(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
Labour union federation Cosatu made famous the slogan “An injury to one is an injury to all.” The organisation was said to be more than just a federation of unions; their unions adopted the Freedom Charter and their demands were not limited to wages and conditions of service, but also what type of society they wanted South Africa to be.
But, in the post-1994 era, Cosatu hinged all workers’ demands on their opposition to the government’s macroeconomic strategy, the conservative Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy. Their growth in the private sector, even as types of work changed, was limited.
One of the problems facing trade unions is that businesses constantly come up with different ways to bypass them.
In your local supermarket chain that carry national franchises, the majority of cashiers, store packers and so forth are members of a trade union, probably the Cosatu-affiliated South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union.
But the motor bike delivery drivers are not unionised. They are not even employees of the company. They are categorised as independent contractors.
This phenomena began in the early 2000s with what became known as owner-driver schemes. Previously companies such as Coca-Cola and Dairy Belle owned the trucks and employed the drivers.
Owner-driver schemes were presented as an empowerment model. The driver would sign an agreement with the company to deliver their goods to various parts of the country and, based on that agreement, they would then receive a loan and purchase the delivery truck. It seemed like a great model and allowed employees to become entrepreneurs. Owner-driver schemes flourished and mining companies also began using similar models.
Upon closer inspection, you begin to realise that this is not empowerment, but rather the company is mitigating its risk and passing it on to its former employee. The drivers receive no job security and lose employee benefits such as sick leave and pensions. It is just another outsourcing model.
The retail sector, where the packers and cashiers are unionised but the delivery workers are not, is a classic example of divide and rule. The expectation is that soon walk-in stores will be an abnormality and the number of cashiers and merchandisers will decrease, because the store will become a warehouse for the internet delivery worker to pick up the order. There is little worker solidarity between the delivery worker and the in-store staff.
So do trade unions still organise workers? We know that trade unions exist, but are they still a revolutionary force on the ground? Do people, even if they are not members of a trade union, still believe that a trade union really wants a better country for all?
It’s not that South Africans have become jaded and cynical, but many have discarded their commitment to revolutionary ideals, because they witnessed their leaders dump it first.
Most of the public sector is unionised, and very many people will testify how bad the services are in public institutions. The revolutionary garments of the trade union leadership and their members seem quite frayed and tired.
South Africans are not fooled by the revolutionary rhetoric about workers and a socialist state. They know that this is a pantomime and not the real focus. Trade unions seem more focused on keeping what they have from other trade unions, rather than growing their membership base in the new areas of the economy.
Thus, the delivery bikers are not unionised, neither are call centre employees. There are a host of social media platform companies in South Africa, such as Facebook, TikTok and Google, and none of the people working in those companies are unionised.
One of the reasons trade unions began was because of the lack of job security. Without unions, companies were able to easily dismiss workers without fear of a backlash. They could lower wages or not give increases.
Take the time to speak to many of our young people. You will find that many of them are working in call centres, where they are sales persons selling financial products or dental plans to people all over the world. They earn anything from R4 000 to R8 000 a month. They have no job security and remain on probation in the hope of becoming permanent. There are no trade unions organising in this sector.
Uber drivers are not unionised. They are also, like the delivery biker, regarded as “independent contractors”.
It’s not that the businesses in an internet-based economy have outsmarted the trade union leadership, but it does seem that unions care only about their current workers’ membership fees and not about the rest of society.
I first got into social media in about 2009, when I signed up for Facebook. I recall that they had a catchy motto: “It’s free and it always will be”. In 2012, Facebook listed as a public company and its share price rocketed. I kept wondering how Facebook made money, so that people bought these shares and the share price just kept rising. I was wondering whether it was going to be similar to the early 2000s with the dot.com bubble burst. Everyone told me that, like Google, Facebook made money through advertising. I still failed to understand how it became a trillion dollar company; it could not just be with advertising.
In the wake of the election of Donald Trump as the United States’ president in 2016, as well as the 2013 defection of American intelligence officer Edward Snowden to Russia, the movie-documentary Cambridge Analytica was released. This documentary revealed how Facebook (and other social media platforms) could use their algorithm to ensure that many people held a particular view. Facebook, Google and others allow full access to the US government to not only track peoples’ views but to also sculpt and mould them in a particular way. In other words, Facebook and others were weaponised.
I had naively thought Facebook was valuable because it gave pleasure and entertainment to the masses, not because it could be used by the powerful and elite to control the masses. When that realisation hit me, I felt quite foolish.
It gets worse, though. Surveillance Valley is a book by Yashane Levine which was published in 2018. It traces the history and development of the internet. I, and others, could be forgiven for believing that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg had no choice but to allow his product to be data-mined and therefore weaponised, so that it could be commercially viable. But what Levine proved is that the internet was not weaponised; it was created to be a weapon to control society.
The truth of the matter is that we measure value by how much money and control it can give us over others. There is no appetite to change society, even from trade union leaders and their members. Rather, there seems to be a high level of commitment to the capitalist values of private property ownership, individual freedom to pursue profit and market-driven competition.
The pursuit of these values will be the death of us. The elite and powerful use these values and the lure of individual success to control us.
When trade unions began, they knew that their struggle was not limited to the shop floor, but to include changing the values of society. Today, we witness a tired, antiquated trade union movement with no discernible plan on how to counter the gig-based and techno-feudal global economy.
Trade union leaders need to re-commit to the socialist values of their unions, and especially worker solidarity and power. In South Africa, we need the plethora of trade unions to sit down and unite, despite their ideological and political party affiliations. Globally the working class must unite. Global competition has become a race to the bottom and Africa is winning that race, but other continents will soon start catching up.
Donovan E Williams is a social commentator. @TheSherpaZA on X.