Address by COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, the 8th National Congress SACCAWU- 28 August 2005

 

President Amos Mothapo

General Secretary Bones Skulu

Leaders of SACCAWU

International Guests

Comrades and friends

It is a privilege that I will cherish for as long as I live that I have been asked to return to address your Eighth National Congress. I was in the last congress in 2002. I regard this as a rare honour that I have been asked to address two congresses of the union in succession. The seventh congress in particular was historic. I am pleased that once more I have been asked to return. I must add that I was in your national bargaining conference in November 2004.

Congratulations on your 30th anniversary. This historic achievement means that the delegates gathered here should regard themselves extremely fortunate that they are given the opportunity to ensure that the congress adopts programmes to shape the future of the union for another thirty years. It is an opportunity that I know you will grab with both hands.

As you know, COSATU celebrates its twentieth anniversary throughout this year under the theme, "Taking the 2015 plan to new heights - celebrating twenty years of COSATU." This year is also the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Charter.

Inspired by all these historic events, all shaped by our common struggle to strengthen the working class and liberate ourselves from colonialism of a special type, I am happy to be part of this eight national congress. In contrast to the last congress when I could stay the entire time, I'm not going to stay for the entire duration. In July 2002 I could not afford to stay away for a single hour. This time around, the union has turned the corner, and you don't need me here.

I read the report of the secretariat to the congress. I have seen the effects of your efforts to implement the 2002 resolutions and to turn the situation around. I am delighted at the progress that has been achieved since that historic congress held in Bloemfontein three years ago.

In 2002 the secretariat report correctly captured the essence of the challenges. The secretariat said the union faced hostility from capital that manifested itself in job losses and casualisation of workers. It talked to financial instability, membership declines and inability to implement decisions of the structures.

That congress sought to address that situation through a series of measures including an Organisational Renew process, Operation Mawubuye Umbutho wethu which meant enforcement of the principle of worker control and internal democracy, and Operation Khokha that dealt with the challenge of employers withholding members' dues and the problems associated with hand collection of subscriptions.

Notwithstanding the destabilizing factor of the decision by the Financial Services Board to place the SACCAWU National Provident Fund under curatorship three years ago, today we all see progress. Militancy and confidence is clearly on the rise, as witnessed through the high profile strikes including the historic Shoprite Checkers strike and this year in Pick 'n Pay. These struggles returned members' confidence to the union and helped especially in organising casualised workers.

Membership increased from 108 000 to 129 000, which represents growth of almost 20%. The union has made steady progress in the computerization of membership - today more than 90 000 of your members are captured in the new system as part of that Operation Khokha. Strong administration systems are now up and running, and the union is connected to the internet and can use email.

Although we have not attained the historic demand for centralized bargaining in retail, there is no doubt that if we implement the resolutions of the November 2004 bargaining conference we would be half way to achieving this goal. In 2003 we saw the introduction of the Retail and Wholesale Sectoral Determination that sets a floor on pay in the sector.

In this context your theme "combat casualisation and poverty, consolidating working class power to advance the vision of the Freedom Charter" is appropriate. Yes, SACCAWU is on its way to recovery. Yes, SACCAWU is in the consolidation phase. It is ready to occupy its rightful place in the front rows of COSATU and broader working class struggles. Once more you are ready to lead the federation with your blend of dynamic unionism and militancy.

On behalf of the COSATU Central Executive Committee we congratulate each of the leaders, members, activists and officials of the union who contributed to these achievements. Our challenge is to record this progress with humility and rededication, not with complacency. We have made tremendous progress, but we are certainly not out of the woods.

Let me outline the remaining organisational challenges.

A central issue is that retail remains a relatively poorly organised sector, with only about one worker in five in the union. That of course also opens up huge opportunities for our recruitment campaign. Moreover, retail has seen the greatest growth in employment in the economy, especially in the past two years. We see it as a major area for growth in the future.

To improve organisation in retail, however, we have to deal with real obstacles.

