Volume 10, No.5 - August 2001

Privatisation

International

Swazi workers appeal to COSATU
WTO ministerial conference
IMeeting the challenges
Militant Russian union

On 25 July Jan Sithole, General Secretary of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) addressed COSATU's Executive Committee on the current situation in his country. This is an edited version of his speech.

Swaziland remains the only undemocratic country in the SADC Region and continues to systematically and blatantly frustrate any voice of dissent to the current autocratic system of governance. The country has been ruled by decree since the King's Proclamation of 1973, which usurped the 1968 Independence Constitution, which guaranteed the Bill of Rights.

All this is happening irrespective of the fact that Swaziland is a member of all international organisations and has signed their human rights related covenants, including the Human Rights Declaration, the Organisation of African Unity Charter, the Windhoek Declaration, the ILO Conventions and many more.

Yet still Swaziland remains an island of tyranny, fiefdom and a feudal system in a sea of democracies, diametrically opposite to the fabricated slogan that prevailed in the past, that "Swaziland is an island of peace in a sea of turmoil".

The violations, which are vigorously and systematically inflicted with gross impunity on all who utter a word of dissent to the status quo, are:

The government has charged simultaneously the leadership of the Nurses Association, Teachers Association and the Association of Civil Servants.
The charge is that they compromised their political impartiality by associating themselves with the Mpumalanga Declaration and thus violated government standing orders by being party to the Declaration which advocates multi party democracy and demands democratic changes and good governance in the country.

Trade Union meetings are now unbanned but can only be held under the following conditions:-

All the above is contrary to the Labour Relations Act of 2000, which allows federations and organisations to freely deliberate and take resolutions on any issue that arise from authority, public policy and public administration, which is everything.
When confronted with this Act, the police will say that this law is in conflict with the Supreme Law of the State, the 1973 Decree and thus remains null and void. They also use the 1963 Public Order Act which gives them arbitrary powers to use any means including brute force to effect dispersal.

International Labour Organisation
On 13 of June, the International Labour Organisation's Committee on the Application of Standards, where the government was appearing for the sixth consecutive year since 1996, suggested sending a high level political mission to investigate why it was difficult for Swaziland to comply to the Conventions in practice and also to assist in the establishment of a genuine social dialogue between stakeholders.
Over and above these conclusions, the SFTU has freshly reported the government on violations of:
i) Convention 29 on Forced Labour;
ii) Convention 87 of Freedom of Association, including gross violation of human and trade union rights and non-compliance in practice with the dictates of the convention;
iii) The problems imposed by the perpetual existence of State of Emergency Decree.

Decree No. 2 of 2001
As if the draconian Decree of 1973 was not enough, on 22 June 2001 the King signed Decree No. 2 of 2001. No other reason was stated than saying it was in preparation for the Constitution Report, which the King will be presenting before the nation in the near future. (This report is a product of the Royalist hand-picked Constitutional Review Commission, established in 1996).
The Decree exacerbates the human rights deficiency syndrome that existed since 1973 in that:
i) It gives arbitrary powers to the Minister for Public Service and Information to proscribe any newspaper, without stating any reasons and cannot be challenged in any court of law.
ii) It criminalises impersonation of the King and packs in a fine of E50.000 or 10 years or both
iii) The courts of law cannot deal with any issue that the Attorney General certifies before the King as:

The right of expression and free formation is completely undermined, much against the Windhoek Declaration that government ratified.
These Decrees were passed under the nose of Parliament in session. The King passes these Decrees when freedom of expression, assembly and association are crucial to the Constitution Report delivery. This brings a lot of suspicion and speculation on the content of the report to the presented.

Reaction by workers and other social forces

In response, the King claims he signed in haste and some members of the Swazi National Council and Cabinet deny knowledge of the decree.
We demand the total eradication and removal of all decrees, including the founding 1973 Decree, and we request that the international community should not be hoodwinked by the removal or amendment of Decree No. 2 of 2001 and begin to relax pressure and focus on Swaziland.
Decree No. 2 of 2001, and many others that may come in future, are products of the founding 1973 draconian decree. Unless the 1973 Decree is removed, dictatorship still remains and human rights and civil liberties are non-existent

Appeal to COSATU
We appeal for continued support in our fight for democracy and human rights, by sanctioning Swaziland, including:

Pay-back time
We believe it is pay back time now. When South African was struggling for independence, most of the citizens of this region, particularly the rank and file, associated themselves positively with that struggle. The acquisition of independence became an asset and a gain for the region. The ANC-led South African government cannot just stand back whilst the draconian regime continues to undermine good governance and the human dignity of its citizens.

