Address by Zwelinzima Vavi, COSATU General Secretary, to the NUMSA Bargaining Conference, Centurion, 18 April 2013
NUMSA National Office Bearers,
National Bargaining Conference delegates,
Leaders of COSATU and its affiliates,
Alliance leaders,
Cabinet Ministers,
Comrades and friends,
It is always a special privilege to be invited to address the union of Vuyisile Mini, Jabulile Ndlovu, Sam Ntuli, Phineas Sibiya, Simon Ngubane, Florence Mnikathi, Mbuyiselo Ngwenda, John Gomomo, Mthuthuzeli Tom and NUMSA's countless other heroes and heroines.
I bring heartfelt revolutionary greetings and best wishes for a successful conference from the COSATU National Office Bearers and all our 2.2 million members.
It is a special honour to have the opportunity to address this important national bargaining conference of metal workers, an event which closely follows the brilliant COSATU Collective Bargaining, Organising and Campaigns Conference in March.
The 500+ workers who met in Boksburg, and your delegates here this week, have delivered a crushing answer to those cynics who say that the unions have lost interest in the workers' everyday concerns. Both conferences have grappled with all the challenges we face every day at work and in the community. We have analysed the problems and hammered out a revolutionary programme to confront each of our challenges and for a real change.
The main message from our members is crystal clear: workers have had enough of poverty wages, retrenchments, labour brokers, obscene levels of inequality and arrogant bosses. We are all in agreement that we urgently need a complete transformation of the economy and the labour market to drastically alter the power relations between the workers and the employers, in favour of the workers.
We will unite to resist the attacks on collective bargaining and the right to strike, and step up the fight to transform the apartheid wage structure and implement, among others, a statutory national minimum wage and a basic income grant.
At the same time we have reaffirmed our commitment to struggle to restructure our economy - the Second Phase of the Transition, as the ANC has dubbed it - to confront the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and inequality and build a society that puts people at the centre. This is what the Freedom Charter and the founding principles of both the ANC and COSATU commit us to. Now is the time to act!
Comrade delegates
While we have made important advances in the areas of democracy, human rights and social benefits - for which we give full credit to the efforts of our Alliance, and the ANC government - socio-economically, workers' lives have not been fundamentally transformed. We have clearly not come close to achieving the economic demands in the Freedom Charter that:
"The people shall share in the country's wealth; The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people."
That is why we have submitted a Section 77 notice, as instructed by the 11th National Congress, to force a debate on these demands. Our demands, amongst many others, are state intervention in strategic sectors of the economy, including through nationalisation, addressing the unemployment crisis through creation of decent work, promoting active industrialisation, eradication of poverty, a 40-hour working week, banning of labour broking and access to free quality education and healthcare.
At the heart of these demands is our call for the radical restructuring of our economy, to create one based on manufacturing industry. The Industrial Policy Action Plan, the infrastructure development programme and at least parts of the New Growth Path plan, if fully implemented, will put us on the road to the second phase of our transition.
At the same time we are determined to fight the attack on centralised bargaining, coming from the Free Market Foundation and others. We will take this matter up at Nedlac through the Section 77 notice, and in mass campaigns.
We shall not only defend existing collective bargaining structures but also campaign for more comprehensive and effective, centralised wall-to-wall collective bargaining in all sectors of our economy.
On an issue which I know is close to your hearts, the bargaining conference noted that the cornerstone of the National Development Plan is to create jobs on the back of a deregulated labour market, and the introduction of lower entry wages for young workers - below the existing poverty wages which the majority of workers are currently receiving.
While the debate on the NDP in general continues within the Federation, we will continue to relate to specific issues in the NDP, using existing policies to reject or welcome aspects of them. We reject its major economic and labour market proposals, which contradicts other progressive government programmes such as the IPAP and which aim to entrench and further promote a multi-tier labour market and the downward variation of minimum standards of employment, and will resist these anti-worker proposals from being implemented by government and the employers.
Let me say this comrades! The NDP's economic and labour market proposals constitute a serious assault on workers. COSATU will not support them and in fact the very campaign we have launched to engineer our own Lula moment from below is actually a struggle against the current inappropriate growth path that reproduces unemployment poverty and inequalities. Implementation of those proposals now or in the future will constitute a biggest setback to our struggle for a better life for all.
It is simply unfair for anyone, in particular our ally the ANC, to ask us to cooperate with our own oppression and exploitation, which is what the NDP's major proposals are. The NDP represent a typical example of the chicken and a pig partnership in which the chicken offers to lay eggs for breakfast but ask the pig to donate bacon.
