Remarks by NUMSA General Secretary Irvin Jim at the New Federation Shop Steward Council meeting held in Johannesburg, 4 February 2016
Organise or Starve!
Don’t Moan, Mobilise!
Political context
Unions only protect 76% of the South African working class, we must organize them! Even those that are protected by unions suffer from Apartheid colonial wages and are exposed to racism in the workplace on a daily basis. Women, in particular African women, carry the triple burden of oppression. Twenty two years into democracy, and Black women are still employed in the lowest paying, least skilled jobs. That’s why it is a priority for unions to focus on women and eliminating injustice in the work place, once and for all.
Poverty, unemployment and inequality continue to rise and affect largely the African working class. Unless we organize workers’ into militant revolutionary unions, this scourge will continue.
African workers continue to receive low pay, just as it was under Apartheid.
In response to this crisis, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has proposed R3500 per month as a national minimum wage. This is an amount that not even his dog can survive on!
To make matters worse Ramaphosa is also imposing limitations on the right to strike, which include balloting before a strike and compulsory arbitration to end strikes.
All these things are happening because we have not organized the majority of the South African working class into militant and revolutionary trade unions to protect the working class.
Globally the capitalist system is in deep crisis. To resolve its crisis it is shifting the cost to the working class. Unless the working class organizes itself we are headed for worse times.
In South Africa the ongoing global crisis of capitalism simply worsens the colonial conditions of the African working class.
Capital is exploiting the fear and suffering of workers from outside South Africa by employing them at the lowest possible wages, or no wages at all. This automatically attacks all our hard won gains.
The solution to this problem is for us to fight for the right to work for every worker, irrespective of where they come from in the world.
We must recruit every worker, documented or undocumented into our unions. Only this will prevent the bosses from super exploiting vulnerable workers from outside South Africa and undermining our hard won gains.
We refuse to be caged into the nation state when capital is exploiting us globally. We will unite the working class irrespective of where they come from.
Capitalism is a breeding ground of all these social ills and therefore mobilizing the working class for a class for itself is vital.
Therefore our unions and their specific and strategic targets at workplaces must:
a) Address general meetings in strategic, targeted workplaces that are informed by a union in that particular sector
b) The deployees and a core of organisers from specific unions must be in a position to address momentary problems that workers are confronted with, as well as putting together a report of workers plight in that particular union. The union must also be able to respond to the plight of workers.
c) For the unions to be able to deliver they must develop a vibrant and dynamic structure. The union must have its own operational centers to deal with the various problems workers will report on.
d) Each local and region must respond by having a tailor made program of action to operate on the basis of this framework.
e) They will hold industrial meetings and utilize tools such as blitz and social media campaigns to get as many people to attend. Loud hailers will also be used. They will also invite media as well as members of the community to attend.
f) Central to the campaign is to demand stop order facilities and organizational rights for everyone and to mount both a legal fight and embark on strike action in demanding organizational rights.
g) Unions who form part of the new federation will have to pull together resources to achieve these actions.
h) The campaign recruitment trail will consciously target all the malls and turn them into centers free of slave wages. Our campaign must guarantee a right to work and the right to join a union, by all workers, regardless of their country of origin. A specialized dedicated core will lead this campaign. This core team will develop a strategy to come up with a plan to enable this action.
i) We need a core of experienced cadres who must be able to give an intensive and creative capacity building to the organisers who lead these campaigns.
j) All unions in the New Federation who are recognized must put pressure on employers in big plants to give the union full time shop stewards and the existing full time shop stewards must be released to work in local, regional, and provisional operational centers.
k) It is compulsory for the success of this program that unions must put resources aside, i.e. visibility of the national leadership, core of organisers at various levels of the organization, transport in the form of kombis dedicated to the campaign, loud hailers, union banners, utilization of community radio stations, social media and radio.
Fascism and racism are on the rise globally. The advent of Brexit and Trumpism means that the time for moaning is over, we must act now. We need to be united as workers, regardless of where we come from on the Continent. It’s time for workers to wake up and realize that cultural differences are tools which are used to divide us. The bosses know that if we are divided, and fight among ourselves, we will never defeat them. We must remember that we are all workers, and our struggle for equality is a universal one. It is upon this basis that we should unite.
We must organize now, or starve.
AMANDLA!
ALUTA CONTINUA!
Statement issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary, 4 February 2016
