The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says President Thabo Mbeki has snubbed it by holding special briefings on the Growth and Development Summit for its counterpart, the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa).
Mbeki holds regular briefings with labour under the auspices of the Presidential Working Group on Labour, so the call to Fedusa was extraordinary. Mbeki has been making overtures to Fedusa and last year gave the keynote address at its congress.
Cosatu attends the working group meetings but complained last year about not being invited to the briefing on the restructuring of parastatals.
The working group has not yet been briefed on the summit, but will be on April 29.
A Cosatu official said Fedusa general secretary Chez Milani told the Millennium Labour Council last weekend that Mbeki had been briefing him on the summit. Cosatu says Mbeki has not briefed it on the summit. The official saw this as part of a larger move to fragment labour and sideline Cosatu, which has been battling attempts by the African National Congress to force unions to stick to shop-floor issues. Cosatu has been under constant attack from the ANC since it organised two political strikes against the privatisation of basic services.
Milani told the Mail & Guardian he had had an “informal” telephonic talk with Mbeki on the summit. He refused to say who had made the call and accused Cosatu of being “paranoid”.
Cosatu representative Patrick Craven confirmed the federation had never been briefed by Mbeki on the summit.
ANC national representative Smuts Ngonyama said Cosatu was part of the alliance, which was driving the process, suggesting that it did not require a separate discussion. The alliance hit one of its rockiest patches last year.
Cosatu president Willie Madisha raised concerns in his address to the Cosatu central committee on Monday about the splintering of the labour movement and the rise of conservative unions in South Africa.
Why, he asked, was there a need for the Confederation of South African Workers Union (Consawu), formed last month, when the country already had three union federations?
Madisha said Cosatu was aware that Consawu, which he described as “bad news”, was being “bankrolled by the World Council of Labour, a conservative movement from the divided past of the international labour movement”.
Consawu claims to have no political affiliations and a membership of 400 000 from 40 affiliates.
Meanwhile, labour says Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel and Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin, who had been appointed ANC representatives on the alliance committees to discuss the summit, had failed to attend any of the meetings — a key reason for the summit’s delay.
Ngonyama said all the ministers were committed to the summit and Erwin had expressed this position at the last meeting of the ANC’s national executive committee. He said the alliance’s last meeting on the summit had not finished its work because the Cosatu and South African Communist Party secretaries had been absent.
At the central committee meeting on Monday, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said growing joblessness might force the federation into “bread-and-butter unionism”.
Cosatu also faced other threats. Under immediate threat of extinction were unions such as the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu) and the South African Agricultural Plantation and Allied Workers’ Union (Saapawu).
Vavi said chain stores were using more casual labour, which had affected Saccawu’s membership. Saapawu had been hurt because members have struggled to find work.
Nehawu was more than R2-million in the red and had been unable to pay its affiliation fees to Cosatu for almost a year. The union was also battling with the slow transformation of the public sector and a “sometimes hostile employer”, the ANC-led government.
But Nehawu’s problems had also been caused by financial mismanagement. The union and Saccawu had 300 000 members but had failed to pay more than R3-million of the affiliation fees they owed Cosatu. Saccawu had not paid its fees for more than a year. Cosatu was owed more than R4,8-million by six of its 19 affiliates.
Vavi also said that two of its biggest affiliates, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union, had lost 27 000 and 28 913 members respectively in the past three years.
Satawu had lost members as privatisation had led to retrenchments. The union also lost 3 000 members in an internal split. Numsa, like all manufacturing unions, had been affected by an increase in imports.
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