NUMSA NATIONAL BARGAINING CONFERENCE DECLARATION
"Decent Work + Living Wage Now!"
Saint Georges Hotel and Conference Centre | 10 - 12 March 2014
Introduction:
We, the two hundred and fifty (250) delegates representing more than 220 000 workers in the engineering Sector, House Agreements (HA) and ESKOM, met in Pretoria, declare to our members and all South Africans, that we have spent three productive days consolidating demands for improved wages and conditions of employment as mandated by our members.
We are emerging from our National Bargaining Conference (NBC) more confident and united, and better prepared and well equipped to represent our members as demanded by our theme"Decent Work + Living Wage Now".
We salute the delegates for exercising maximum discipline and bringing to the fore members' mandates from the shopfloor. The mandate as expressed by delegates reflects our founding principles of worker control and participatory democracy. It has buried false and malicious insinuations that we have become a business union, as some of our opponents might want everyone to believe. We have remained true to our primary goals of being a shield and spear for our exploited members at the point of production.
The NBC was a collective product of intense and vigorous work done at the shopfloor through our "Ear to the Ground"campaign which started in Numsa organised workplaces as far back as January 2014. This campaign solicits workers' demands covering improved wages and living conditions. They are developed against the backdrop of the high cost of living, and the heavy socio-economic burden imposed on our members.
As a result of their meagre wages our members, like other employed workers, support the vast army of the unemployed who are languishing in squalor and abject poverty, mainly in black, especially African working class townships and informal settlements.
This reality is contradictory to the ideological fog of "a good story to tell" that is being spread by the politicians. In our view the 1994 negotiated settlement offered some benefits to the black majority but in the main it has been white monopoly capital who became the main beneficiary of the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
We use to share this perspective with the SACP with rallying cry that the second decade should belong to the working class. The current state of the South African working class tells us of a story which is too horrific to be good.
The global economic context and conditions of the working class:
The Conference was held within the context of the a soaring crisis at the main center of global capitalism and imperialism - the United States and Europe, where there is massive shrinking of manufacturing, and a shift into insecure services, especially finance, retail, security and so-called "knowledge production" tertiary sectors. Despite all of this slowdown in the global economy and suffering of the working class, capital continues to make profit. When the banks were crashing, it was the job of the bourgeois State's to rescue finance capital, since they are an essential part of the system that makes capital flourish.
Political developments:
The Conference takes place at a time when our country is still facing difficult challenges as can be seen in the d of unemployment, poverty and inequality. The truth of the matter is that no matter how many times we keep on talking about the triple crises, they will not go away unless our country takes a new radical political and economic path to address these challenges.
The old solutions, no matter how many times they are recycled, are not capable of delivering the required results. Only a new economic path can do this. This new path must be about changing ownership and control of the South African though the most resolute implementation of the Freedom Charter.
The disastrous result of the failure to implement the Freedom Charter finds expression in the stubborn triple crises we are facing today. What we are being fed on a daily basis are lies that the neo-liberal National Development Plan (NDP) is a good story to tell, and that South Africa has become a better place to live since the negotiated settlement of 1994.
We have a bad history of shifting the goal post to defend the right-wing neo-liberal agenda that our movement has adopted. Today we can see ANC's vision 2014 that we all supported has not halved unemployment, poverty and inequality as promised in 2004. The State of Nation Address (SoNA) provides nothing to take forward the second phase of radical transition neither did the 2014 budget speech which gave the bosses free grants with the illusion that these grants will create jobs.
Cosatu in the Intensive Care unit (ICU)
The backdrop to this Numsa National Bargaining Conference sees the progressive trade union movement, particularly COSATU in the Intensive-Care Unit (ICU). It is busy imploding due to ideological and political differences that have rendered it into a permanent state of paralysis.
This paralysis is not class neutral. In certain instances it is self-inflicted. To some extent it is being advanced by our class enemies inside and outside the broader liberation movement. Unfortunately, since COSATU's 11th National Congress, underhand tactics and dirty politics have been unleashed to publicly sideline the democratically-elected General Secretary comrade Zwelinzima Vavi. Since the General Secretary Vavi's ill-fated suspension, not a single resolution or mandate from the 11th National Congress has been taken forward by COSATU's National Office Bearers (NOBs).
As Numsa, we are fully committed to unity in the Federation. But that unity should not be at the altar of undermining 11thNational Congress resolutions or outcomes. We refuse to be part of any agenda that seeks to liquidate COSATU's independence, militancy and fighting stances. This factional grouping does not care about workers' issues anymore. The Central Executive Committee (CEC) of COSATU is now nothing but a talk-shop and debating club.
The Cosatu National Office Bearers have now resorted to tribalism to divide organised sections of the working class. This reactionary stance stands in stark contrast to the Cosatu Constitution which makes non-racialism a corner stone of our revolutionary values. Ours at this moment is to mobilise the base of the working class to stand up and reclaim their federation from a power-hungryright-wing grouping that has no regard for COSATU's constitution.
The offensive against Numsa and its members:
This Numsa National Bargaining Conference also meets within the context of the following anti Numsa shenanigans;
The ANC, SACP and COSATU leadership has taken an underground decision to target Numsa organised workplaces under the guise of the ANC's election campaign with the aim and objective to cause a revolt against the December 2013 Numsa Special National Congress resolutions.
