|
Campaigning for a better life for allThis edition of the Shopsteward covers the campaigns on a range of
issues that the federation is taking between now and the end of the
year. Indeed it is a campaign to ensure that the transitional period does not just address the demands of the new elite in so-called 'black economic empowerment' ventures or, worst of all, the big centres of capital that thrived on apartheid. NACTU has decided to throw its weight behind our campaign and will participate in all the activities. The anti-privatisation campaign is against job losses. It aims to ensure that our government has the capacity to pursue job creation and the elimination of poverty and to ensure universal access to basic services, addressing inherited inequalities and building a better life for all. It is not a separate campaign. Rather, it is part of the ongoing campaign that we launched three years ago that saw workers involved in massive struggle that culminated in the 10 May national general strike in which four million people took part. In October, we turn to the other area of our strength - ensuring service to members. The July 2001 Executive Committee dubbed October 2001 "the Month of the Member", inspired by the NUM slogan for 2001. Throughout the month we shall be reconnecting and solidifying our links with members and, under the old COSATU union's slogan "organise or starve," launching an intense and focused campaign to organise new members into the COSATU unions. Any worker not in a COSATU union is unorganised. As part of our preparations for the November Central Committee we shall encourage all affiliates to hold general meetings, organise workers forums, holding strategic meetings and other constitutional structures. In all these meetings we shall be discussing four related issues that will form part of the Central Committee agenda. These are, how best we can service our members, the structures we need in the 21st century, the current political conjuncture and management and staff developmental issues. This Central Committee will be preceded by the extended Central Executive Committee in September that will also discuss and approve papers currently being prepared covering these topics. The 1999 recruitment campaign showed that many of our unions had not prepared for a proper campaign. No resources were made available; no time off was arranged for shop stewards; union work was not adjusted to open space for organisers to work on the campaign; access was not arranged for targeted workplaces, no union media was produced, etc This time around, the regions and affiliates of COSATU have had to ensure that all these weaknesses are addressed so that our campaign can indeed help us recruit the thousands of unorganised workers into our ranks. We must break new ground, with the focus on the most vulnerable workers, guided by the policy on organising informal sector workers adopted at the 7th National Congress. |
In this issue How does the alliance benefit workers? Stop blacklisting Mobilise for the national strike against privatisation. Our experience with privatisation COSATU demands Frequently asked questions about privatisation SANCO joins protest action Unions score victories in this year's wage disgutes COSATU Exco SACP - COSATU Bilateral Madiba tells COSATU - declare war on AIDS The organisational Review and the central Committee COSATU Recruitment Campaigns Unions score victories in this year's wage disputes Women must unite to face new challenges What is the National Productivity Institute Workers of the World Unite Where - COSATU stands - Resolution from the 7th National Congress Transformation of SAPS must move faster Happy 80th birthday COSATU salutes SACP Regulate the credit bereaus, says SACP Make our workplaces safe and healthy South Africans for a Basic Income Grant Making the earth fit to live on Swazi workers appeal to COSATU Meeting the challenges of the new Millenium Trade union declare global day of action for 4th WTO Ministeral Conference on 9th November Militant Russian union leader appeals for action against new labour code. |
||
 In
October too we shall remember Kinross mine disaster and thousands of workers
killed in countless workplace accidents and others maimed by the accidents
and left with permanent injuries.
The Health and Safety awareness campaign must be used as a drive to educate members about their rights, in particular the right they now have to refuse to do dangerous work. Secondly it must help us to elect health and safety stewards in every workplace and get the union to give the health and safety campaign a central focus. Madiba, our first democratically elected president and the icon of the South African people, addressed our Executive Committee and made a passionate plea that the trade union movement and its leaders be seen as the champions of the anti HIV/AIDS campaign. We promised him that we shall live up to his expectation, not just because of the deep respect we have for him, but because the scourge and epidemic of HIV/AIDS require strong leadership and dedication by all. The activities we plan in the run-up to the International Day on HIV/AIDS on 1 December must help us to educate and raise awareness and to ensure that those who have been infected have access to cheap drugs. The world and the United Nations have honoured the exemplary manner in which we struggled and defeated institutionalised racism - the apartheid system - and the strides we have made to construct a non-racial, non sexist and democratic system by deciding to hold the World Conference against Racism and Xenophobia here in South Africa. In support of this, as well as to popularise the demands we are making to those who benefited from the era of colonialism and slavery, the Alliance (ANC, SACP, COSATU and SANCO) are organising a huge march on 1 September 2001 in Durban. We hope that SANGOCO would be part of this march. A series of activities have been organised by various formations. We hope that all the public activities will happen in an orderly manner, instead of the chaotic fashion seen in some of the protest actions taking place elsewhere in the world. Anarchy drowns the demonstrators' demands and does not help the progressive forces to win public support or sympathy to the issues. We hope that those elements will be stopped in their tracks. Obviously we welcome support from all people, irrespective of their race or origin. It would however be a great pity, barely seven years after our liberation, if whites from Europe and America, instead of the immediate victims of racism, dominate a march against racism in South Africa. For the first time, in the history of the trade union movement, all workers across the globe will join an International Day of Action on 9 November 2001. This day of action has been organised to coincide with the World Trade Organisation's Ministerial meeting, in Qatar. Our demands and the reasons for the protest action are that we want governments to address the call for the globalisation of workers' rights through the trade systems. We shall be demanding that the WTO deal with the huge trade deficit that exist between the industrialised countries and their poor and developing counterparts in the South. We shall be demanding easy access to the markets of the industrialized countries for all products produced by the developing countries. Again this campaign is linked to our campaign for job creation, against poverty and for development. The sixteen days of activism against women abuse runs between the 25 November and 10 December. I call on all our cadres to make this year's activism befit the scale of the problem we face. Too many women remain sitting ducks of abuse by their husbands and spouses. Their partners are the cause a third of women's deaths. Linked to this is the question of children abuse. Both of these issues have an embryonic link to the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. |
|||
