South Africa’s white and black workers are increasingly finding common ground, as shown by their joint participation in the public service and metal industries strikes. The Mail & Guardian‘s Matuma Letsoalo poses questions to Dirk Hermann, the deputy general secretary of the union Solidarity.
How many members do you have?
About 130Â 000 in total.
Historically, white workers refused to join forces with their black counterparts. What has radicalised them?
In the first place, workers were defined by their race. Nowadays, one realises that workers more and more find each other on class-related issues. In the past two to three years, we’ve experienced much more militancy among our members.
Secondly, white workers feel a bit alienated in the political sphere because no political party represents them. They feel excluded and that leads to frustration.
Do white and black workers now see each other as ‘comradesâ€?
I think so. We’ve seen this in recent strike actions. In the past, we could not take part in the same rally.
There’s a lot in common, but we have our differences. The indication of a mature relationship is respect for differences.
How does Solidarity differ from white unions in the past?
Many white trade unions couldn’t survive after 1994 because of the transformation in the country. We made sure we became a trade union for the new global era.
We’ve made a lot of changes to tackle that. We aligned ourselves more to the political centre and said we won’t be aligned to any political party. We feel quite strongly about our independence.
Is there is still a lot of racism in the workplace?
Yes, but I believe this is now on both sides of the coin. Ironically, the lower you go in the ranks, the less the racism. At shop-floor level, people work much better together. The higher you go on the ladder, the more racism you find.
What still divides white and black workers?
Of course, there are ideological differences between ourselves and Cosatu unions. We have a more social, free-market ideology, while Cosatu has a socialist approach. Another area of difference is our relationship with political parties. We believe very strictly in the independence of the union movement, while Cosatu is allied with the governing party.
Do you plan to woo more black members?
If any worker associates with us, we will work with that. But the fact is that we have a specific character. We don’t think we will strive to be representative of South Africa’s entire democracy because if you do that, it’s not possible for minority groups to have an institution to represent them. We believe that the minority groups like the Afrikaner community should have institutions. At this stage, we will function within that specific community but have close relationships with other groupings as well.
Are you moving towards a closer relationship with Cosatu? Are your problems the same as theirs? We have a very good relationship with Cosatu unions.
Eighty percent of our problems are definitely similar, for example the issue of wages and frustration with the enrichment of chief executives in South Africa.
Would you consider merging with Cosatu or other federations?
No. We won’t merge with any federation; we are a single trade union affiliated to Consawu, the Confederation of South African Workers Unions. What’s important for us is to have union democracy. Just as it isn’t healthy for a political democracy to have a one-party state, it’s also not good for an industrial democracy if you have one federation in the country.
Last year, Cosatu criticised your campaign against affirmative action as anti-black and dividing workers …
Our basic principle is that imbalances must be rectified, but not in such a way that you create new imbalances. There is no doubt that affirmative action at this stage is the playground of the elite.
You have also been accused of speaking for white workers who benefited from job reservation under apartheid.
The argument that whites enjoyed benefits in the past is valid. But as we go deeper into democracy, this can’t be relevant forever — a whole new group of young people is entering the labour market. We are now building a new democracy. We don’t want to fight for a better past, we want to fight for a better future.