The Freedom Charter says that there shall be a national minimum wage. We have agreed to attack head-on the false claim by the bourgeois ‘experts' that minimum wages lead to unemployment, since many firms may not be able to pay them. International experience discredits these claims for what they are: propaganda and a denial of realities here and elsewhere.
The average minimum wage in South Africa was R3 336 in 2010. The Labour Research Service Report reported minimum wages on Bargaining Indicators (2011) as being 19% below the Minimum Living Level of R4 105. Therefore the call for a national minimum wage in the Freedom Charter is yet to have effective meaning for at least 44% of the workforce. Conference therefore resolved to engage urgently with government on our call for a legislated National Minimum Wage to be introduced by 2014.
Comrades
On the right to strike, we have agreed to lobby for two fundamental changes to the law, firstly on the question of the widespread use of scabs, which, in the context of our shocking levels of unemployment, it is a root cause of violence in strikes.
Secondly we want a change in the law on the question of liability for damage, on which the current laws are inconsistent and illogical and must be amended. We cannot allow unions to be bankrupted as a result of damage cause by individuals who ignore our clear instructions that demonstrations must be peaceful and disciplined.
The conference recognised however that the right to strike also goes with responsibilities, and that we need to take greater care in communicating with members during strikes, exercising leadership, improving our planning and coordination and discouraging use of violence and intimidation.
On decent work, the conference agreed that job security is a fundamental measure of decency, so the national campaign for the banning of labour brokers continues to be central. Statistics South Africa does not report the use of labour brokers, but by 2012-contract work of limited and unspecified duration accounted for almost 32% of total employment. Such super-exploitation and slave-labour practices must be outlawed!
While mobilising our members on national mass action, we shall continue to engage the ANC and the Alliance to ensure that the agreements that we have reached are taken forward in parliament, including a resolution of the only remaining area of disagreement: that COSATU demands that no labour broker be allowed from day one of employment, while the ANC envisages some role for labour brokers in the first six months, which we believe will open the system up to major abuse.
Workers are telling us everywhere that they are tired of listening to themselves demanding a complete ban on labour brokers. It is now four years since the ANC committed itself to the principle of decent work. Decent work and labour brokering is like oil and water - they don't mix! It's now more than a year since millions of workers staged a massive stay away sacrificing their meagre wages in support of their demand for a total ban of the labour brokers. It is now exactly a year since the Alliance agreed on the set of proposals to amend labour laws and advance the agenda of decent work through legislation. We are extremely concerned that this agreement, no matter how imperfect it may be, has not been implemented. We are worried that workers' interests are not prioritised as the interests of others.
The conference also touched on the issue of employment equity. Our workforce still comes nowhere near to reflecting the demographic profile of the country, in which Africans constitute 78.9%, whites 9.6%, coloureds 9.1% and Indians 2.9%,
Racialised inequalities in income were exposed by the South African Institute of Race Relations, which, analysing data from Statistics South Africa, showed that in 2011 the median monthly salary for Africans was R2 380, while Coloureds earned R3 030, Indians R6 800 and whites R10 000.
On employment opportunities, the 12th annual report of the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) for 2011-12 revealed what it rightly describes as the "gross under-representation" of black people‚ women and people with disabilities in key areas of the labour force".
At the top management level Africans represented an even smaller percentage than the previous year - only 18.5% (down from 18.8%). Meanwhile whites at 65.4% are only slightly down from 68.1%, due to a small increase for Coloureds, at 4.8% (up from 3.9%), Indians at 7.5% (from 6.1%) and foreign nationals at 3.9% (from 3.1%).
COSATU agrees with the commission that it is "a matter of grave concern" that Africans at this level remained "grossly under-represented with the year-on-year decline".
In any discussion about wages, we must never leave out the social wage. Workers' living standards are not determined only by the size of their wage packet, but also by our scandalous two-tier service provision. A still mainly white, rich minority can pay for top-class private services, while the overwhelmingly black, poor majority have to struggle with inefficient, under-resourced facilities.
The bargaining conference therefore raised demands on healthcare, housing, transport, education, e-tolling, electricity tariff increases, service delivery and gender-based violence. We will never apologise for campaigning on social issues outside the workplace, which directly affect the quality of life of the workers and their families.
Comrade delegates
We will however achieve none of these demands unless we transform our own organisations - building on our strengths and boldly confronting our weaknesses.
You meet at a time when, as I am sure you know, the labour movement is facing some very serious challenges - both internal and external.
Some are self-inflicted, and some are being pursued by our class enemies, who are trying to fatally weaken us. That is why we condemn in the strongest possible terms the tendency of anonymous individuals within the federation to "leak" to the media distorted and false information about decisions made in constitutional structures.
