Glenda Daniels
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is not only planning a national strike next week against the government’s privatisation policies it is proposing alternatives.
Privatisation, Cosatu argues, is responsible for escalating job losses, a lack of service delivery, the rising cost of basic services and the further impoverishment of the poor.
In an attempt to force the government to engage with alternatives to privatisation, Cosatu’s two million members will embark on a national strike next week.
Cosatu’s research wing, the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (Naledi), held a seminar in Johannesburg this week where labour’s alternatives to privatisation and the impact of privatisation on service delivery and workers’ security were discussed.
The government is expecting to earn R18-billion through the privatisation of parastatals, but Cosatu says this will be used to reduce state debt and not for social spending.
A shocking number of jobs have been lost due to privatisation since 1995. At Transnet 36 609 jobs have been lost; 4 880 at Denel; 12 793 at Telkom; 2 641 at Eskom, and 134 153 in the public service.
Naledi’s Ebrahim Hassen sys: “The biggest weakness of the government at present is that it has no developmental path to eradicate poverty and create jobs.”
What the strikes signify, he says, is that that Cosatu will not be a junior partner in the tripartite alliance for much longer. The anti-privatisation strike will reestablish the union federation in politics, Hassen says.
Labour has lost its battle against the Eskom Conversion Bill, which, in effect, allows for competition and deregulation. Labour is proposing a national electricity distributor instead of six regional distribution companies, which will compete with each other and result in increased costs to the consumer.
Accountants PriceWaterhouse-Cooper says the distribution industry restructuring will result in increased tariffs of between 22% and 50% over the next 10 years. Naledi argues for the standardisation of Eskom and municipality tariffs, and asks unions to “consider supporting an increasing block tariff in electricity”.
In the public service privatisation is taking place with disastrous consequences. The most recent example of this was in the Northern Cape this week. The South African Municipal Workers’ Union says that it will not wait until August 29 and 30 to strike over privatisation, it will do so immediately after the Khara Hais (formerly Upington) municipality wrote off a debt of R150?000 owed to it by Enterprises, a company that bought the privatised Gordonia Resort late last year.
Yet, despite protests, the municipality announced it is about to privatise the traffic department.
The South African Communist Party has proposed increasing the capacity and resources that are lacking in the public sector and in parastatals as an alternative to privatisation, which it sees as a “violation of the basic human right to a decent life for the majority of people”.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) is proposing that oil and coal links be kept in state hands rather than be concessioned off, which is part of the government’s plan. Satawu wants the freight business to be made more profitable and for the state to concession off the luxury rail service.
In telecommunications, Cosatu has made submissions to the government that competition should be allowed only at the top end of the market. The price of local calls rose 35%, says the federation’s Neva Makgetla, and many connections are terminated every year because users cannot afford to pay. Over the past year, she says, Telkom provided 620?000 new connections while 220?000 lines were terminated.
Water privatisation has already taken place in many parts of South Africa with unfortunate consequences for example, the Dolphin Coast privatisation by Siza Water where prices went up by 15%.
Bilateral meetings last week between the African National Congress, Cosatu and the SACP failed to resolve the privatisation issue no agreement has been reached and the strike will proceed next week.