Ferial Haffajee
THE half-day strike organised for Monday by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) appears set to go ahead, despite talks planned for Saturday aimed at suturing controversy around the draft Basic Conditions of Employment Bill.
The government and labour are optimistic of a settlement at the talks, but business is still at odds with the Bill. Business would like to see concessions on the Bill’s call for issues such as a shorter working week, overtime pay, longer notice periods and three days family-responsibility leave.
However, the executive director of the National Economic Development and Labour Committee (Nedlac), Jayendra Naidoo, said good progress had been made in negotiations this week. “The main issues on the table have been covered,” he said.
Negotiators were tight-lipped about the details of gains won at previous talks. But Cosatu was upbeat, while the government was said to be mooting amendments to the Bill.
An already fraught week was intensified by business’s decision to apply for a court order declaring Cosatu’s planned strike unlawful. However, Cosatu appeared to have complied with the Labour Relations Act (LRA) and notified Nedlac within the time limits of its protest plans.
For Business South Africa (BSA), its court action was less about whether Cosatu had got the technical requirements of the Act right, and more about whether the union was sticking to the spirit of the Act.
BSA complained that negotiations on the Bill had not yet reached a deadlock and that it had only been a fortnight since it was tabled. “We are not trying to be vexatious, but the Act seeks to enshrine conflict resolution,” says BSA’s Adrian du Plessis. “Problems have to be settled around a table, not on the streets.”
And although this week’s negotiations at Nedlac were said to be cordial and mature, labour was angry at business’s action. “BSA has not moved an inch [in negotiations],” said Cosatu’s assistant general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi. He added that business had objected to socio-economic strikes since the negotiations around the LRA began and said court action was a way of continuing its protest.
Whether there had been a legal wrangle or not, there appears to have been no turning back from the strike action by Cosatu.
Monday’s protest is a shadow of the first campaign outlined by Cosatu, which aimed for a full-day strike.
Plans are already in place: buses have been hired, posters put up and pamphlets printed and delivered. In Mpumalanga, union officials have been taken off normal union work to devote themselves to organising the strike.
Cosatu’s regional office in Cape Town complained of some intimidation by employers, but marches starting at midday have been organised around the country in all major centres.
Some of Cosatu’s regional offices said they would be able to cancel Monday’s action, if negotiators settled the dispute this week, by using community radio stations and the SABC. Vavi, however, said: “It’s not possible to call off a strike in a day.”
A resourceful organiser in Cape Town had a solution: “We may even turn it into a victory celebration.”