix between fiscal and monetary policy, COSATU sees fiscal and monetary policy going in two different directions. The growing and positive trend over the past few years, of increasing fiscal spending on social security, infrastructure and poverty alleviation measures, is intended to stimulate economic growth, reduce poverty and create jobs.
Meanwhile the interest rates increase will snuff out the glimmer of hope of increasing economic growth, especially in manufacturing industry, and of providing cheap capital to small business. It will make housing inaccessible to many ordinary workers and attract an influx of speculative investment. This policy will destroy still more jobs and sabotage prospects of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014.
COSATU would welcome a review of the current inflation targeting measure as well as a review of the current bands that would take into consideration the developmental and growth agenda required to reduce unemployment and poverty.
4. COSATU pays tribute to Moses Mabhida
The late South African Communist Party (SACP) chairperson, Moses Mabhida was laid to rest last weekend in Pietermaritzburg.
Mabhida's remains were returned to South Africa from Mozambique by a top government delegation last week. Twenty years after the Frelimo government at the Dhlangeni Cemetery in Maputo buried him,
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) pays tribute to one of the great heroes of our liberation movement - Moses Mabhida, who died on March 8, 1986, in Maputo, Mozambique aged 62, and who is now returning to join the people he lived and died for.
He was without doubt one of our greatest political leaders. Although he left us before the Tripartite Alliance came into being, he was the very embodiment of the ideals which inspired it; he was a crusader for a united national liberation movement to transform the lives of all the people of South Africa.
He devoted his life to the revolutionary struggle to crush apartheid and build a united, non-racial and democratic nation and put it firmly on the road to socialism. As well as being General Secretary of the SA Communist Party, he was for many years a member of the National Executive Committees of both the African National Congress and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU).
In his childhood in a rural community near Pietermaritzburg, he inherited his family's and community's bitter anger at the seizure of their land by the white colonists. At school, one of his teachers was Harry Gwala, who persuaded him to join the ANC and the Independent Trade Union Movement, and in 1942 he joined the Communist Party.
In 1952, after the Defiance Campaign which saw 8,000 people sent to jail in protest against the apartheid laws, he gave up his job and start working full-time for the Howick Rubber Workers' Union and the Chemical Workers in Pietermaritzburg, Durban and other parts of Natal.
He played a big role in planning for the Congress of the people in 1955 which adopted the Freedom Charter. In the same year 1955 he was invited to participate in the launch of SACTU at its first congress in Johannesburg and was elected one of the four Vice-Presidents.
In the mid 1950s Comrade Moses was also secretary of the ANC's Pietermaritzburg branch, working with Chief Albert Luthuli. He was elected to the ANC's National Executive Committee (NEC) and in 1958-1959 as acting chair of the Natal ANC.
A week after the declaration of the 1960 state of emergency, SACTU sent him overseas to be their international representative in Prague. He organised international solidarity campaigns through the World Federation of Trade Unions.
Then, in 1963, after being re-elected to the NEC at the ANC's Lobatse conference in October 1962, Oliver Tambo deployed him to build Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). He received military training and then himself became a trainer and instructor of new recruits before being was promoted to be the commander of MK.
After the Morogoro conference he helped establish the ANC's Intelligence and Security department, and in 1979 was part of the team that drew up the famous Green Book, which is still the subject of debate today.
He was elected general secretary of the Communist Party in November 1979, after the death of Moses Kotane in 1978. In 1985, he suffered a stroke, and after a year of illness, died of a heart attack in Maputo.
COSATU echoes the tribute by Oliver Tambo at Moses Mabhida's funeral in Maputo in 1986. He said: "It is rarely given to a people that they should produce a single person who epitomises their hopes and expresses their common resolve as Moses Mabhida did. In simple language he could convey the aspirations of all our people in their magnificent variety, explain the fears and prejudices of the unorganised and sense the feelings of even the most humble among our people Moses Mbheki Mabhida will be there when the trumpet sounds the salute to freedom".
COSATU dips its flags in honour of a great liberation fighter, whose life remains an example and inspiration today to all who seek to carry forward his lifelong fight for freedom, democracy and socialism. He must not, and will not be forgotten by the working class of South Africa.
