The South African Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) has threatened mass action to protest against the government’s plan to restructure ports operations, saying the move will result in massive job losses.
The government wants to concession existing South African ports operations to the private sector as a means of promoting competition.
In the past few months the authorities have indicated that they intend granting long-term management contracts for the private sector to run port terminals, saying this will help ports deal with large infrastructure backlogs, increase productivity, reduce tariffs and create jobs.
Randall Howard, Satawu’s general secretary, said the move would compromise local companies and result in a high level of unemployment.
“If the port operations market is opened up through concessioning, it is highly unlikely that local capital will be in a position to compete with the cartels. The port operations sector is likely to fail in every key performance area spelt out by the Department of Trade and Industry in its industrial strategy for South Africa, such as black economic empowerment, small business development, employment and geographical spread.
“What advantage is there in further contributing to the concentration of capital in the ports industry worldwide? What possible opportunities are there for local capital, especially black capital in this environment?” asked Howard.
“The ports sector in South Africa is already fairly logically segmented according to products, and there already exists over-capacity, except in container terminals.
“There appears to be little reason therefore to introduce new terminals in the interest of competition. There also appears to be little scope for dividing operations within terminals. Even with privatisation there is likely to be little scope for expanded competition between terminals in ports,” said Howard.
He warned that the restructuring plans would only worsen the level of unemployment in South Africa.
“Given our unemployment rate, job losses and a possible worsening of working conditions are highly sensitive issues and cannot simply be taken as a given. Taking the narrow view of productivity and putting massive numbers of port workers out of work may indeed add costs to the state and to the economy as a whole, thus detracting from growth.”
Satawu has accused the government of failing to consult labour on the proposed privatisation of the ports.
Howard said the government had failed to adhere to the National Framework Agreement, which states that all stakeholders should be full participants in the policy formulating process.
He said since the Cabinet had adopted the policy last year not a single meeting of substance had been held with Satawu over the policy before it was adopted.
An undertaking by the government to Parliament for a second round of portfolio committee hearings had also not been met. The matter was referred to the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) by Satawu in late 2002. But the government has been unavailable for six successive meetings scheduled by Nedlac.
Howard said that from next week Satawu would embark on picketing in certain provinces.