Wally Mbhele
Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana failed to address the tension between the government and public sector unions over the wage negotiations deadlock when he spoke at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) special congress on Thursday.
Mdladlana’s approach was a departure from the hardline position that has been taken by a number of Cabinet ministers over the issue.
He called for the establishment of what he called the “workplace renaissance”.
“As government we would like to see our laws bring equity and efficiency to workplaces. We want to see workplaces freed of discrimination, adversarial conflict and poor and unhealthy working conditions,” he said.
However, secretary general of the South African Communist Party Blade Nzimande warned that the current public sector dispute may end inconclusively. He said this poses an important question for Cosatu’s congress to debate.
“The challenge facing Cosatu public sector unions politically is how these unions support and strengthen our government without at the same time sacrificing the genuine and legitimate interest of their members. How do these unions advance their legitimate interests without undermining the democratic government?”
Nzimande said it would be wrong for public sector unions to advance the interests of their members as if they were an opposition to the government, just as it would be wrong to mechanically support each and every government decision for its own sake. This, he warned, would turn these unions into sweetheart unions.
“The resolution of these questions requires an open and frank debate by all of us in the alliance,” said Nzimande.
Much as the immediate issue is a wage dispute, Nzimande said there are broader political issues that will have to be dealt with.
But much more importantly, said Nzimande, the alliance must agree on a need for a new wage policy.
Much as the government is constrained by the budget, he said the same budget is an outcome of political choices that “we have made, including macroeconomic policy, which remains a subject of disagreement within the alliance”.
Nzimande said the government could never achieve the transformation of the state and the public sector without the unions and principally Cosatu unions.
“Any approach that is based on the fact that one without the other can advance transformation can only play into the hands of the enemies of transformation.”
He slated a Sunday newspaper editorial which called on the government to take tougher action against the unions. He said that the editorial was mischievously trying to get the government to act in a manner that would set a precedent and open a floodgate for bosses to smash the labour movement.
“Workers are not just a cost on the payroll, but are a chief asset for transformation.
“Our approach should also be that there is no contradiction between a living wage and service delivery, and that we cannot expect only workers to be the ones to make sacrifices for the sake of transformation in this country and everybody else to defend their interests to the hilt.”
Calling for the stengthening of the African National Congress and the alliance, the SACP secretary general told delegates at the conference that the working class will prove itself by not fleeing when encountering problems and misunderstandings but by struggling for the resolution of those problems.
He said it is the responsibility of the working class to ensure that it pulls its weight behind a strong ANC – rooted in the working class and the poor – rather than to seek to run away from this task.
To abandon the ANC would be to agree with those who try to represent the ANC as a conservative, elite organisation. “We should challenge all those who would like to turn the ANC into a home for anti- working-class sources, pursuing another capitalist agenda.”
Nzimande said whoever believes that any component of the alliance can advance the revolution on its own will play into the hands of those forces who are anxiously waiting for its dissolution.
“Such a break in the alliance will mean a split within all our organisations, not least the ANC itself.”
The special congress elected current South African Democratic Teachers Union president Willy Madisha as Cosatu’s new president.