5 SADTU slams Department of Education
Schools have now closed for the festive season. But spare a thought for the many teachers - in Gauteng, Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, and Northern Cape - who have still not received pay progression and other payments agreed in April this year.
Since April there have been several meetings of the task team to address these payments, but the provincial departments of education have been dragging their feet.
The final straw came on 1 December – when the Department of Education created chaos at a meeting of the ELRC (Education Labour Relations Council) when they revealed that they lacked information on which teachers have still to be paid.
SADTU – the majority union - slammed the Department for its response as it was tantamount to bargaining in bad faith. According to General Secretary, Thulas Nxesi, “The employer is fully aware of teachers who have not been paid. In some provinces the employer is delaying payment in a last ditch attempt to enforce performance assessments on teachers unlawfully. Teachers are being punished for monies due to them.”
In further evidence of crass inefficiency, the Department requested meetings dealing with the staffing of schools and workloads of educators to be cancelled as they were not ready to respond to these issues.
SADTU is awaiting the outcome of the final ELRC meeting that was this week before taking the matter to its structures for action.
According to Thulas Nxesi, “the Department needs to get its house in order. If we don’t get some progress – and quickly – the year will end on a sour note, and that means we start 2007 on a bad note as well. When the Department messes with the teachers it is not good for education in general.”
Across the border:
6. PUDEMO and police violence
Violence and political intolerance have long been the central policy of the absolute monarch government. This policy dates back to the fateful day of April 12, 1973 when the late King Sobhuza II proclaimed his intention of eliminating dissenting political voices. For more than thirty years, the monarchy government has aggressively pursued this policy to persecute generations of pro-democracy activists through the use of direct violence and fear. We understand that in Swaziland as in other evil dictatorships, the use of violence and torture against one person is meant to silence not only that person but the whole population
A week after the South African newspaper, The Saturday Star (25/11/06), published a fake story about a PUDEMO secret army, King Mswati III unleashed a pre-Christmas violence campaign against PUDEMO and SWAYOCO. In our recent publication, we warned that the story, which generated excitement at the prospect of an imminent umgicomgico among local journalists, will be followed by massive state violence against our people.
On Saturday December 2, 2006, armed police attacked PUDEMO and SWAYOCO members during a peaceful gathering in Manzini. As has been the case in previous attacks, the violence was brutal, senseless and indiscriminate. Hundreds of baton-wielding police charged at anyone on the street including children and the elderly. According to eyewitnesses, armed police severely assaulted an elderly woman with batons. The injuries sustained by PUDEMO and SWAYOCO activists are horrific. They range from broken bones to head injuries. Nearby offices of the Swaziland Transport and Allied Workers Union were turned into a makeshift medical centre as scores of seriously injured people required medical help (The Times of Swaziland, 02/12/06). Several people were arrested and the beating continued at the Manzini police station. Mphandlana Shongwe, a well known pro-democracy activist, was brutally assaulted at the police station where he had gone to enquire about the arrests. Shongwe lost consciousness as his head was repeatedly banged against a wall. As a result of the beating, Shogwe suffered head injuries and a broken rib.
The scale of the violence was purely unnecessary, callous and unprovoked. The Times of Swaziland (Ibid) report claims that the police attacked after “a missile was thrown at the direction of the police… It took a single stone, thrown form the side of the marchers to the police, to trigger what appeared to have been eagerly expected by the police officers as they charged at then vigorously.” The stone-throwing incident has not been corroborated by eyewitnesses and therefore we do not know if it actually occurred. However, we take a very strong view that even if something was thrown in the direction of the police, it cannot justify the scale of violence unleashed against the public. In our view, this is yet another example of unprofessional behaviour on the part of the police who act more like a gang of thugs spoiling for a fight than a professional organisation trusted with protecting the public.
What happened on Saturday is not uncommon in Swaziland. Violence is a mainstay policy of the monarchy regime in its response to calls for democracy. As has been demonstrated on numerous occasions, the regime uses violence as its ultimate response to public demands for a democratic system of governance. This is a regime which feeds on violence and fear to sustain its stranglehold on power. For many years the regime has waited for its dream of an apocalypse to come true. In recent years, it has stepped up political violence and terror against our people. The regime’s strategy is to create the conditions where it can engage in mass killing and destruction of our country. It would then claim that the pro-democracy movement has provoked it to do so. For this regime, public fear is strength. At a time when the public credibility of the monarchy government has suffered massively, it hoped that mass fear would offer opportunities for political revival.