Working with former Numsa office bearers, shopstewards and officials, including internal ones, we know that Toyota shall see a visit by Cosatu President, Cosatu KZN POB's and Minister of Sports on 17th March 2014. We are told that t-shirts with the inscription - "I'm Numsa I'm voting ANC" - are allegedly to be distributed to Numsa members.
In the Numsa Sedibeng Region, we are told that Arcelor Mittal is targeted on the basis that Numsa is delivering poor service to Numsa members. The SACP Gauteng Provincial leadership together with the SACP Headquarters is at the center of this destabilization drive aimed at Numsa members, shopstewards, office bearers and officials.
In Numsa we have no sleeplessness nights over these shenanigans because we have a clear resolution with respect to the 2014 elections and other decisions of the SNC;
1. Every Numsa member is entitled to vote for a political party of their choice including the ANC;
2. Given the attack on the working class as a result of neo-liberal and anti-working policy implemented by the ANC, Numsa shall not endorse nor fund the ANC in its 2014 elections campaign;
3. Numsa is not and shall never be transformed into a political party;
4. In Numsa we have members of different political parties and therefore the unity of workers is our primary goal;
5. The United Front is not a political party BUT a mobilising instrument and tool in the hands of the working class to organise and coordinate working class struggles for working class confidence, consciousness and working class power;
6. The working class needs an independent and revolutionary working class party. In this regard we shall research and investigate internally the experience of workers parties and report these international research findings in March 2015. Dividing workers as the ANC, SACP and COSATU national and provincial leaders are now doing, demonstrates the fact that the working class is on its own and would have to accept that painful reality. No romanticism or sentimental attachments can obscure the bad state of the South African working class. As we reached the end of February 2014, we have grown the Numsa membership to 341, 473. We shall continue to serve the interest of workers to the best of our abilities.
Principles that underpins our 2014 Collective Bargaining strategy:
Closing the apartheid wage gap, fighting for equity in the workplace and demanding a Living Wage;
The democratization of the workplace;
Reduce excessive pay for the Bosses;
Develop the skills of the workforce that was deprived of that development during colonial-apartheid past.
Use collective bargaining to organise the unorganized and thereby growing Numsa into a formidable fighting force
Core and cross cutting demands:
1. Wages:
Double digit increases inclusive of the CPI and an improvement factor
2. Duration of the Agreement
We demand a double digit increases inclusive of the CPI and an improvement factir=gans;
.s too horrific to be good.
o the working class. Theone year agreement effective 01st July 2014 to 30th June 2015.
3. Scope of the agreement
Wage negotiations must benefit all Numsa members'irrespective salaried or wage earners
4. Allowances
a) Shift Allowance b) Service Allowance c) Housing Allowance d) Transport Allowance e) Tool Allowance
5. Training and Career Pathing
6. Outlaw Labour Brokers in our industries
7. Improvement of Leave provisions
a) Sick Leave /IOD/Illness b) Maternity leave c) Family Responsibility Leave d) Annual Leave e) Leave Enhancement Pay
8. Organisational Rights
a) Shopstewards Time -off b) Improvement in Short Time provisions c) Youth Wage Subsidy - Employment Tax Incentive Act - Must not be implemented in our industries d) Productivity Bonuses
9. Benefits
a) Improvement in Severance Pay b) Improvement Ex Gratia Payment c) Provisions to cover workers in respect of Load shedding/ Inclement weather/Unforeseen Circumstances d) Improve the medical aid schemes/contributions e) Free solar geysers for Eskom employees f) Retirement Fund Reform: The conference welcomes the general financial amendment particularly with respect to employers who deduct workers money for pension contributions and not paying over to the funds.
The conference noted that in 2013 government issued six discussion papers on reform for comment but without consulting labour at NEDLAC. We are concerned that the government want to push preservation without addressing our demand for a Comprehensive Social Security.
Given its paralyses, COSATU is not taking this matter serious because no serious effort is made by COSATU to oppose Preservation.
We as NUMSA will mobilise Social Forces to oppose preservation until Government goes to NEDLAC to seriously negotiate Comprehensive Social Security.
Conclusion:
1. Side by side, Numsa members together with our sister unions in the various bargaining chambers, we shall confront the logic of Capital in collective bargaining;
2. We are working flat out to make sure that the Numsa led S77 strike on 19th March 2014 is a success. The 19th March strike shall usher in rolling socio economic strike between now and 2016;
3. We regard the unity of metalworkers and all other workers in the South African economy as sacrosanct and therefore we shall fight with all our strength to preserve the unity of workers and the working class in general;
4. We shall take up a serious battle with National Treasury to ensure that retirement reform does not act against the interest of workers. We note that Cosatu's paralysis has resulted in the Federation being incapable of making our representation to retirement reforms initiated by employers and national treasury. We shall build the struggle for retirement reforms, in the interest of workers, into the Numsa socio economic strikes as endorsed by our SNC.
5. We shall intensify the call and struggle for the convening of the Cosatu Special National Congress.
As adopted by the Numsa National Bargaining Conference (NBC) and the Numsa Central Committee (CC) on 12 March 2014, in Saint George Hotel, Irene, Pretoria, Gauteng.
Issued by NUMSA, March 12 2014
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