The strikes conducted by the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) in 2006 came at a ”huge” financial cost, the union’s general secretary Randall Howard said on Wednesday.
”It [the cost] was huge, with the level of arrests and bailing out comrades and lawyers,” he said at Satawu’s second national congress in Johannesburg. He declined to mention a figure.
Reports suggesting that the industrial actions had financially ruined the union were ”all lies”.
”There were those who wanted to run us down by suggesting the union was bankrupt.”
Howard said other Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) affiliates had helped to relieve the cost of Satawu strikes. Satawu is Cosatu’s fifth-largest affiliate.
Satawu had already set up a strike fund to support future industrial action, but still needed to decide how members would contribute.
Howard said the union expected more strikes over the next three years as workers’ economic conditions worsened.
”It is quite clear, with the widening income inequalities and the fact that we organise workers in vulnerable sectors … we must [strike more] because employers are becoming more arrogant.”
Howard said the rate of inflation could no longer be used to decide wage demands. Inflation-based increases did not cover workers’ needs.
”We need other socio-economic measures to determine wage demands … We need to ask what profit did the employer make.” — Sapa