Trade Unions: Friend or Foe
Increasingly SA's trade union movement behaves like the enemy of the people. They disdain the poor and the unemployed and have pushed up the wage bill to unacceptably high levels. To say this as the granddaughter of a famous trade unionist is almost sacrilege but the unions need to be taken to task.
They are holding the country back in many ways obstructing progress in the public service on every level, especially education. And if they cannot win an argument, they blackmail the country through strike action, some of which are unruly and lawless.
South Africans demand good education - the basis of any successful democracy - and will no longer stand idly by while the unions wreak havoc with our development agenda.
There is nothing more urgent than to reverse our high illiteracy and innumeracy rates; to improve our maths and science results to prepare South African youth for the labour market; and to demand teachers who are qualified, competent, dedicated and professional.
The recent budget proposals indicate how precarious the economy is: a low skills base, an inflexible labour regime, high current account deficits, high youth employment and a very low skills base.
Declaring teaching an essential service is one step in the right direction for Public Service Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, who rightly, proposes a plan to transform the moribund public service to one that will truly serve the public.
Her plans include a revised public service charter; compulsory training for government employees; the blacklisting of law-breaking employees; the enforcement of stricter disciplinary measures; the review of teachers' salaries; the revolving door for those involved in procurement services will be blocked for some time; public servants will be prohibited from doing business with the state; an inspectorate of schools will be reintroduced and the minister, herself, will visit schools unannounced. This plan includes rooting out corruption, a dress code for teachers and additional training.
What is wrong with that? In any civilized democracy, such measures would be highly welcome? Not here. SADTU's general secretary, Mugwena Maluleke, immediately declares war on the plan.
He will lobby his executive committee to oppose the Minister's measures, especially the reintroduction of school inspectors, the public service charter, and the monitoring of teachers' working hours. Our left-wing commissars who act and speak on behalf of the people are as responsible as government for the decline of our education to one of the lowest in the world.
The alliance between government and the unions is a millstone around government's neck and it is the reason we don't make any progress in the public sector and education in particular. Sisulu knows that determination and resolve will be essential to drive this programme of transformation through the wall of union resistance. I hope she will persevere and not back down.
My organisation works with the public service and just last week we trained over 70 delegates of councillors and municipal officers from Aliwal North. By Jove, they need it. Sisulu's idea of a School of Government, however, alarms me and proves that our current schools of government have become ineffectual. Old-fashioned public administration courses and mostly irrelevant theoretical hogwash make up curricula that are of no consequence to the public sector.
Our academics are far removed from reality but what we need is peer-to-peer training led by those who are engineers and technical experts who know how to implement sanitation and waste management, recycling, pollution control measures, solar heating, and infrastructural development projects effectively. They are around. Find them!
This article first appeared in Die Burger.
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