As we have always done, PUDEMO and SWAYOCO condemn this senseless act of violence against unarmed civilians. It is a poignant and cowardly act so characteristic of violent regimes. Many regimes of this type have been internationally condemned and censured, but the monarchy government in Swaziland is being encouraged by international bodies such as the Commonwealth Secretariat to commit gross human rights violations against Swazis. Public statements of support by Commonwealth senior officials such as the Secretary-General, Don MacKinnon, have given comfort to the monarchy government to violently suppress democracy with impunity. Since 1996, the Commonwealth Secretariat has refused to heed local and international concerns about its participation in the repression of our people. PUDEMO has made several representations to the Commonwealth Secretariat. Canadian members of parliament (Mr Roly MacIntyre - Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick - and Mr Paul Zed the federal representative for Saint John) have written to the Commonwealth Secretariat expressing their concerns about the situation in Swaziland.
The recent violence is directly linked to the Commonwealth-sponsored constitution which prohibits political party participation in Swaziland politics. The government used this prohibition to legalise its violence against PUDEMO and SWAYOCO. Although proponents of the constitution would argue that freedom of assembly and association is guaranteed, these freedoms do not extend to prohibited formations such as political parties. The regime thus claims constitutional legality to stamp out activity associated with political parties.
Our people were on the street on Saturday to protest against this prohibition and to honour our heroes who have died for this cause. We hold the Commonwealth responsible for the continued political violence and call upon sensible leaders within the organisation to promote democracy and peace in Swaziland and not disharmony. It is now the time for the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to seriously consider formal investigation of the persistent violation of the Harare Declaration principles by the monarchy government. The time has also come for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to break its silence and intervene in the crisis in Swaziland. Waiting for the apocalypse is no longer a rationale for lack of action. We invite the SADC and Commonwealth leadership to give priority to proactive rather than reactive approaches to conflict resolution. Swaziland is a member of both the Commonwealth and SADC and its persistent recalcitrance towards democracy has brought into serious question the commitment of these organisations to the principles of responsible governance. It is incumbent upon to these organisations to take the necessary action against the government of Swaziland in defence of their values and the people of Swaziland. History will judge the Commonwealth and SADC harshly if they continue to embrace the old strategy of waiting for an apocalypse.
Swaziland’s persistent violation of SADC and Commonwealth values over the years presents a strong case for intervention. Once again, PUDEMO calls upon SADC and the Commonwealth to condemn the violence and take interest in our call for democratisation in Swaziland.
PUDEMO’s triumph is that after twenty years of state terror, we are still marching and still committed to a relentless and non-violent struggle for democracy. We will not be suppressed and we will not be provoked into losing our way. We will continue our journey to freedom and will not be diverted from our cause by state terrorism and violence.
7. Striking lab workers back on the job this morning
THE fourth strike this year by health workers at Gisborne Hospital ended this morning when 10 striking laboratory workers went back to work.
Medical Laboratory Workers Union members and New Zealand Blood Services workers across the country went on strike at 8am last Wednesday.
They went back to work at 8am yesterday.
They have been calling for pay increases that reflect rising inflation rates.
One of 10 striking Gisborne Lab workers, Ann Rush, said she was looking forward to going back to work this morning.
"We have missed our work," she said.
She felt that the strike had been worthwhile, raising awareness around the importance of lab workers.
However, she said it was unfortunate that the increased awareness had to come at a cost to patients.
Their decision to strike was not one they had taken lightly, she said.
Ms Rush was disappointed that several of her fellow lab workers chose not to support them during the strike, especially when other hospital workers and the community had been so supportive of their plight.
"They will be more than happy to put their hand out and get the pay increase if the District Health Boards accept our proposal, but they are not prepared to support us now."
A comment that appeared in The Herald last week from a non-striking union member had hurt Ms Rush and fellow striking workers.
The non-striking member said they had stayed on the job because of their commitment to the community.
"We are also committed to this community. All bar one of us has had more than 10 years experience at this hospital."
Tairawhiti District Health (TDH) chief executive Jim Green said Gisborne Hospital had coped pretty well during the strike, managing to perform several surgeries that did not require blood products.
