Both managements and unions will have to adapt to deal with the rising tide of worker militancy, writes Drew Forrest
IT somehow seemed out of place in the brave new South Africa — a white manager of Pick ‘n Pay’s Southgate store held hostage by black strikers in his office, a sharpened broomstick at his throat.
Three months after the country’s first all-in election, when business thought the bad old days were over, police threw a stun grenade to clear the supermarket’s barricaded doors, fired rubber bullets and set dogs on striking staff. Strikers armed with knobkerries and metal rods poured methylated spirits on merchandise and the shop floor and set it alight.
Across the Reef there was a similar pattern of near-hysteria: bakers threw plastic chairs in the ovens, a truck was set alight, customers and scabs were punched and harassed, babies were snatched from shopping trollies and thrown at their mothers. More than 1 000 strikers were arrested and many hurt.
The events boldly underscored the dilemma of the new government: the strikers are its constituency, and Cosatu’s Sam Shilowa demanded it repay its historic debt to the labour movement by backing them. But the ANC now has broader concerns, including the creation of a stable industrial climate attractive to investors.
Nelson Mandela incongruously descended from his presidential throne to meddle in the strike, recalling the interventionism of labour ministers in the 1950s when white workers and managements clashed on the mines.
Especially alarming was the speed with which the strike escalated into violence — strike conflict is nothing new in South Africa, but has typically been the product of protracted stalemates. More was clearly at stake than the R54 a month gap between the company’s pay offer and that demanded by the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu).
The strike triggered the unprecedented occupation of Pick ‘n Pay’s Bedfordview head office by a group calling themselves the Joint Affirmative Management Forum — not drivers or shelf-packers, but black managers on the wrong side of the battle-lines. Pick ‘n Pay said they saw this as entirely separate from the main strike action. They were dead wrong.
At issue is the continuing racial division of labour and control in South African industry. Apartheid may be history, but the crisis of the apartheid workplace is not.
Pick ‘n Pay was the first company to recognise Saccawu; it was one of the first to use arbitration; its parental rights agreement with the union was a labour milestone; its recent flexibility deal was praised by the union as the start of a social compact; it is an affirmative action employer; it has not suffered a national strike for six years. Yet this week, Saccawu trashed it as “white-dominated and highly paternalistic”, referring to “authoritarian and racist managerial attitudes” and the “stark” inequalities between managers’ and workers’ pay.
Whether Pick ‘n Pay really is an enlightened employer by South African standards is not the real issue. Black workers — particularly in commerce, where they tend to be young, urban and politically aware — want the toppling of the apartheid state translated to the shop floor. “There’s a wave of labour militancy at the moment, in response to a work environment marked by sharp antagonisms and racially defined decision- making and pay scales,” remarked South African Labour Bulletin editor Karl von Holdt. “Workers have seen political changes, now they want the workplace changed.”
Some, among them the Democratic Party, suggest militant unionism has no place in a developing South Africa. It is a suggestion pilloried as “outrageous” by labour lawyer John Brand. “I find it ironic that free- marketeers are effectively calling for controlled economies,” he said. “Collective bargaining and strikes are the essence of the free market.”
Indeed, Wits University law professor Martin Brassey believes the proper response to strike violence is the strengthening of unions, to enable them to discipline members. He suggests the extension of closed shop arrangements, whereby union members expelled for indiscipline would lose their jobs.
Cosatu’s problem union, the chronically fractious Saccawu has been further weakened by the exodus of key leaders to parliament. Its handling of the strike has been typically inept: it appears to have rebuffed management overtures for the negotiation of strike rules, leaving no framework for orderly picketing. Its worker protests, a form of brinkmanship, mushroomed uncontrollably into strike action a week before the strike was due to start.
Fuelling worker hysteria in the strike has undoubtedly been Pick ‘n Pay’s use of strike busters — strikers dread being fired, which in South Africa may mean permanent unemployment.
Brassey argues that strike law must change to give lawful strikers protection from dismissal, except where the enterprise is threatened. “The stakes in South African strikes are terribly high,” he says. “Tensions run high, the temptation to intimidate scabs is high. It’s a volatile cocktail that quickly goes over the top.”
And labour commentators are unanimous that pre-emptive interdicts against strikers — particularly those which bar them from coming within 500m of the work premises — are more likely to ratchet up strife than defuse it.
Pick ‘n Pay insists its interdicts were in response to violence, and that they were intended only to head off unlawful action.
“The courts are lending improper weight to management by granting interdicts which create a 500m no-go zone,” Brassey remarked. “It’s a massive invasion of civil liberties.”
A regime is clearly needed under which strikers can seek to persuade shoppers and strike busters not to cross picket lines without intimidating or attacking them. It is a fine line, but labour lawyer Halton Cheadle believes a statutory picketing code — such as Judge Richard Goldstone’s rules on marches and public protests — has a role to play.
For Von Holdt, the wave of post-electoral militancy poses challenges for the unions. If they merely ride it, rather than channelling it, they may be weakened and isolated, he warns. “They can’t just assume community support, as they did in the apartheid era, and they can’t rely on mass action by well-organised militants in large companies, to the detriment of millions of other working people.”
South Africa’s workplace polarisation can only be tackled, he believes, by redressing the balance of power. Buttressing this process is the proper role of the state, rather than intervention in individual strikes.
“There are underlying problems of conflict, low productivity and lack of worker commitment to the product, and these can only be resolved through a dramatic shift in the power relations between management and labour.
“It must go beyond the current superficial experiments in worker participation — quality circles, green areas and the like. What is needed is a new transparency and power-sharing in the workplace.”