We would appreciate if ANC and ANC-led Government would:

COSATU presented a document to the International Congress of Free Trade Unions' Millennium Review Progress Group meeting in Genoa, Italy, on 18-19 July 2001. This is a summary of its main points.

The world's trade union movement represents the most formidable force within civil society. It makes a magnificent contribution to the struggle to free humankind from poverty, disease and ignorance and to build a world where all workers will walk with pride, claiming our collective ownership of the world's resources.

But, as we move into the 21st century the world is divided into a new form of apartheid. Just as in the old South Africa, a minority enjoy obscene wealth, directly as a result of the abject poverty and oppression of the vast majority of the socially and economically disenfranchised. Particularly in the South, colonialism and the cold war has left most countries devastated by poverty.

The trade unions are the main force fighting to change this. That is why we always attract attacks and insults from the powerful forces that fear our power to change society.

We are leading the opposition to the powerful bloc of multinational companies, international financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF and WTO, and the governments of industrialised countries which seek to consolidate their hegemony over the world political and economic system at the expense of workers, the weak and the poor. They impose stringent austerity policies which workers pay for through unemployment, cuts in social protection and lower wages.

The ICFTU must take a lead against these forces of neo-liberalism which attack gains made by the unions over many decades. Within their own countries, and throughout the world, unions must become a fighting force on behalf of all those marginalised and impoverished by globalisation and neo-liberalism.

We also need to confront the manoeuvres of multinational companies which want to replace formal, secure and well-paid jobs with temporary, casual work with no security or social protection.

But to do this we have to unite the workers' movement. Only unity can protect us from the onslaught of neo-liberalism. The ICFTU must consciously work to consolidate and eliminate divisions at global and continental levels. And the unions should also form strategic and tactical alliances with progressive political parties and NGOs who identify with our vision and platform.

To make sure that these ideas are not merely the subject of conference speeches, the Millennium Progress Review Group needs to review the ICFTU's rules, procedures and structures to establish a stronger, more participatory democracy within the ICFTU, where debate and disagreement is not merely tolerated but promoted.

The foundation of unions' power must be their independence and democracy. Our detractors must never be proved right when they accuse us of representing an elite. We must retain the mass character of the unions, not through slogans but with practical programmes in which the members are fully involved. Unions are not established for workers but by workers themselves to defend and advance their rights. Trade unions that do not maximise workers' participation are bound to face extinction.

We are opposed to a trend in some unions to 'manage' democracy for workers, on the grounds that this is 'practical' or 'efficient'. This can bureaucratise the trade union movement and undermine the principle of worker control. Our experience in South Africa shows that what our members have not won in the streets we will not win at the boardroom table.

The ICFTU must focus too on gender. For too long, unions have had slogans expressing commitment to gender equality and the elimination of women's oppression but have taken no practical steps to achieve it. The Review Group must explore concrete strategies to increase women's representation at all levels of the ICFTU.

The Millennium Review must also tackle the special problem of strengthening and ordinary people and progressive movements, the unions can help to drive the African rainaisance.

This task should not be limited unions from Africa and the South but become the duty of all trade unionists.

The ICFTU has the pontetial to lead the workers in a succesful fight to create a better world, where poverty, hunger, ignorance and hopelessness are life for all.

The full document is available on COSATU website www.cosatu.org.za

Trade Unions declare Global Day of Action for 4th WTO Ministerial Conference on 9 November

Trade union leaders from around the world, at a special session of the ICFTU Steering Committee, held in conjunction with the G8 Summit in Genoa, decided to mark the launch of the next Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Doha, Qatar, by staging a Global Unions' Day of Action by the workplaces of the world. The Day of Action will take place on November 9 2001, the opening day of the WTO Conference.