As the Secretary General of the ANC warned us, allowing a degeneration of worker organisation - the only weapon workers have to improve their wages and conditions of employment - will be a disaster. We must not allow that to happen.
As our 11th National Congress alerted us: "We cannot afford to fight silly battles against one another when the house is on fire." We want to bequeath to the next generation a united, growing, militant, independent and fighting Federation that will continue to be a major factor in the political and economic life of our country.
The newspapers' ‘sources', who we now can say without any fear of a contradiction are a few senior leaders of our affiliated unions at the level of the Presidents and General Secretaries, are the new enemies of the working class. They have been given a mandate to destroy COSATU or at best create so much division that the Federation can no longer be an independent movement capable of fighting for the interests of members.
The mandate of the sources is very clear: target the General Secretary and smear him continuously in the newspapers until workers lose trust in him. After all they know the only way to kill a snake is to smash its head. At this stage I am of the view that there will be no common ground with those leaders, whoever they may be.
Either they succeed to divide and weaken COSATU or we expose them and crush them. The real reason why they won't disclose their identities is that they act without any mandate from the members of their unions. Eventually we shall defeat these few individuals acting as sources of the newspapers; we have no doubt about that.
What the sources are doing to this movement, which they clearly don't know what it took to built, is worse than just committing treason. It forms part of the unfolding tragedy in our broader movement. Divisions among the forces of change have moved focus away from driving real change - to defeat unemployment, poverty and inequalities and build a better life - into internal, unending strife that has left us incoherent and enjoying less and less confidence from the people we want to lead.
In the end it is not even the parasitic sections of capital but the real ruling class that will be the main beneficiaries of these divisions the sources are promoting. There will be no implementation of the Freedom Charter or any second phase of a radical economic transformation if workers allow COSATU to be divided and weakened. COSATU will no longer be able to fight for the total banning of labour brokering or fight against corruption, which is an elite programme to steal from the poor.
Our Conference agreed that we must leave no stone unturned in our drive to rebuild our organisation and address our weaknesses. The biggest challenge of all is that two out of every three workers are not organised! That is why a top priority must be a recruitment drive to reach out to all workplaces, aiming at 100% representative and not just 50+1%.
The main focus has to be to recruit the most vulnerable workers - young and female, those in rural areas and small towns and those in low-paid sectors. Even many professional workers are barely protected in law, and it is our duty to extend our organisational reach to them.
I must also mention that our conference also urged all affiliates to desist from recycling of members amongst themselves. Poaching members from another COSATU union is not registering progress. We must strive to enforce the founding principles of the Federation, including the ‘one union one industry' principle, and ensure that mergers and integration take place between unions that are currently competing for the same membership.
But increased numbers do not necessarily translate into organised power. Our strength, as NUMSA has proved, is based also on mobilising members politically to act in their class interests, so that we can both use bargaining to strengthen our organisation and use organisation to strengthen collective bargaining.
A very worrying revelation in the Naledi workers survey is that 35% of our members have told us that there has not been a shop stewards election in their workplace in the past four years (compared to 50% of non-COSATU unions).
That is why the 11th National Congress adopted a Listening Campaign, to give greater power to the voice of ordinary members, through an "Ear to the Floor" campaign across the Federation, coordinated and monitored through national and provincial structures.
NUMSA, I am sure, is busy implementing this decision, through regular general meetings and workers' forums, in line with its historic commitment to worker control and internal democracy.
Closely linked to recruitment is better service to members, who told us in the Naledi survey that the most important reason for joining a COSATU union was protection against dismissal and unfair discipline (38% of our members), followed by improving wages, benefits and working conditions (33% of our members).
So we have to put our efforts first and foremost into successfully defending workers in disciplinary cases and into wage bargaining. Our members are telling us that we have to pull up our socks in all areas of service.
In essence this is a call to go back to basics, focus effectively on workplace issues, organisation and recruitment, deliver service to our members, and implement our 2015 Plan!
A critical element of this Plan is to ensuring that the unity of the federation and our alliance is restored and enhanced. Our federation has come under immense attack from our class enemies, many using the tactic of ‘divide and rule', to turn worker against worker.
We must therefore foster and increase solidarity and cooperation amongst all COSATU unions and ensure that the current tensions are addressed through the process the CEC is already embarking upon.
As the final conference declaration said: "It is only through building powerful, unified organisations that workers will have an effective engine to drive the changes we want to see at the workplace, in the economy, and at a political level."
This is our vision of a socialist future; the time to start building it is now.
Thank you very much, enjoy the rest of the conference and then make sure that your resolutions are turned into action in the factories and the streets in the coming months.
- Forward with the unity or our great workers movement!
- Forward to the programme of radical economic transformation!
Issued by COSATU, April 18 2013
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