It had been pretty much business as usual, due to the presence of 12 non-striking lab workers.
The only surgeries postponed during the strike were those requiring blood products, with the majority being joint operations. However, New Zealand Blood Workers went back to work this morning, collecting, testing and delivering blood to the nation. This meant Gisborne Hospital would be pretty much fully operational again by today, Mr Green said.
Many of the joint surgeries cancelled had been re-scheduled for next week, which meant the hospital was still on track to meet its orthopaedic initiative target.
The arrival of a new orthopaedic surgeon to the hospital this week would also help them reach their target.
Mr Green said informal discussions between the Union’s and District Health Boards had continued throughout the strike.
Meanwhile, a Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) strike scheduled to start next Wednesday will not bring too much disruption to Gisborne Hospital.
SFWU members are not directly employed by TDH, rather by private company Spotless.
However, of all the Spotless staff at Gisborne Hospital only around six were members of the SFWU, Mr Green said.
"There will be no disruption to any services as the duration of the strike, 1.5 hours, and the number of actual members who will be on duty at that time, three, will mean that cover can be provided."
These strikes follow one by resident doctors in June and two strikes by radiographers during September and November.
8. Namibia: Nurses Could Face Criminal Charges
The Minister of Health and Social Services, Dr Richard Kamwi, has warned nurses intending to take part in a planned demonstration today at midday that they could be charged with a criminal offence.
Addressing a press conference late yesterday afternoon, Kamwi said the interests of the patients are paramount and that no patient should be adversely affected as a result of the planned demonstration.
“All nurses know that abandoning patients is negligence and the individual concerned shall be held criminally liable in accordance with the laws."
The minister noted that the ministry was not asked for permission and has not granted permission for the demonstration. Therefore the demonstration cannot take place within official working hours, while those who make themselves guilty will bear the consequences. Kamwi charged that nursing is a calling and that the planned demonstration is motivated by self-interests.
He called on the nurses to listen to the voice of reason and not to allow themselves to be misled by individuals who may have their own agendas.
Kamwi said the ministry decided to issue the press release after they received notice from some nurses that they intend to stage a demonstration today. He said the grievances for the demonstration, according to the documents submitted to the ministry, are that the ministry has reduced their overtime and that the nurses want to negotiate with the ministry on conditions of service. Kamwi explained that there is no change as far as overtime, Sunday, public holidays and night work is concerned.
He noted that the ministry in the past failed to make a distinction between employees that work normal working hours from Monday to Friday and those who work a shift system, which included Sundays and public holidays. He noted that the nurses were overpaid as a result and that has now been rectified.
"Since the rectification resulted in less payment than in the past, some nurses are unhappy and decided to stage a demonstration." He added that the ministry could not continue to pay nurses what they were not entitled to.
On the issue of negotiating with the nurses on their conditions of service, Kamwi said Napwu enjoys the status of legitimate exclusive bargaining agent for public servants who include nurses, and his ministry has no legitimacy as requested by nurses to negotiate conditions of service for nurses.
"The collective bargaining principles are enshrined in the agreement between the government and Napwu, and the latter has successfully negotiated for improvement in conditions of service for nurses and other public servants for the next three years."
Meanwhile, the General Secretary of Napwu, Peter Nevonga, said the planned demonstration by the Namibian Nurses Union (Nanu) is in fact baseless and what Nanu claims is that the ministry must pay nurses overtime on Sundays and public holidays when those days fall in the nurses' normal shift. He accused the Nanu leadership of not understanding the Labour Act, lacking vision and completely misleading the nurses especially on the overtime issue.
"They are putting the nurses in a more serious problem because they are fighting that nurses must be paid unlawfully."
Nevonga charged that Nanu is organizing and instigating workers that they must get or receive illegal payment and telling them to commit a crime, because that will be tantamount to theft.
Nevonga categorically stated that Napwu is not part of the planned demonstration and therefore called on its members in the ministry countrywide not to partake in the planned Nanu demonstration.
"Nurses should not make themselves victims of possible consequences which might arise as a result of such illegal demonstration."
The demonstration was planned for Wednesday between 12h00 and 14h00 today.
This week in history:
13 December 1995
- New LRA passed
16 December 1961
- MK is launched