To start with, half of all retail workers are in shops with less than 20 workers. In contrast, in the economy as a whole, 80% work in larger employers. We all know that it is harder and more costly to recruit and serve workers in these smaller employers. The union has to deal with more negotiations issues; shop stewards need more support, because they don't have enough to form the collective strength that is attained with bigger numbers. Transport and telephone costs, as well as staffing costs, go up when union is servicing smaller workplaces spread all over the country.

Furthermore, even the bigger shops have moved out to malls in the suburbs. That means our workers are in a hostile environment. The action of the police in arresting peaceful demonstrators in the suburbs during the Pick'n'Pay strike this year points to the problems. The Courts have not helped to enforce constitutionally guaranteed right to picket and demonstrate. At times we have been told to picket a hundred meters away. This in return shielded employers in these malls from public pressure.

Finally, many workers are facing casualisation, outsourcing and part-time work. Soon 90% of Shoprite Checkers staff will be casualised. We need new strategies to ensure that even part-time and casual workers are integrated strongly into our structures. We need to define how we can better work to meet their needs. Permanent workers must understand that as long as employers can rely on poorly paid casuals, none of our gains are safe. At the center of our strategy must be to demand implementation of the principle of "equal pay for work of equal value". We must make it less appetising for the bosses to take the casualisation and sub contracting route since at the end they must realise it makes no economic sense for them to do so, since everyone employed whether casual, sub contracted or permanent must enjoy the same benefits and same rate of pay.

At our recent Central Committee, we took a number of resolutions in an effort to address this problem. These resolutions centred on the need for greater training and support for shop stewards and organisers. We have to increase the number of organisers to serve workers in smaller employers, and make sure that our organisers have sufficient transport and communication allowances. We also have to step up legal support for shop stewards, who struggle to deal with complex and legalistic arbitration and conciliation processes.

This congress should explore the potential benefits of closer alliances with the relevant manufacturing unions - SACTWU, FAWU and NUMSA. We have long had strong agreement on the need to set up cartels and super-unions. How can we improve our organisation along value chains so as to increase workers' power and protect and create more jobs? The work between SACTWU and SACCAWU on the dispute with retailers, especially in the pickets in the build up to the national stayaway in June, showed how much we can benefit from closer collaboration. The resolution on mergers with SACTWU must be implemented without any further delays.

Comrades and friends,

At the political level I want to highlight the following challenges. As we indicated earlier, we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Charter. We have entered the second decade of our freedom. This means we must appraise progress made in achieving the goals of our National Democratic Revolution.

As always, we analyse the challenges of our society from a class perspective. Our revolution was never narrowly about replacing white rulers with black ones. It was never just about replacing white exploiters with black ones. Rather, it is about the fundamental transformation of our society to meet the demands of the Freedom Charter.

We have made tremendous progress to realize the principal demand that "The people shall govern." On that basis, we have begun to meet some of the other demands. Millions now have clean running water, electricity, social grants, access to better healthcare and education. That does not mean there are no shortcomings. Roll out could have been faster and more effective, as the recent outbreak of typhoid in Delmas demonstrates.

We have some political space to influence the transition. We have maintained our organisation whose power helps us defend the political space and gains. COSATU is still by far the strongest organisation in civil society. In addition, through the Alliance, despite its many weaknesses, we have impacted on some of the government policies and the state.

But we must also be honest. In the core area of the economy, benefits to the working class have been slow at best, and sometimes non-existent. Capital has proven not just to be unreliable as partners, but indeed predators ready to feed on the most vulnerable sectors of our society. The greatest suffering has affected women and youth, currently devastated by mass unemployment, casualisation and AIDS.

In economic terms capital has gained the most from the first ten years of democracy. This is manifest in the rising share of capital in the national income on the back of retrenchments, casualisation, subcontracting, the soaring wage gap and poverty. Workers' increased productivity has created the basis for bosses to reap enormous profits. In these circumstances, workers' share in the national income has declined steadily.

Bosses have selfishly rewarded themselves at the expense of the workers and the growth of the country. They have squandered profits by paying out generous dividends to shareholders; granting millions to top management; and exported capital rather than investing in South Africa.

