Speech to the SATAWU National Policy Conference by Zwelinzima Vavi, COSATU General Secretary, Benoni, April 19 2012
The SATAWU NOBs
The entire leadership at all levels
The alliance leadership present
Comrades Delegates
I bring greetings from the National Office Bearers, Central Executive Committee and over two million members of your fighting federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
I am always pleased to be invited to address the workers who keep South Africa on the move, the members of our militant and committed union, who we always depend on when we go into battle, as we are about do next week when we go to war against the highway robbery of e-tolls.
You have a proud record of fighting not just for your own members but the working class internationally. We shall never forget that it was SATAWU who refused to handle a ship carrying weapons in Durban Harbour that were on their way to Zimbabwe. SATAWU led the campaign to escalate the boycott of Israeli goods and told its members not to allow any Israeli ship to dock or unload in any South African port.
It is the militancy and iron determination of unions such as SATAWU that has given rise to a move by our enemies to take away from the unions the principal weapon of war - the right to strike - and leave us with rights on paper that are worthless when we go into battle with the employers.
SATAWU was given a foretaste of the battles to come when the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a high court ruling making the union liable for R1.5 million worth of damages allegedly caused during a 2006 Cape Town protest.
The court based its judgement on Section 11 of the Regulation of Gatherings Act which provides that if any riot damage occurs as a result of a gathering, every organisation on behalf of or under the auspices of which that gathering was held, shall be jointly and severally liable for that riot damage, as a joint wrongdoer together with any other person who unlawfully caused or contributed to such riot damage.
We are taking this on appeal to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that this ruling could bankrupt unions who would be liable for any damage committed by anyone during a union protest regardless of the measures which we always take to ensure that protests are peaceful, lawful and disciplined.
Our case will be based on Section 11(2) of the Act which says that it shall be a defence to a claim if an organisation organising a gathering proves that it did not commit or connive at the act or omission which caused the damage, and that the act or omission did not fall within the scope of the objectives of the gathering and was not reasonably foreseeable; and that it took all reasonable steps within its power to prevent the act or omission.
But now, the government itself is tabling amendments to the labour laws which would impose even bigger threats to our constitutional rights to strike, march and demonstrate.
They want to require unions to ballot members who are entitled to strike in respect of the issue in dispute, and get a majority in favour. Such requirements were a feature of apartheid labour legislation. It was left out of the current laws precisely because of the problems likely to arise when strike action is delayed by the balloting process and angry workers become impatient.
Another amendment wants confine the legal right to picket to members of the union involved and removes the world "and supporters". This would criminalise solidarity action by other workers joining a picket.
The proposals also seek to remove the protections against dismissal for taking part in a protected strike from anyone whose action is defined as an "offence", which could include a breach of a picketing agreement or rule, which would be treated in the same way as a criminal offence.
Another amendment is to give the Labour Court the power to suspend a picket or a strike, which could be used opportunistically by employers to sabotage workers' actions.
But probably the biggest threat of all is the outrageous proposal that all state employees should be called "essential service workers" and therefore banned from striking. Many of your members in the ports, railways and airports could be included.
If passed, this would reduce our unions to toothless dogs, able to bark but never to bite. We run a serious danger that all the union rights enshrined in the constitution will remain only on paper.
The background to these proposals is the ongoing propaganda war, one waged by the Democratic Alliance primarily against our comrades in SADTU, which they accuse of being a violent, strike-happy, irresponsible and anti-social union.
The National Planning Commission's ‘diagnostic report' also regurgitates some of these ideas, when it says, "Strike action, sometimes unofficial, consumes as much as 10 days a year (5% of school time) and holding union meetings during school time is often the norm in townships schools".
The other part of the assault on the unions is being waged by employers who keep demanding "more flexible" labour laws so that they can find ways to pay workers even less, and hire4 and fire them more easily. Many are already in effect doing this by using labour brokers or employing workers on a casual basis. The strategic intention is to destroy the fighting capacity of unions to fight in order to allow bosses to make even bigger profits.
Sadly this propaganda now seems to have infiltrated some amongst our African National Congress leaders, whose Labour Law amendments reflect a similar prejudice against unions and strikes. We are determined to put a stop to these plans. We are arguing in the alliance; we will intervene in the parliamentary hearings; we will try to persuade the ANC Policy Conference to throw them out, and we may have to take it to the Constitutional Court.
But power concedes nothing without struggle, as always the rule applies that you will never win through negotiation what you have not won on the streets. It applies on this issue, just as with the labour brokers and the e-tolls.
What makes these proposals even worse is that they come at a time when workers are under attack from another flank - the relentless growth in the casualisation of labour, presided over by the labour brokers and the super-exploitation. Your members in the taxi and security sectors and others will know all about this only too well.
That is why the Living Wage Campaign, which includes the fight against labour, brokering, tops the list of the eleven campaigns adopted by the 5th Central Committee last June.
Other campaigns include the Public Transport campaign, anti-Walmart Campaign and the campaign for the new growth path.
The Public Transport campaign is naturally close to the hearts of SATAWU members. 18 years into democracy we still have not achieved an integrated, safe, reliable and affordable public transport system for the country.
The National Household Travel Survey revealed that 47% of households indicated that transport is either not available or too far away; 27% of households expressed concern at safety of minibus-taxis and the bad driver behaviour and 23% indicated that transport is too expensive.
We are still confronted by the reality of racial disparities even with regard to access to transport. Most white people find it much easier to get to work, with 80% of white workers getting to work within 30 minutes. In contrast only 60% of African workers can find themselves at work within 30 minutes. A quarter of all black workers take between 30 minutes to one hour to get to work in contrast to just over 15% for white workers.
As unreliable public transport and spatial patterns continue to impact on commuters, so too does the cost of public transport on low income households.
Research also shows that more than 60% of households earning R500 and less pay over 20% of their income on transport - one fifth of total income! In contrast, those households who earn R3000 and more a month pay between 1-5%.
According to the survey results, on average more than 25% of South Africans pay 20% and more as a percentage of total income on transport. Put differently this amounts to about 2, 3 million households who pay 20% and more on transport costs.
These statistics explain why there is such intense opposition to the Gauteng e-tolls. Instead of addressing these public transport challenges, government, through Sanral, has is decided to privatise one of our basic public assets - our road network - and introduce the Open Road Tolling System (ORTS) at a cost of R20bn.
Popular opposition to the tolls is overwhelming and has grown even fiercer after the latest threats by Sanral that motorists who do not register for e-tags with having to pay a punitive rate to use the toll roads, as high as R2 per kilometre, nearly six times higher than the rate for those who have registered.
Having being forced to concede that buying an e-tag is not a legal requirement, they are now trying to bully and blackmail motorists into registering. But these threats will have the exact opposite effect. They will infuriate people and make them even more determined to follow COSATU's advice not to register and not to buy an e-tag.
We have been engaging with the ANC to reach agreement on alternative ways to fund road improvements. These talks are continuing and we shall strive right up to the last minute to have the tolls scrapped or at least postponed for a proper public debate.
Meanwhile the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance is lodging an application to the North Gauteng High Court to have the e-tolling interdicted. Should that case fail, COSATU is ready to take legal action of its own to get the tolls interdicted.
In the end however, it is the pressure of the masses which will force government to back down. Our aim is to make the tolls uncollectible and force the government and Sanral to find more equitable ways to pay for road improvements.
For the workers public transport is not a luxury but at the core of their livelihood and we cannot have the country prioritising projects such as e-tolls and the Gautrain which only stand to benefit the elites. A worker will have to take his lifetime savings in order to use Gautrain for a month.
All the campaigns we have undertaken will require us to keep an ideological compass, because these battles are not separate fights over labour laws, labour brokers, e-tolls and public transport but part of class politics and the struggle to complete the National Democratic Revolution and them the battle for socialism.
In the year of the ANC's 100th anniversary we must never lose sight of the value of our revolutionary alliance and help our movement to overcome the problems it is facing with ill-discipline, premature leadership struggles, incompetence and corruption. It affects only a small minority of its cadres, but nevertheless has a serious impact on our progress.
Of course there will be issues in our campaigns where we will have tactical differences with the ANC and/or the SACP but we will need to be careful that such tactical differences are not wrongly exaggerated into permanent strategic differences, and even more importantly are not interpreted as part of a leadership campaign.
The task that this conference has is answer is how we can use our campaigns and our work within the Tripartite Alliance to build unity within and between the partners and keep up the momentum towards a National Democratic Revolution whose victory will at the same time create possibilities for Socialism.
I wish you a very successful conference and look forward very much to reading your resolutions.
Issued by COSATU, April 19 2012
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