Speech delivered by COSATU Deputy G.S. Bheki Ntsalintshali 19-07-07 |
COSATU Deputy General Secretary, Bheki Ntshalintshali's, address to the SACCAWU National Bargaining Conference
18 July 2007
Comrade President,
National Office Bearers of SACCAWU,
Leadership and Delegates from Provinces,
International Guests
Leadership of COSATU
Friends and ComradesIt is a great pleasure for me to address your National Bargaining Conference. On behalf of the COSATU leadership I hereby bring revolutionary greetings. Many people are looking forward to the outcomes of this important conference. They have no doubt that you will rise to the occasion.
This conference comes at an opportune time after the recent success of the public service strike, one of the largest strikes ever in the public sector, and just recently the engineering unions concluded one of the most important settlement agreements in the sector. At the same time there more pending disputes in other sectors which if not resolved could lead to other strike actions.
Not forgetting your own bitter battles notably the Karin beef strike which claimed the life of your member at the hands of the police. SACCAWU should be proud that despite this union bashing company it was victorious and this could not have happened if there was no solidarity among SACCAWU members. All these indicate that members' patience is running thin and militancy is gaining momentum, as workers demanding their share of this booming economy. Our role is to give leadership to this militancy, not to demobilise members.
It also comes on the back of a number of successful conferences held earlier this year. More recently the SACP National Congress was held during last week, preceded by the ANC Policy Conference held at the end of June and a successful civil society conference, spearheaded by COSATU on Jobs and Poverty in early June. These significant events debated and passed important resolutions on dealing with some of the most significant challenges facing workers and poor.
Comrades, while we continue to gauge and assess the outcomes of these conferences; it must be measured against those objectives set out in the Freedom Charter.
There are those who have forgotten about the important and basic declarations contained in the Freedom Charter; others seem to wish it away as if the struggles of our forefathers were insignificant and outdated. They continue to distort the significance of the Freedom Charter and provide their own interpretations of the declaration.
Let those who deny history continue to do so; they will live to regret it.
We cannot err from those important principles adopted in 1955. Our policy positions must fundamentally be rooted in the principles of the Freedom Charter. It must set a basic platform to measure our progress over the past 13 years of our democracy and if we have not failed to deliver on these basic tenets, and if indeed we did, we would have failed the millions of workers, unemployed and poor communities.
There is no alternative interpretation when the Freedom Charter declares:
" The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people"
OR
" The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole"
There is no other interpretation when the Freedom Charter says:" Rent and prices shall be lowered, food shall be plentiful and no-one shall go hungry"
The Freedom Charter is clear when it states:
" The state shall recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full unemployment benefits;
Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work;
ANDThere shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for all workers, and maternity leave on full pay for all working mothers;"
These are just but a few fundamental principles grounded in that historic but living document.
Thus comrades, as we start this important bargaining conference we must deliberate on the past 13 years of democracy and assess whether the policies developed have encapsulated the principles of the Charter.
We must ask: Has the past 13 years benefited workers and the poor? This can simply be answered with a resounding NO.
This conference should draw lessons from the past 13 years of democracy when developing a programme on your collective bargaining demands.
Comrades, collective bargaining is a core pillar of any union. While bargaining, is in essence the fundamental strength of trade unions, the type of union movement we have created is not just based on the bargaining gains we can achieve at the table.
Collective bargaining is about linking a number of critical pillars:
Firstly, we seek to use the unity and strength gained from greater numbers to improve the working conditions of members and to continuously improve their wages.
Secondly, we are seeking to use that strength to defend the jobs of our members and fight for social and economic policies that will defend members' and workers' pay and living standards; and
Thirdly, we seek to use this strength to represent workers' broad political interests. We know very well that it is pointless to fight for improved pay if that pay will be eroded by, for example, transport costs or higher health care.
As we measure our success in advancing these pillars, the unionism we have built goes beyond the narrow shop floor issue. We shall continue to resist attempts to confine our role to the workplace. We shall play all these roles because to us they are one struggle.
Our growth and strength is determined by our ability to use collective action to achieve these ends.
Comrades,
While we welcome the many opportunities that our democracy has ushered in, we must continue to be vigilant against the continued threats of job losses, increasing levels of casualisation, increasing poverty and growing inequality. Remember the saying that workers' victory is temporary - it needs to be guarded and protected at all times, as it will be under consistent attack with an aim of reversing any gains made.
Remember these threats are more real in your sector. Workers in retail, hospitality and tourism all face very similar challenges: increasing casualisation, high levels of job insecurity, low wages and poor working conditions. It is no wonder the largest growth of employment is in your sector and continues to remain so.
In September 2001, trade sector employed 2.5 million workers, compared to 3.1 million workers in September 2006, with one third of workers (1 million) employed in the informal part of the sector in small shops, informal traders and others we find in city centres and our communities.
The majority of those workers are young, women and are casualised!
This of course poses a difficult organising challenge, with increasing informalisation. This continues to threaten many of the gains we have made as workers over the years.
Workers not only face difficulties at the workplace but also continue to face challenges of poor and costly public transport. According to the Department of Transport, it is estimated that workers spend up to 30% of their monthly income on travelling to and from work. On a daily basis many ordinary workers are forced to risk unsafe and dangerous public transport.
Current housing development programmes continue to mushroom on the outskirts of the city centre or places of work - housing development continues along Apartheid spatial development lines.
Health care is characterised by costly private healthcare provision coupled with poor and inadequate public health care facilities, with many public health institutions not having sufficient staff, long patient queues and the absence of basic medication in some instances.
Today there is still no universal mandatory retirement fund provision for all workers, with many workers who retire after long and dedicated service to bosses having to survive on the meagre state owned old age pension of R870 a month.
All the above indicate that the living standards of the workers, especially in this sector, cannot be addressed by wage increases alone; we need more increases in the social wage, not only for the period of employment but beyond.
That is why the union should consider the attack on, and the placement under curatorship of, its provident fund as a class war, aiming at discrediting a union-controlled retirement fund. Core to the attack was the union decision to establish an administration company to look after this fund. You must remain steadfast on your commitment to rescue the fund from the curatorship.
We continue to reiterate that the first decade of democracy has not economically benefited workers and the poor. Economic growth we are told has not been so high in many years. Company profits have never been so high in decades. The rich are getting richer; managers are allocating themselves shares in unbelievable proportions. When other starts to say that capitalists are motive forces you would not blame them, as capitalists benefited from apartheid and today the are benefiting more than anyone under democracy.
While all this is happening, unemployment is worsening at 41%, inequalities grow, the apartheid gap between the rich and the poor widens. Our recent Jobs and Poverty Conference identified poverty, growing inequality and continued high unemployment as the major obstacle for workers and the poor:
§ South Africa still has one of the most unequal economies in the world. According to the World Development Indicators, it ranks as the 12th most inequitable country on earth. Amongst major middle-income economies, only Brazil is (slightly) worse.A UNDP study found that earnings inequality worsened by 15% in 1995 to 2000, then declined by only 0,7% in 2000-2004; with the richest 10% earning 45% of national income in contrast to poorest 60% only receiving about 20% of income
§ There is no significant shift in the number of those employed in the share of people below the international poverty line. Between 2002 and 2005, just over 50% of those employed earn less than $2 a day or R1500 per month in real terms. Or seen from another angle, just over 65% of those employed earn R2500 and less a month. These are many of the workers employed within the sectors you organise!
§ While government continues to praise job growth, analysis of this shows that these jobs are not decent and have mostly been created in vulnerable sectors such as retail, construction, agriculture and call centres. Comrades, we know these jobs are not sustainable and are characterised by low wages, poor working conditions and very little or no access to benefits. These workers cannot open accounts, for example, or improve their living standards and have very little job security.
§ Linked to this is the growing trend of increasing casualisation. Today, we find more and more workers being employed as casuals, workers being outsourced and employed through labour brokers.
For many of workers and poor, the economic growth that is so regularly talked about has not benefited our members or the vast army of unemployed; neither have many of the rural poor, in particular youth and women in our communities benefited from this growth.
In the wholesale and retail sector growth is typified with large-scale inequality between workers and senior management.
People at the top seem easily to lose track of the reality of low pay for most workers. The democratic system has effectively maintained the massive wage gaps left from apartheid. Rather than questioning the overpayment at the top, we have taken it over wholesale.
Coupled with this is a continued campaign by employers to undermine our labour laws through casualisation, outsourcing and the use of labour brokers. These forms of employment undermine job security and decent work.
Comrades,In our Jobs and Poverty Conference declaration, we will continue to campaign for:
" Government and the private sector to eliminate all forms of atypical employment including casualisation, informalisation and labour brokers."
While casualisation will continue to remain a major challenge, this must be encompassed as part of an overall campaign to achieve a number key demands in your sectors.
At all times we balance our role as a trade union, that must uncompromisingly defend members' interests, but at the same time a trade union that is also part of the revolutionary forces seeking overall change for the betterment of the lives of working class and our people as the whole.
Balancing this is not easy comrades, but if we wish to improve our ability to represent the working poor we must develop new strategies that not only pay lip service to our overall demands but that they becomes key objectives to improve the lives of all working people.
