Glenn Adler
Cosatus fifth national congress is its most important deliberation since the federation was founded in 1985. It is undertaking a comprehensive, quite critical review of its affairs while debating innovative strategies for achieving its long-standing goals in a new democracy facing the pressures of a global economy.
At the centre of the discussion is the 234- page report from the Commission on the Future of the Unions chaired by Cosatus second vice-president, Connie September.
This is a landmark document in the history of labour in South Africa, and its policy recommendations will have a wide impact on political and economic developments. Yet it has been generally ignored by the media. Where it has been examined, its political recommendations have been largely misunderstood and its economic thinking dismissed.
The reports treatment is indicative of a general shift in attitudes towards the labour movement. The unions that gathered in Durban in 1985 sought unity in the struggle to end apartheid and to advance a socialist transformation.
Twelve years later these goals seem, to many, a distant memory and the movement that espoused them an anachronism to be consigned to the past, along with PW Botha and the Berlin Wall. This is a serious mistake that misconstrues the complicated character of democratisation in this country and the central role labour must play if democracy is to flourish.
The September commission report is an unprecedented document. Never before has a movement of black workers survived the economic and political conjuncture in which it was born to be able to chart its fortunes in a new epoch.
From the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union in the 1920s to the South African Council of Trade Unions in the 1960s, the labour movements future was always decided for it by a repressive state, in collaboration with business. Each generation of unionists had to build on the remains of those movements that preceded them.
Todays unions avoided this fate. They emerged from the fight against apartheid with their organisations intact, with their membership growing and with the achievement of a more progressive industrial relations framework under which these advantages could be consolidated.
But economic liberalisation poses a new set of problems. Tariff reduction threatens the integrity of strongly unionised industries; the easing of exchange controls increases the mobility of capital and its power against less-mobile workers; the aggressive logic of competitiveness pushes capital to intensify production and lower labour costs inside firms while deregulating the labour market more generally; government deficit reduction constrains programmes of redistribution for redressing apartheid inequalities.
Cosatu faces two extra challenges. First, it must develop responses to these threats while in an alliance with a party in government responsible for many of these same economic policy changes. Recrafting its relationship with the ANC means defining a new etiquette of opposition and support.
Second, it must remake its own internal structures and practices originally devised for a smaller opposition movement that abstained from involvement in policy- making.
Responding to these challenges is akin to renovating ones motor vehicle while driving at speed in the fast lane of a motorway. It is not a job for the faint- hearted. Yet it is precisely this task that Cosatu undertook when it initiated the September commission in early 1996 to develop the vision, goals and strategies to take Cosatu into the next century.
The commission conducted a careful analysis of Cosatus current position, warts and all. It makes quite damning statements about organisational weaknesses (particularly in regard to national and regional structures); the failure of affirmative action; and the lack of clarity regarding fundamental policies and vision.
The report develops a comprehensive economic strategy derived from its commitment to a socialist society. It places redistribution at the centre of a programme for meeting the needs of all citizens and outlines policies in four interlinked areas: the public service; the state sector (state-owned enterprises); a social sector (co-operatives, community- based organisations); and the private sector. It envisions transforming the latter into a stakeholder sector to increase democratic control over decisions on investment and distribution.
Its political strategy prioritises the need to deepen and extend democracy, and recommends revitalising the tripartite alliance around a common commitment to democracy, development and overcoming poverty.
It makes extensive recommendations on changing the public sector, to democratise its old authoritarian institutions and to transform it into a developmental state capable of contributing to Cosatus ambitious economic programme.
Finally, the report recommends revitalising Cosatu itself to retain its internal democracy and dynamism under new conditions. This involves new commitments to organising new layers of workers traditionally outside the labour movement, and expanding and entrenching the participation of women in the federation.
The report also recommends building a more effective internal administration and management, while balancing these functions with the imperative of worker control. Finally, it advocates expanding the capacity of the federation by increasing the number of full-time officials, while bolstering the powers and resources of regional and local structures.
In some cases, these recommendations draw together policies that have been developing over a number of years. In others particularly in economic policy the commission makes bold departures.
Some of these recommendations will not sit easily with the rank-and-file, such as the acceptance that under certain conditions workers must engage with managements goals of productivity and competitiveness, and experiment with the provisions of the new Labour Relations Act expanding opportunities for worker participation in enterprise decision-making.
These recommendations will produce strong debate, and many affiliates have introduced resolutions critical of these ideas. But the commissions goal was to open, rather than close, discussion on these issues.
What is most impressive about the document is that it has emerged at all. Few labour movements in the world would have undertaken such a task and none would have done so under such internal and public scrutiny and challenge. In this respect it is noteworthy that the commission was composed exclusively of black working-class intellectuals who had ultimate control over the research and writing. This should put paid to reports that the labour movement is brain dead, owing to the departure of many (white) leaders to the government.
The commission testifies to the labour movements continuing intellectual vitality and its current office-bearers willingness to accept the responsibilities of leadership.
This is good news for Cosatu, and good news for democratisation. As the labour movement was a crucial actor in bringing about democracy, so, too, is it necessary for consolidating, deepening and extending democracy.
Many in business and the government will take issue with Cosatus economic policies that are derived from a socialist project. But in the absence of a programme of redistribution, it is difficult to see how current macro-economic policies will seriously redress apartheids legacy of inequality.
At some point one hopes sooner rather than later both business and the government will have to engage with Cosatus economic thinking, as outlined in the September commission report. Perhaps then it will get the attention it deserves.
— Glenn Adler is a research associate at the sociology of work unit at Wits University, and a senior researcher at the National Labour and Economic Development Institute