Volume 9, No.5 - October 2000

United and Strong

COSATU's Information Technology Unit

Our homes, our jobs, our entire lives are increasingly pervaded by Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). From dotcoza advertisements on television to the recent launch of South Africa's e-commerce green paper, ICTs more and more influence the way we live, work and play.

Formed in 1996 at the conclusion of the Metric Project (see box), COSATU's Information Technology Unit has worked over the years to build capacity within the federation with regard to all aspects of ICTs. The work of the unit focuses on three main areas.

ICT Support. Led by Support Manager Thapelo "Shadow" Mahlong, and assisted by Support Officer Elias Mabiletsa, the unit provides for the IT requirements of COSATU's 65 staff, based at the head office in Braamfontein, at the parliamentary office in Cape Town, and in 8 regional offices around the country. Together they work to ensure that all COSATU staff are equipped with modern, reliable personal computers and provided with up-to-date computer software.

Local area networks link computers together in all offices to facilitate file sharing and the exchange of documents. Anti-virus software is used to protect the federation from the ravages of computer viruses such as Melissa and Navidad. E-mail and the Internet. The federation now makes extensive use of e-mail to communicate both internally and externally.

E-mail allows documents to be transmitted from office to office, even to a general secretary on a mission abroad, thus enabling collaborative work across the divides of time and distance. Meetings are now routinely arranged via e-mail, and agendas and minutes circulated. Staff even receive telephone messages by e-mail.

The federation uses group e-mail lists to facilitate communication with its staff, its regions and affiliates. Other lists, which union members and the public at large are welcome to join, circulate all press statements and a daily labour news digest to several thousand recipients.

COSATU also maintains a large and effective web site. Union officials, shop stewards or union members searching for a recent press statement, an official policy response to a government bill, a recent speech by COSATU President Willie Madisha, or a congress resolution on gender, need look no further than www.cosatu.org.za. The web site offers a range of additional features, such as daily labour news headlines from South Africa and worldwide, links to several hundred useful web sites both locally and worldwide, access to an online web forum. Naturally The Shopsteward is itself available online.

The site is a busy one, daily receiving several hundred visitors and processing well over a thousand page impressions. ICT Policy Intervention. The IT Unit is also active in the policy arena, representing the federation in a range of policy processes and structures.

These include: the recent ICT Foresight Project; a project to develop an IT industry strategy for South Africa; the process to formulate an e-commerce green paper. In all of these the unit attempts to ensure that the interests and views of workers are placed firmly on the agenda, that the role of the union is recognised, that jobs are protected and skills upgraded.

Presentations have also been made to a number of conferences and workshops, highlighting the union view on issues such as skills development within the sector, privatisation, e-commerce, call centres. Questioned on some of the challenges facing the unit, Head of IT Charley Lewis singled out the question of access.

"Access to computers, to e-mail and the internet for officials, shop stewards and ordinary members alike," he said, "is the key to building an effective federation in the information age. ICT access is essential to communicate with our structures, to promote internal democracy, to empower our members with information, knowledge and skills.

" He feels that affiliates, with some notable exceptions, could do more to ensure that their structures and members are able to make use of the new technologies. COSATU's "Online Rights for Shopstewards" campaign needs to be pursued more aggressively. But unions need to ensure that ICTs are not pursued as an end in themselves.

ICTs need to be closely aligned with the union's overall organising and service strategies. Unions must ensure that the new channels of communication are filled with appropriate and useful union content. Training remains an essential component in empowering structures to use ICTs - one that is all too often neglected.

Future plans include moving to more mobile forms of computing, such as wider use of laptops to enable busy union officials who are often on the move to function effectively and to stay in contact. A free web-based e-mail service for union members countrywide is being launched at www.union.org.za.

Subscriptions to The Shopsteward and a facility to purchase COSATU memorabilia will shortly be available on the COSATU web site. A number of online educational seminars on labour issues are planned for 2001. Box - Metric Project COSATU first began to venture into the field of information technology towards the end of the 1980s. With the assistance of the CGIL of Italy, the Metric Project was established to promote computerisation within the federation.

A number of PCs were bought and distributed, and software was legalised. Computer training was provided and support facilities instituted. To ensure financial self-sufficiency a membership and subscriptions system was developed. To build capacity within unions to make effective use of the new technologies, organisational development support was provided.

The first forays into e-mail and the internet were undertaken. Although mistakes were made, valuable lessons were also learned. And COSATU's current ICT capacity owes much to the generous co-operation and assistance of the CGIL. ...ends