We must also look at the feasibility of holding costly annual bargaining conferences. Is this really necessary when our demands primarily remain the same? Our approach instead should be to look at developing a more long-term approach to collective bargaining demands and how we can achieve this in the next 5 years, for example.
In assessing our previous bargaining rounds we must continually challenge and refine our thinking on how we can achieve our key demands.
In more recent times, the mushrooming of malls all over the country has resulted in the prohibition of the right to strike at the premises of the companies where we are organised. The property clause in the constitution has been given precedence over workers' right to campaign for better wages and conditions of service. We must challenge this at all costs.
As we move ahead, these are key questions your bargaining conference must engage on. We cannot have business as usual, we cannot accept that the current membership is OK for our survival. Comrades, let me remind you this is the same membership we had in 1991, our members can no longer accept mediocre service and wage settlements. The only way for us to grow is to recruit and service our membership.
Your Bargaining Conference must engage on ensuring that we;
Firstly, develop a campaign on shifting towards the establishment of a National Bargaining Council or a Bargaining Forum. I know this may be a challenge, particularly with the union representivity being less than 15% of total workers employed in the sector. This conference must, as one of the commissions demands, conduct an introspection into why in some companies we are dismally failing to recruit new members. Is it because our shop stewards have no capacity to do so, or is it because the environment in which you operate is so difficult that those we intend to recruit are so fearful of victimisation by the employers? What we know is that in some companies the union has more than 80% unionisation while in others it is below 15%. This is a matter we can no longer postpone.
Secondly, this must be linked to developing a comprehensive campaign to organise permanent and casual workers. Comrades, we must think differently, since old approaches have not reaped any benefits. A Retail, Tourism and Hospitality Organising Strategy Workshop could be a good start, where all role players such as key shop stewards, organisers, other affiliates, COSATU and the Department of Labour are brought together to debate and develop an organising strategy. Comrades, this could include employing more organisers to target specific sectors, pooling greater resources to defend workers who are dismissed because of union membership or developing a closer working relationship with the Department of Labour to ensure better enforcement.
Thirdly, we must continue to demand a more strategic intervention in enforcing the Sectoral Determinations. The Minister of Labour cannot be a spectator or a neutral party. He must represent the interest of the working poor by ensuring direct interventions to comply. Comrades, this would include the active involvement of assisting workers to get to public hearings. I must stress comrades that the ECC is not a negotiating forum; for it to make sound recommendations to the Minister the union has to play a major role in the hearings so that the report to the ECC is a reflection of the voice of the workers.
Fourthly, we must continue to fight for the control of workers' retirement fund money from employers. The union must continue to take back control of workers money.
Fifthly, the CCMA should provide better institutional support to the retail sector. The retail sector is the highest referring sector to the CCMA. This clearly shows huge challenges for workers. One of the key objectives of the CCMA is to promote social justice and it should provide improved dispute prevention, early involvement in strike action and better support for vulnerable workers in the sector. The union should be vocal on the role of the CCMA and repeat the call that it can take a neutral stance where the power relations between the employee and employer are skewed in favour of the employer. The CCMA can and should make a ruling, but when challenged in court, it must not fail to defend its decision, putting the worker a limbo in relation to its ruling
Sixthly, we must intensify our campaign for non-trading public holidays. The complete disrespect for key and significant holidays such as Freedom Day and Workers Day, for example, will be lost to profits.
Lastly, we must make our campaign against ongoing casualisation, outsourcing and the use of labour brokers a reality. Comrades, I want to encourage a more extensive debate on organising all forms of casual workers and how our collective agreements can be extended to them. These workers should be treated no differently to permanent workers and so we can draw valuable lessons from other sectors.
SACCAWU should raise its concerns around labour law review, no matter how sensitive the issues are, as a way assessing our approach to the labour law review. Many shop stewards complaints about their time offs, the unemployment benefit withdrawals, family leave, and essential services. This would make the labour movement as whole to know what are the issues that workers want addressed.
Finally, this conference should spend time discussing worker solidarity within the union, among unions and beyond our borders, especially at this moment when many companies in this sector are now multinational, and find ways of building unions in the region. Without worker solidarity we will be weaker.
These and other specific bargaining strategies should be debated at this conference. We must debate in an honest and open manner that provides adequate introspection of our bargaining and organisational strength to achieve a better life for our members and workers generally.
I am confident that this conference will rise to the occasion and find ways of addressing the challenges, but would also go further by ensuring that resolutions adopted here are implemented fully.
Comrade President,
On behalf of the National Office Bearers and all our members I wish you a very successful bargaining conference.
Amandla!
Viva SACCAWU
Viva COSATU