The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will hit the streets on Monday in two provinces, kickstarting a series of provincial strikes planned over the next few months to protest against joblessness. But the potency of localised mass action has ”dubious merit”, say analysts.
The strikes will start in the Eastern and Western Cape, targeting specific employers in the clothing, fishing and farming industries that are ”retrenching, outsourcing and casualising workers using labour brokers, or engaging in racist practices”. The seven other provinces will follow suit over the next few weeks.
Cosatu has been buoyed by its national strike against unemployment on June 27, which it claims more than 100 000 workers joined countrywide and which led to the government and business agreeing, at a tripartite alliance meeting, to support a weaker exchange rate and 75% local procurement by retailers. (Although subsequent Nedlac discussions to this effect ”didn’t go anywhere”, said Neva Makgetla, Cosatu’s chief economist.)
Cosatu’s decision to take the next phase of its Jobs and Poverty Campaign to the provinces is based on the premise that ”features of the jobs crisis are parochial to provinces”, said Tony Ehrenreich, Cosatu Western Cape secretary. ”For example, in the Western Cape, workers are mostly affected in the clothing and fishing industries. We’ll target these employers, but the value of the strike is that it’ll have a national flavour.”
Steven Friedman, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and veteran labour analyst, said that while mass action draws attention to discontentment it is essentially ”a blunt instrument”, particularly when it’s diffused to the provincial level.
”Cosatu can be good about strategic thinking, but we’re not in such a time at the moment,” he said.
Makgetla said that while the federation acknowledges that mass action is ”no quick fix” to the problem of joblessness, it’s one of the few tools that labour can use to ensure that the issue ”stays in the public domain, otherwise it would simply fall off the table”.
Xolani Pakati, Cosatu secretary in the Eastern Cape, said that while the success of provincial action is yet to be judged, ”when you attempt to negotiate and negotiate solutions [with the government and business] but you get the sense that you’re not taken seriously, the time comes to take the talks to the street. That’s the law of bargaining.” He said he expected 15 000 workers (out of total membership in the province of 250 000) to join the strike in four centres: Port Elizabeth, East London, Queenstown and Umtata.
Vic van Vuuren, the chief operating officer at Business Unity South Africa and business representative on National Economic and Development Labour Council, said he doesn’t believe that the mass action will have ”any positive pressure on business”. He said although mass action ”does have a time and place” in the case of joblessness and poverty, there are too many ”contributing and complex” factors for mass action to have an effect, both nationally and provincially.
”Cosatu should rather engage in protracted negotiations,” said Van Vuuren. ”There is no sudden resolution to the issue on the table.”
Ehrenreich suggested that the upcoming strike action is more about exposing the ”the devastating effect [of unemployment] on the disintegration of the social fabric of our society”. He said that he expected non-Cosatu members to join Monday’s strike simply to express the plight of their poverty-stricken lives. ”It’s a personal experience to come on a strike and I think people miss that,” he said.
Despite Statistics South Africa figures showing that unemployment is slowing down, Cosatu says, ”the official unemployment rate has declined only because more people have given up looking for work. Thus the share of people labelled ”economically inactive” has risen, and the share of employed people has declined since 2000, from 44% to 40%.
”Nominally, two out of every five workers cannot find employment. While mass action is an effective pressure tactic, it has to be used sparingly,” said Friedman. ”It has dubious merit on job creation because this isn’t an issue about one group using its muscle against another. It’s about tactical politics.”
Cosatu has acknowledged the need to review its organisational tactics. ”Unions must not lose focus as a trade union representing the interests of its members,” Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s general secretary, said recently.
Cosatu’s research arm, the National Labour and Economic Development Institute, is currently conducting research into the reorganisation of the union movement.
A striking schedule
October 3: Eastern and Western Cape
October 10: Gauteng and North West
October 17: Northern Cape, Free State, Mpumulanga
October 24: KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo
Demands
Business:
1. Retailers must buy 75% of their stock locally
2. Large companies, especially the mining companies, must invest more in South Africa, rather than offshoring
3. Any casual worker employed for more than three months should be treated as permanent
Government:
1. All government policies must aim to grow employment
2. A competitive exchange rate
3. Trade tariffs