In a move aimed at boosting its stagnating membership, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will shortly launch a new trade union for workers in the burgeoning informal economy.
The decision was taken at a national workshop in February attended by Cosatu affiliates, former members of the defunct Self-Employed Women’s Union (Sewu), Sikhula Sonke — a new trade union representing seasonal agricultural workers in the Western Cape — and StreetNet — a non-governmental organisation for street vendors.
Mncedisi Nontsele, Cosatu’s national organiser, said the federation’s seventh national congress decided to organise the informal economy, but that this was put on ice because of the existence of Sewu, which Cosatu did not want to undermine.
In August last year, Sewu was liquidated following a financially crippling lawsuit. ”After this, a discussion ensued about how to reinstate the 2000 resolution,” said Nontsele.
Pat Horn, the coordinator of StreetNet, who attended the February workshop, wrote in the NGO’s latest newsletter: ”After a thorough debate [at the workshop] it was agreed to initiate a project towards the establishment of a new union for [Cosatu] of … self-employed workers who do not fall under the scope of any existing affiliates.”
It was decided that the new union would represent street vendors and home-based industries. Informal workers in other sectors of the economy, including the taxi industry, construction and manufacturing, will be absorbed into existing Cosatu affiliates such as the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union. Nontsele said this would ease ”tensions as a result of cross-recruitment”.
There are thought to be 2,3-million workers in the informal economy. Caroline Skinner from the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal estimates that they contribute between 8% and 12% to South Africa’s gross domestic product. The informal economy is marked by extensive casual labour and labour broking, meaning that many workers lack basic labour rights and cannot afford formal union membership.
This, combined with a steady decline in formal employment, has pegged Cosatu’s membership at about 1,7-million over the past five years. According to StatsSA’s latest labour force survey, workers with permanent contracts dropped by 4% between 2001 and 2003. Rudi Dicks, Cosatu’s labour market policy coordinator, said it was imperative that Cosatu tap into the informal sector to achieve its goal of four million members.
The February workshop agreed that members of the new union will pay membership dues, to be collected by stop or debit order, and that, where necessary, members will be helped to open savings accounts. However, the new union will be supported financially by the foreign donors that sustained Sewu, Dicks said.
The campaigns planned by the new union include the right to trade, to banking sevices and credit, and to government services and less stringent municipal by-laws.
But Cosatu is likely to run into resistance in its attempt to organise informal traders. Edmund Elias, head of the South African National Traders Association, which represents several thousand hawkers in Johannesburg, objected: ”We’re business people, not employees.”
Johannesburg’s informal traders often face harsh treatment from the Metropolitan Police Department, which is vigorously implementing by-laws prohibiting traders in 27 precincts as part of the council’s vision of a ”world-class city”.
Police have been accused of regularly confiscating goods without the legally required, 48-hour warning.
Elias said street vendors wanted to fight their battles directly with the Metropolitan Trading Company, set up by the council to manage the implementation of the by-laws. They would approach Cosatu ”only as a last resort”.
The launch of the new informal sector union follows similar union initiatives in Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania, Venezuela and Brazil.