"The purpose of the Day of Action is to mark the unwillingness of trade unions to accept the negative effects that globalisation is imposing on workers around the world, and draw attention to the serious deficiencies in the world trading system at the present time," commented Bill Jordan, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
At the WTO Conference, Global Unions will be calling for:

The Day of Action will be co-ordinated at global level and delivered at a local level, taking the form of diverse actions to be determined in individual countries ranging from stoppages and demonstrations to workplace discussions, public meetings and high-profile media activities.
"We represent hundreds of millions of people who have stopped believing that trade liberalisation can bring higher living standards and more employment. While globalisation has created unprecedented wealth and resources, there is universal agreement that it is widening inequality world-wide, evidenced by growing and appalling poverty in all parts of the world", said Bill Jordan.

The ICFTU represents more than 156 million workers in 221 affiliated organisations in 148 countries and territories. The ICFTU is also a member of Global Unions: http://www.global-unions.org

For more information, please contact the ICFTU Press Department on +32 2 224 0232 or +32 476 62 10 18.

Unions meet Italian PM about HIV/AIDS crisis

During the ICFTU meeting in Genoa, a large trade union delegation, including COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, held a meeting on July 19 with the host of the Genoa Summit, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, organised by the Italian trade union movement and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD

The General Secretary spoke on the HIV/AIDS crisis. He pointed out that no war has killed as many people as the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sub Sahara Africa and that projections and statistics tell us that HIV/AIDS is the single most potent threat to humanity.

"Yet," he said, "resources released by governments and capital from affected countries as well as from world leaders is not matching the scale of the pandemic. We are aware and do appreciate discussions to establish a global fund to fight the scourge. We await with greatest anticipation for the details and hope that we shall not be disappointed."

He recognised the link between HIV/AIDS and poverty, broader health challenges and underdevelopment: "The response of the world must be comprehensive and include the need to provide comprehensive treatment to those affected, with the affordability of drugs at the centre of that. Education and awareness, elimination of poverty, dealing with the challenge of underdevelopment, cancelling of the odious debt, etc. all have to be part of the total strategy."
He concluded: "This is the message those dying of AIDS are expecting from the industrialised countries."


An Appeal to Fellow Unionists

The Russian government has begun in earnest to implement changes to its labour legislation - changes that in essence will amount to doing away with the rights of workers, including the right to free association.

The current Russian Labour Code and the laws associated with it are unusually progressive. In particular, they stipulate that without the agreement of the trade unions, employers do not have the right to lay off workers for the purpose of cutting workforce numbers, or for reasons related to ill health or inadequate skills.

Nor, without union consent, do employers have the right to change the manner of payment for work, introduce overtime, set work norms, determine shift schedules, decide the sequence of vacations, and so forth.

Setting up a trade union is currently simple, with only three people required. As a result, workers in sectors where new unions have been established have managed to achieve substantial improvements in their conditions of labour on the basis of the existing legislation.

Collective agreements in Russia contain such norms as prohibitions on the sacking of workers without trade union agreement; indexation of wages to keep pace with price rises; and the right of labour collectives to monitor how funds are spent by enterprise managements.

In March 2001, on the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a commission was established in the State Duma to work on an agreed draft for a Russian Labour Code. The members of the commission included government officials, employers, and a so-called trade union component consisting of Mikhail Shmakov of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR - the former Soviet trade unions), and Yefremenko-Kravchenko of the All-Russian Confederation of Labour VKT).

So far, the members of the commission have reached agreement on several sections of the new code. Provisions include:

The so-called trade union representatives, from the FNPR and VKT, agreed to these provisions. The new Labour Code is likely to be adopted as early as June this year. In anticipation of this, the functioning trade unions of Russia will hold a conference on June 6. This gathering is expected to pass a resolution calling for a national strike and other solidarity actions.

Organisations prepared to take part in the conference include the "Zashchita" Federation of Workers Trade Unions; the SOTSPROF Trade Union Federation (with nine branches); unions of flight crews, air traffic controllers, rail workers, miners and dockers; and a number of other bodies.

To counteract the anti-labour policies of the government and the scab policies of the FNPR and VKT leaderships, it is proposed to put forward a packet of demands aimed at extending the rights of workers and their associations. These demands include cutting the working week to 35 hours, raising real wages to the subsistence minimum (that is, to US$40 instead of $4 as at present), indexing wages to keep pace with price rises, and other measures.

At a time when Russia's 60 million hired workers are in danger of losing their rights, I appeal to you on behalf of my country's trade unions to:

With comradely greetings,
Oleg Shein
Co-President of the "Zashchita" Federation of Workers Trade Unions of Russia
Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation