23 September 2016 COSATU President Sidumo Dlamini Speech to the 2016 SACTWU National Congress The President of SACTWU comrade Themba Khumalo The National Office Bearers of SACTU, The National Executive Committee leadership of SACTWU The Entire Shop Steward collective from all levels The Alliance leadership invited here The invited guest Comrades and compatriots Please accept greetings from your federation, COSATU. As COSATU we feel honoured to have been invited to such an important gathering. SACTWU is one of those model COSATU affiliates. It remains a stable union despite turbulences of retrenchments in the sectors where it is organizing. SACTWU is a union of solutions. When there is retrenchment in its sectors SACTWU comes up with effective intervention strategies to compensate for retrenchments. When in the COSATU CEC, SACTWU leaders in the meeting always distinguish themselves with consistently providing clarity of purpose and properly thought out way forward. When we participate at various platforms of engagement such as NEDLAC we rely on the capacity of SACTWU to make our proposals win the day. SACTWU is a union of self sustenance. This union may be a relatively smaller union but its activities, its financial muscle and its strategic interventions, which include financial interventions, makes it to be envied by both friends and foes alike. Comrades, this congress is taking place at a time when it is now clear that that the world have entered into a period of unprecedented stagnation in which traditional forms of macro-economic stimulus, namely cheap credit and quantitative easing, were no longer effective. The current global situation is marked by social desolation, economic conflicts and rising geo-political tensions. Global demand unceasingly falls below output, leading to glutted markets with excess supply and over production. The economic crisis has forced national economies to be more inward looking and protective of their local markets. It has in particular set the epicentres of capitalism against each other as seen with the recent political rupture in the European Union in which the Britain has taken a decision to dismember itself from the European Union leading to economic shocks all over the world. We are meeting here today at a time when the working people all over the world are under attack. Capital continues to shift the burden of the economic crisis to the working class. Throughout the period of economic crisis since 2007 / 2008 the ruling class has pushed "structural adjustment programmes", taking away the retirement, benefits, wages, and health care that working people rely on to survive. A recent report by McKinsey Global Institute based on a detailed study of advanced countries shows that a significant majority of the population in 25 of the world's most advanced countries was experiencing declining or stagnating incomes between 2005 and 2014. An estimated 540 million to 580 million people, 65 to 70 percent of the population of those countries, had real incomes that were flat or fell during this period. This is an experience of the working class in the so called advanced countries. If this is the current experience and conditions of the working class in developed and advances countries, how worse are the conditions of the working class in developing countries such as South Africa? Another recent report by the Global Slavery Index estimates that some 45.8 million people today, across 167 countries, are living under some form of modern-day slavery. The figures reviewed in the report lay bare the conditions within which some of the most oppressed sections of the working class are living in. These are human beings that enjoy no rights beyond those of the commodity - they have been forced into conditions in which the only way out is to be bought, sold, and used. This is congress will have to interact with this global reality from a position of our class interests in particular to use this information to develop the fighting strategy for the working class. It is unacceptable that as the global economic crisis or put differently as the crisis of capitalism deepens and intensifies, the working class formations become more incoherent in terms of the application of our fighting strategies and tactics. It is for this reason that on amongst we have recently had a bilateral meeting with the SACP, our ally and our political leadership as the organised detachment of the working class. The outcome of that meeting was that there is no time for petty differences; there is no time for our organisation to drift apart. We said that there exist a possibility that with the current local government results, the people's camp may be forced into a position of panic and being in disarray, resulting to unprincipled accusations and or failure to tackle mistakes genuinely. Within the same wavelength a another possibility exists that we may all close ranks to a point of being unable to draw lessons, correct mistakes and marshal the forces forward. In this context comrade Joe Slovo warned that "..when things go badly wrong (whether it be in a movement or a country) it is inevitable that some who have ulterior motives jump on to the bandwagon. "When a gap develops between the leadership and the led, it always provides openings for real enemies. But to deal with the gap in terms only of enemy conspiracies is an ancient and discredited device. Equally, to fail to tackle mistakes or crimes merely because their exposure will give comfort to our adversaries is both short-sighted and counter-productive". As COSATU and the SACP we said that we need to defeat every attempt to drive a wedge between our formations and between our leaders. This, comrades, we promise we will do, as we prepare towards the alliance engagements in the near future and as we prepare towards the ANC policy conference and / or the consultative conference. For us as the SACP and COSATU it is clear that the working class is on its own and we need to decisively stand as a united force and force our comrades in government and the movement as a whole to listen to what we are saying. We want a united ANC, with a leadership that is able to lead the organisation and take decisive decisions where that is necessary. We want an ANC leadership that builds an ANC-led Alliance that is able to drive a radical economic transformation. The CEC said we must openly says that we are not happy with the divisions we see in the ANC where we see high levels of factionalism and self-importance, we are not happy with a perception and allegations which points to the fact that the ANC and by extension the country are being run on the basis of factions. We are not happy that the movement operates on the basis of listening to pressure groups depending on who makes more noise and insults it more in public. When you don't insult, no one listens actually you get labelled as weak. Being not happy about certain things in politics is not enough, what matters is the practical resolve to confront those issues and force a solution. As COSATU we have reached stat stage. We have reached a stage where we now realise that we can no longer take our diplomacy beyond this point. We are now calling those of our class, the working class to rise up and show the way forward. It is clear that if we do not rise and take charge of the situation, the democratic forces may lose power in the near future as it has happened in the recent local government elections. Many of those who continue to deepen divisions inside the ANC have no interest in seeing a united ANC. For them chaos is helpful because it allows them an opportunity to loot. Many of those who pursue factions have fat bank balances. For them, they have arrived. For them loosing political power means nothing because according to their standards democracy has paid them well. Their families can still survive for many years to come. This means that we are fighting our class enemies on one side, and on the other side we are fighting the enemy from within, and all these battles cannot be fought by individuals but must be fought by an organisation with enough capacity to take up battles in many fronts. But the question we must answer is whether we have such an organisation with the required fighting capacity. Oom Gov, writing from Robben Island, in his book "learning from Robben Island" he begins by reminding all of us that if we have to grapple with concrete socio-economic problems - problems of oppression and exploitation of man by man we have to adopt a more realistic approach to our problems. Oppression and exploitation are man-made by minority interests to the disadvantage of majority interests. What then must the oppressed and exploited majority do to turn things in their favour? He continues and he says our starting point is to direct our attention and efforts to the source of our strength by saying: 'Go to the masses of the oppressed and exploited peoples of our land. Work among them; work with them to prepare the way for a take-over of power.' Expressed briefly this is to say: 'Go. Organise.' He continues and says that "experience has taught, however, that a lot more requires to be known about organising if the product of our efforts and activities, i.e. organisation, is to be effective. And if the oppressed and exploited are to achieve their end, viz to take over power, they must build effective organisational machinery. And to have such organizational machinery there is no room for haphazard and half-hearted measures. The task has to be tackled seriously and systematically." Comrade Lenin on his part said that "The strength of the working class lies in organisation. Unless the masses are organised, the proletariat is nothing. Organised-it is everything. Organisation means unity of action, unity in practical operations. But every action is valuable, of course, only because and insofar as it serves to push things forward and not back ward, insofar as it serves to unite the proletariat ideologically, to elevate, and not degrade, corrupt or weaken it. Organisation not based on principle is meaningless, and in practice converts the workers into a miserable appendage of the bourgeoisie in power". - Lenin. In simple terms, the fighting capacity of the working class is determined by their organisation. As COSATU we are moving towards a position of being more stable. We have dealt with the divisions and those who had a programme to divide the federation have been exposed by their own activities. FAWU has written a letter and announced its undemocratic congress decision to disaffiliate from COSATU. Thousands of workers throughout the country have made a call that this was not their decision and they want to remain in COSATU. They have asked COSATU to find them a new home and we are busy with that. We want SACTWU to communicate a message to those workers from FAWU who want to remain in COSATU to go to COSATU provincial offices. They will get help from our provinces. COSATU is their home. We have been very open about the remaining challenges in COSATU and these relate to the weaknesses in our affiliates particularly in the private sector. It is important that in order to properly understand the challenges facing our unions we should look at factors which have impacted on our unions and which are outside our control (the objective factors) and those factors which were within our control (the subjective factors) Factors which negatively affected our unions but which were outside their control. An article by the Economist journal published on the 28th September 2015 shows that this trend is also the same all over the world. It shows that trade unions' membership numbers have also dropped dramatically in the rich world over the last three decades. >From a peak of 20m members in 1979 they fell to 14.5m in 2013 in America and from 12m to 6.5m in Britain, according to the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. European countries, including Germany and France, have also seen huge drops in membership. The decline is largely due to structural changes in advanced economies. Total manufacturing employment in America has fallen from nearly 20m in 1979 to 12m today. The kind of workers who have lost out-in particular, unskilled men-were precisely those most likely to be in a union in the first place. And what has sprung up to replace them, crimps unions further. If you went to a factory in the 1970s, you would have seen assembly lines of people. Such workers were much more amenable to the idea of "class consciousness". The impact of globalisation has been an increased in the use of technology and mechanisation and this has made it harder for unions to regulate work, the rise of a more flexible service sector, and government policies (such as those imposed by a Conservative-led government in Britain in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher) and the loss of union clout seems inevitable. Faced with declining membership figures, some unions have tried to modernise. In Britain, for example, UNISON, the second-largest union, now allows people to join online and has created an app which is popular with younger people. It has also changed the way it markets itself to potential members: highlighting services such as free legal advice rather than just its ability to strike. Instead of relying on "stewards" to recruit new members, it advertises in newspapers and on the television. But the pace of change in trade unions has often been slow. Several high-profile unions are still run by leaders who prefer staging industrial action as a means of recruiting new members. This means that membership in the private sector, particularly in America and Britain, has seen a larger drop than that in the public-sector (although the numbers of private-sector union members has increased slightly more recently in Britain). As the public sector contracts, particularly in Britain, that may make the unions even more vulnerable. This trend is not universal. In some countries trade union membership has grown: Spain, Ireland and Luxembourg have all seen an uptick in members over the past three decades. Meanwhile there is scope for even more growth in emerging markets. Since 1981, when records for Chile began, the number of people who are members of a trade union there has more than doubled. Between 1992 and 2013 the number of union members in Mexico increased by 25%. Workers at China's manufacturing plants may also increasingly start to organise themselves. And despite the declining number of members, unions in places such as France still hold sway in other parts of the market, determining wages or preventing businesses from expanding. But unless western unions start to widen their appeal, events such as in Paris will become increasingly sombre. Factors which have impacted negatively on our unions but which are within our control. It is important to start by acknowledging that even though these factors alluded to above may have been relatively outside our country but there was space to manoeuvre. The failure of many unions to strategically respond to changes in the workplace which have been occasioned by the economic changes has further diminished their power. Few manage to appeal to younger workers or those who are self-employed or work part-time. Whilst unions themselves have failed to come up with new and innovative ways of organising workers in what is clearly a radically changed labour market, objectively, the vulnerability of many workers has simply made it that much more difficult to organise in the private sector. There are too many weaknesses in COSATU Affiliates which are not being confronted and addressed and these have accumulated into a platform which is used by our class enemies and detractors as defining a permanent state of COSATU. Some of these include the following: a) Internal Organisational and leadership turmoil have compromised and weakened the capacity of our unions to attract members. b) The usage of courts and the use of violence c) Non Implementation of COSATU Programmes, Policies and Resolutions d) Non Implementation of OD programmes As part of building our federation from the ground we have said that we will not wait until the day when it is declared that we are strong. We will build our strength on the ground. As we speak we are preparing towards the International day of action for decent work on the 7th October 2016 to respond to an offensive directed by capital against the working people all over the world and in within our own country in particular. Our demands will include the following: 1. Fight in defence of our Jobs and against retrenchments. 2. Fight to defend and protect our Collective Bargaining Agreements. 3. Fight for the implementation of the National Health Insurance [NHI]. 4. Demand the implementation of Free Education. 5. Fight for compliance with Occupational Health and Safety Standards in all workplaces. 6. 6. Demand the implementation of the Legislated National Minimum Wage. 7. Demand the total banning of the labour brokers. 8. Demand the scrapping of the e-tolling system including the expensive toll gates. 9. Fight for the scrapping of the Taxation Amendment Law. We have prepared to have marches all over the country and our demands will focus on calling for moratorium on retrenchments, call for an economic policy that will ensure the creation of decent jobs because we now know that the NDP in its current form cannot and can never create decent jobs, we will call for the total ban of labour brokers. We are calling on SACTWU to mobilise all workers to join these protected protest actions all over the country Comrades we wish that SACTWU must have a successful Congress __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 14172 (20160924) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- 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. 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