In these circumstances, our Central Committee in August demanded that organised labour and the broader working class do more to ensure that the next decade of democracy belongs to workers and the poor. We shall use whatever leverage we have, including our mass power through the Jobs and Poverty Campaign and the control of our retirement funds, to discipline capital and achieve our economic and social aims.

Capital has not been placed under pressure in the first decade of democracy. As we march into the second decade of democracy we must place capital under pressure if we are to transform the brutal capitalism in South Africa. To that end we support the call for state-led development in which the state plays an active and interventionist role on the basis of a coherent industrial strategy. It is in this context that we hereby declare that we will do everything possible to ensure that our provincial strikes throughout October 2005 are a success. The Eastern and Western Cape provinces are fully ready and must lead us all on the 03 October 2005.

For years now we have been drawing the attention of the Congress movement to one of the most pressing challenges facing our revolution: that is, the temptation to embark in a mass race to get rich through whatever means possible and in the shortest period possible. The capitalist system by its nature breads corruption, predator politics, survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle, where the system itself thrives on feeding on the weakest.

All leaders and members of the movement have a responsibility to resist this temptation and lead by example. The Third Central Committee identified this as one of the biggest challenges we face.

Signs that corruption, consumerism and crass materialism are fast becoming the biggest challenge facing the movement are there for all to see. The idealism that inspired the demands of the Freedom Charter are in danger of being eroded and replaced by the new culture where it is all based on mentality that asks only, "what is in it for me alone," and not what we can gain for our people.

Some of the difficulties we face now can be traced to this tendency. Some want political power, not to realize all the demands of the Freedom Charter, but to pursue their own interests - to gain a share in white businesses or to increase their profits at the cost of consumers and workers. Some enter the succession debate, not from the standpoint of who can better achieve the goals of the RDP, but who can guarantee my business interests.

The working class must be alive to the fact that they may find themselves used as cannon fodder to meet this unending lust of businessmen to be richer than they are today.

The 2015 plan is a political response and strategy in part to help our NDR stay on line. Through this plan, COSATU's Eighth National Congress declared that consolidating working class power means building our trade unions, strengthening the Tripartite Alliance, building the ANC and SACP and building civil society formations - all not just for their sake but in order to create quality jobs.

Now is the time for workers to forcefully claim the ANC as their own. The time has now arrived when workers should not shy from declaring up front that the ANC must retain its bias towards the workers and the poor. Today, the ANC has become the most contested organisation in the world. Now is the time to state unequivocally that we want to make the ANC in our own image, whilst recognizing that elements of capital outside and within the ANC will struggle bitterly to steal our organisation for themselves.

One thing is for sure - workers must never abandon the ANC. We don't want a new UDF, we don't want a new left political party, nor a split in the alliance. Rather, we want the ANC to be maintained as an organisation primarily of the workers and the poor. We will never hand over this weapon, built up with our blood, sweat and tears, to the other side on a silver platter. We will never let the ANC be privatised by the rich. It is a working class formation and a leftwing liberation movement - it must remain ours.

Equally we must be vigilant against those who want to use the union movement to improve their chances of ascending to political office in the future. Those harbouring ambitions to become mayors, cabinet ministers or even Presidents must find another vehicle to advance their careers, not the trade union movement. Those who have these secret plans may try to hide their ambitions, but there is always one way to detect their true colours: they are inconsistent and completely unprincipled in dealing with working class demands. Today they are militant and tomorrow they are trying to get the working class to embrace propositions that are foreign to our traditions of democracy and solidarity. This does not however mean that trade unionists should not have political ambitions to represent the aspirations of the working class through institutions established through our struggles.

As we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of SACCAWU and twentieth anniversary of COSATU let us be rededicate ourselves to the task of ensuring that our revolution stays on course and delivers on its historic mission. Only a strong SACCAWU, COSATU, ANC, SACP and Alliance can help us achieve that.

Thank you very much

Amandla!