COSATU calls for withdrawal of Deputy President's contact man from national minimum wage negotiations

The Deputy President's office has assigned Enoch Godongwana as their contact person for discussions on the national minimum wage, and labour relations issues taking place at Nedlac. This is an important role which requires the utmost integrity, tact and sensitivity, in order to ensure trust and respect by all parties to these sensitive negotiations.

COSATU is therefore outraged by two unacceptable interventions made by Enoch Godongwana, in a speech to the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM) national bargaining conference, which fatally undermine our confidence in him in this regard.

On Thursday 12 March, in a divisive speech, he blatantly questioned and undermined the government and Deputy President's clear mandate on introducing the National Minimum Wage (NMW), questioned the labour movement's stance and motives on the minimum wage, and implicitly questioned its viability.

He stated: "In the manifesto of the African National Congress we made a commitment that we'll look at the modalities of the implementation of the minimum wage [but] when I talk to people... the voices are not even interested in attaining it. Do you know why?"

He said it was because those against the minimum wage knew the labour movement was not as coherent as it used to be. In addition unions did not care about creating new jobs, only defending existing workers: "You as the labour movement, you are not as coherent as you are supposed to be on the minimum wage ...The first question is whether we are talking about a universal or sectoral [minimum wage]. .. A related question: Is the minimum wage going to be a product of law, or is it going to be a product of collective bargaining?" If it was by law, the collective bargaining process would be undermined, where the very existence of unions would be at stake.

As a former unionist, Chairperson of the ANC Economic Transformation Committee, and participant in the ANC Manifesto drafting team, Godongwana is fully aware what the answers are to these ‘questions', and is being disingenuous and mischievous both in the manner of posing them, as well as in their content. The blatant anti-labour sentiment of his input is bizarre, not only coming from an ex-trade unionist (although admittedly subsequently turned business person), but as someone who hopes to instil confidence in those participating in the negotiations.

His claim that people he has spoken to "are not even interested in attaining it", says more about who he is speaking to, than the issue at hand. He forgets that both the ANC and government have committed to introducing a (legislated) national minimum wage, as a key priority of this administration. The business people he is speaking to may not want it, but workers throughout the country have clearly expressed their views on this matter, not least in the Parliamentary hearings, which perhaps he needs to attend.

His statement questioning whether "the minimum wage is going to be a product of law, or is it going to be a product of collective bargaining" is disingenuous, and intentionally misleading. He knows very well that a legislated national minimum wage sets a wage floor, and that collective bargaining in different sectors sets wages and working conditions above that floor. International experience shows that the one complements and reinforces the other, and that they are not mutually exclusive alternatives, as he tries to suggest.

The argument that "the very existence of unions would be at stake" if we had a NMW is incomprehensible, and again suggests that he is advancing a deliberate agenda to undermine the campaign for a NMW. Workers would still need strong unions merely to ensure that the minimum was in fact being paid, and in addition to take forward the call by our 2013 Collective Bargaining Conference to fight for wall-to-wall centralised bargaining, which needs to be rolled out together with a National Minimum Wage.

Therefore we have a critical question to pose to Cde Godongwana from our side: ‘why are you campaigning against the introduction of a national minimum wage, and on whose behalf are you speaking?'

In another problematic part of his speech to the NUM National Bargaining Conference, dealing with strikes and labour relations Comrade Godongwana inappropriately supported the use of compulsory strike ballots and arbitration, purportedly to deal with the length of strikes, again another contentious matter to be dealt with in the Nedlac negotiations:

He stated: "Now we don't want to tamper with the Constitution and change the right to strike and disadvantage the majority of workers in this country who exercise that right in the normal way." Rather, the compulsory introduction of strike balloting legislation should be considered.

He again cannot claim ignorance of the fact that a number of unions already conduct secret ballots; others favour workplace mass meetings but in either case it is a democratic, inclusive process, and there is strong opposition to any attempt to dictate by law to unions how they should consult their members.

Comrade Godongwana then made his most dangerous proposal: "...following a specific period of time, government should be able to tell the parties to go back to the negotiating table. Different instruments were being considered, such as arbitration, without doing away with the strike itself.'

Doing away with the right to strike however is exactly what such a law would lead to. It is the same as the Democratic Alliance's call for compulsory arbitration in the event of protracted and/or violent strikes.

It would effectively be a law to force workers back to work, which would be a blatant contravention of Clause 23 of the SA Constitution's Bill of Rights, which protects the right to strike. It would in effect amount to forced labour, and in any case be unenforceable in a democracy.

Such laws violate ILO Conventions 87 and 98 on Freedom of Association and the Right to Organise, which the SA government has signed. The ILO Committee which interprets the Convention has expressly stated that compulsory arbitration is acceptable only in cases of strikes in genuinely essential services.

COSATU of course would prefer shorter strikes, and the majority of them are relatively short. But when a strike is prolonged the employers are at least equally responsible, often more so, and the prospect of legally enforced compulsory arbitration would enable the bosses to be even more intransigent and wait until enough time had elapsed for them to go the courts to force their employees back to work.

These inappropriate and provocative interventions by Cde Godongwana on the national minimum wage, and strikes, clearly demonstrate that he is unable to appropriately play his role as contact person from the Deputy President's office, for the Nedlac negotiations. We therefore call for his withdrawal from this role, and his replacement with a suitable person.

We further call upon the ANC leadership to disown his comments on the national minimum wage, and strikes, and make clear that this is not the ANC view.

Statement issued by Patrick Craven, COSATU national spokesperson, March 17 2015

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