Volume 9, No 3 - September 2000

Crush Poverty! Create Quality Jobs!

EDITORIAL COMMENT

The challenge facing Congress

Unemployment has soared to catastrophic new heights, over 36%
Since 1997 one in ten workers in the formal sector have lost their jobs. And thousands more jobs are under threat because of plans to privatise state-owned enterprises and 'restructure' local government.
Poverty stalks huge areas of the country, especially the rural areas. Millions of our people are struggling to survive on handouts from their few working relatives. Statistics SA has confirmed that income per head has fallen as the rise in population outstrips economic growth.
Now some of the workers' hard-won rights are under threat from proposed changes in the labour laws. If they are imposed bosses will be able to force workers to work for longer hours and even less pay.

COSATU members are saying: 'Enough is enough!' Already, on our 10 May general strike, four million workers made it clear that they support the campaign to smash poverty and create quality jobs. Congress now has the challenge to plan the next stage of the struggle to make bosses and the government take the unions' demands seriously.

COSATU rejects the argument put forward in the media and by government ministers that they must be 'realistic' and that 'there is no alternative' to a free-market, neo-liberal, capitalist solution, as advocated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

This argument is wrong both in principle and in practice. Workers cannot accept a policy that forces their wages down to the lowest possible levels, in order to make their employers' businesses more 'competitive' on the world market. We will not tolerate investors staging 'strikes of capital' against those countries which fail to impose such policies, while investment flows into other countries with poverty wages and weak labour laws.

But it is also a policy which clearly has not worked. The poorest countries in the third world which have gone down this road are still the world's poorest countries. The profits made from the exploitation of their workers have not been ploughed back into development but into the pockets of the shareholders of the big multi-national corporations, based mainly in the wealthy first world.

In this issue...

Editorial Comment

The Challenge facing Congress

COSATU's seventh National Congress takes place at a critical time for the South African trade union movement.

Secretariat Report to Congress

Three years hard work for the workers

COSATU's Secretariat report to Congress.

Discussion Document

Advancing social transformation in the era of Globalisation

In preparation for the Congress the COSATU Central Executive Committee Lekgotla in May 2000 approved this document.

Resolutions

COSATU is proud that is controlled by the workers it represents.

Trade Unions and the Informal Sector

Congress will be presented with a challenge - how to organise workers outside the formal economy.

Job Creation Strategy

Labour input on the job crisis

"Unemployment constitutes a national crisis," declares the Congress document on Job Creation.

Accelerating Transformation

First term report of the parliamentary office

This document being presented to Congress describes how COSATU has tried to influence government policy since 1994.

Gender Policy

Make the unions home for women workers

"COSATU is committed to striving for a socialist society and freedom from all forms of oppression and exploitation.

Labour Law Amendments

Defend workers rights

The COSATU Executive Committee was stunned when they heard details of the amendments to labour laws proposed by the Minister of Labour.

Job Creation Trust

How your money is creating jobs

Obituary

Mkhize Bheki

Here in South Africa, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy has created neither growth, employment nor redistribution. On the contrary, more jobs have been lost since this strategy was adopted, on average over 100 000 jobs a year have disappeared. Growth and redevelopment has been at a snail's pace and South Africa remains the second most unequal nation on earth. The top ten households control 57% of the national income. Only Brazil is worse.

The fact that such policies are being implemented all over the world does not make them any more acceptable. We shall fight against them both here and with our fellow workers internationally.

The only 'realistic' alternative for workers - to put socialism back on the agenda, with policies that put the interests of the workers and the poor first, not those of business and the rich.

In South Africa that means going back to the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and implementing it vigorously to redress the inequalities and injustices inherited from the apartheid year which still haunt us today.

We demand of our partners in government that they start to take the Tripartite Alliance seriously. They must stop unilaterally imposing policies without even consulting the trade union wing of the alliance, COSATU. We are insisting that the Alliance use its structures to bring all three partners into the policy-making process.

COSATU, in these structures will be demanding:

an end to unilateral imposition of policies by government;
a return to the RDP principles;
the saving and creation of jobs to be the top priority;
a genuine redistribution of wealth not from one elite to another but from the rich minority to the poor majority.

This issue is a special pre-Congress edition. It contains some of the main points from documents being presented to Congress, which expand and explain the federation's achievements over the past three years and its plans for the next three.

They are:

The Secretariat Report of the last three years' activity
The Financial Report
First-term report of the Parliamentary Office: "Accelerating Transformation".
Discussion Document: "Social Transformation in the Era of Globalisation.
"Document on Job Creation: "Labour input on the jobs crisis.
"Document on "Trade Unions and the Informal Sector"
Document on "Gender Policy
"Resolutions from Affiliates

These documents together fill over 500 pages, so the Shopsteward cannot begin cover all the material contained in them. But we hope there will be enough ammunition in these pages to arm workers for the coming battle to defend their jobs, improve their living standards and safeguard their democratic rights.