Ferial Haffajee
Strike action in South Africa is on the increase – but it is fuelled less by party political tension and more by the shrinking economy.
“This is not Cosatu [the Congress of South African Trade Unions] sending warnings to the [African National Congress/South African Communist Party/Cosatu] alliance. But the strikes are political if you use a broader notion of politics,” says labour writer Karl von Holdt.
Rising inflation and high interest rates are taking their toll and workers faced with growing numbers of unemployed dependants are protecting their corner.
After two years of remarkable decline, strikes are again on the increase. They jumped by 20% in the first six months of 1998 – compared with same period last year – and could end the year even higher.
Part of the reason for seemingly ubiquitous strike activity is that it is slap in the middle of strike season. But disputes this year have been characterised by greater militance than previous years.
There has been arson at Eskom, clashes at petrol suppliers, teacher strikes and rhetoric less conciliatory than that of the honeymoon years following the election in 1994.
The conflicts come in the slipstream of tension earlier this year between Cosatu and the ANC over economic policy.
“Strikes are being fuelled by anger over living and working conditions. There is an accumulated exasperation and impatience among workers,” says Professor Tom Lodge of the University of the Witwatersrand.
“Workers are seen as an elite simply because they have a job. In fact, they are bearing the brunt of growing unemployment,” says Deanne Collins, the editor of the SA Labour Bulletin. Every miner supports about 10 dependants in rural areas, although urban workers have fewer to feed.
The economy is still shedding jobs. In the vital metal and engineering sector 5 000 jobs have been cut this year, miners are still being retrenched and tariff cuts in other industries raise the spectre of further losses.
In this atmosphere, pay demands in more secure sectors of the economy are likely to increase and wage disputes in turn trigger four in five strikes.
In another development this week, Cosatu’s two biggest affiliates – metalworkers and miners – gave notice of their intention to go on solidarity strikes.
It is the first time since the passage of the Labour Relations Act that workers will exercise their right to strike in sympathy with colleagues in related sectors.
It is unlikely that strike statistics will ever match the figures notched up in the 1980s, when worker militance was fired up by political struggles.
Institutions like the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration as well as laws like the Labour Relations Act have enshrined conflict resolution and labour rights.
A trend toward centralised bargaining forums could also cut strike activity in the medium term. But posturing at new centralised forums in the security and chemical industries this year led to strike action.
“Industrial action will focus on industrial issues,” says Von Holdt, adding that workers are likely to begin pushing against racial gaps in wages and jobs where managers and supervisors are still largely white.