Address by ANC SG-COSATU unions and the state of collective bargaining Gwede Mantashe, ANC Secretary General, 12 march 2013 Collective Bargaining is a collective tool of workers to engage a more organised and brutal partner, who owns the means of production, the employer. Individual workers who have a contract of employment with their employer are much weaker individually in dealing with employer. The relation between the two is always characterised as being tense because one party want value for investment, which is general known in the modern day world value for the shareholder. On the other side the worker wants to have a sense that the value he/she receives for the labour he/she sells to the employer is worth the effort. To counter the power of the employer workers organise themselves into a union so that they can have a collective voice in engagement. Unions are divided into two categories, sector unions and general unions. Sector unions are focusing in specific sectors while general union organise any worker who approaches them. Sector unions develop specialised skills for the particular sector and that becomes a source of strength. A general union is a jack of all trades but a specialist of nothing. This debate characterised the unity talks when negotiations were underway, for the formation of COSATU. The decision was that was taken and became one of the founding principles of the federation was that sector unions will serve workers better, captured as “one industry, one union.” This principle was elucidated further by emphasising the importance of solidarity among unions by forming the federation, captured as “one country one federation”. The federation must first confront the question of whether it is promoting its founding principles. When there are more than one union in a sector they compete and in the majority of times fight for membership and the right to represent workers in the sector. During this competition the employer exploits the divisions and even fund and resource the inter-union fights. When there are two COSATU unions in a sector the situation is even worse because they share experiences in the federation and use the same strategies to undermine each other. From where we are sitting the federation is fast putting the founding principles in back banner with COSATU unions fighting it out in the field. The ESKOM strike in Medupi is a case in point where the NUM and NUMSA competed and fought over some principle issues they should ordinarily agree on. When they disagreed they undermined each other and therefore became weaker in dealing with the employers. The strike almost fizzled out as a result with some settlement being found when the strike was falling apart. The point is that our forebears in SACTU had the wisdom of understanding that one sector one union was the way to go. Many COSATU unions compete in a number of sectors, with the result that they weaken each other. Not much progress is made is merging the federations into one federation in the country, with the effect of undermining each other. The second important principle for a union to be strong is making preparations for collective bargaining mandatory. When a UNION has prepared the articulation of issues becomes clearer and therefore contests ideas in the public domain from a working class perspective. This is a function of the technical capacity each union has. Worker control as a principle is an important principle, but it must be underpinned by ongoing training of the leadership. This saves the leadership from being driven by bureaucrats and being relegated into loud hailers of ideas that are neither their own nor fully understood. Such leadership becomes nervous and aggressive when engaged. This is what is called projection, intended to keep everybody at bay so that what is not properly understood cannot be discovered. There are strong signs of this developing, with leaders of unions not relaxed when engaging. This is a sign of weakness in that it makes it difficult to define the role of intellectuals in the trade union movement. This translates itself into either the intellectuals pushing for being elected to leadership positions where they derive political power or manipulate processes so that their views prevail. When this happens leadership gets divided because others in the leadership collective will feel isolated. When this feeling gets stronger the tendency to disown decisions that they feel belong to some kind of an inner circle begin to take root. Signs of this are beginning to show. From the distance the current public tensions have all the signs of this manifestation. If the fight continues when the federation is so under siege it will weaken its standing in society. It is the manifestation of this weakness that projects general secretaries as the bosses of unions and the federation and the presidents get relegated into second in command weaken the principle worker control. This weakness is evident and is growing, translating into tensions. In the extreme cases these tensions result in unions splitting, with the split being led by either a general secretary or the president of the union or federation. COSATU has many examples to learn from. Anarchy and rowdiness is fast taking root in the collective bargaining, with COSATU unions being no exception. When every strike is characterised by destruction of property and violence the federation must be worried because such behaviour invites the state to be part of collective bargaining. Then we get derailed into discussing the brutality of police and the issues at hand get lost. Police gets put in a difficult situation in that when they act against this anarchy they get accused of brutality and when they don’t act the state is projected as weak and allowing lawlessness. It is the prevalence of this kind of anarchy that makes South Africa to be ranked number 144 out 144 in the Global Competitiveness Index in the area of employer/ employee relations, despite the country being rated number 52 overall. This raises questions about our collective bargaining dispensation and institutions like NEDLAC. This was an interesting point for me in that in the 1990s we received many delegations that wanted to learn from us as this federation was seen as a trailblazer in collective bargaining, a status that we have since lost. COSATU unions are the creatures of rules and statutes. They get disorganised when the house rules disappear. New entrants are better in dealing with lawlessness. The NUM in the platinum mines and FAWU in De Doorns paid the price and still have to recover from doing away with house rules being ignored and lawlessness taking over. As things develop today there will be no bargaining dispensation to talk of in five years. In that situation COSATU unions will be much weaker. The question is whether the response of our unions will address these weaknesses, wherein COSATU unions walk around in borrowed gowns by being rowdy themselves. The experience among our staff members in general and organisers in particular has deteriorated. When one listens to spokespersons of unions and when one bumps into the young trade union organisers one detects the deterioration of quality. As a result of this weakness leaders of the unions do not only provide strategic leadership in public but get embroiled in the mud- slinging which ideally should be left to spokespersons. In the majority of COSATU unions there are no spokespersons to talk of because they are totally absent in the public space and the battle of ideas. My conclusion is that COSATU is in a dangerous downward slope. Unions are under siege and less equipped to deal with the difficult situations they face. Union are fast replacing solid organisation with anarchy and therefore fast blunting this important tool of bargaining and striking. The federation is not only divided but it is saying so itself and thus weakening itself in the public eye. The ANC has recouped some lost ground in the public since Mangaung, with some experience on how a divided organisation becomes so weak. We are prepared to share the experience. We have some experience on how leakage of information while a structure is in session serves to weaken it. So far there is a big improvement in this regard in the ANC but this tendency has migrated to the federation. If the trend is not arrested you can only get weaker. My advice is that a three months recruitment campaign will test the unions and give the federation a sense as to whether it can recover soon. All other campaigns will have no impact unless there is an organisation. COSATU must have some focus and not be all-over and save itself from the decline. An attack on COSATU is an attack on the congress movement. A weak COSATU is a weak congress movement. The ANC must also own up that there are areas where the ANC itself is weak and therefore have no capacity to help. Historically in such instances where unions are stronger in the same area unions took a bigger responsibility for rebuilding and strengthening the ANC. In such instances the effort has always been recognised. There is however a growing worrying trend where COSATU leaders are given a responsibility they do not see the importance of accounting to ANC structures. This has the biggest potential of bedevilling relations at that level.
-- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
