NUMSA PRESIDENT'S OPENING REMARKS TO THE NATIONAL BAIRGAINING CONFERENCE HELD FROM 16 - 19 APRIL 2013 IN IRENE, PRETORIA, April 16 2013
"Redistribution of Wealth Now as Demanded by Freedom Charter! Motsotso wa Numsa!!".
National Office Bearers,
National Bargaining Conference delegates,
Leaders of COSATU and COSATU affiliates present here,
Alliance leaders present here,
Cabinet Ministers present here,
Comrades and friends,
I take the privilege this morning on behalf of the National Office Bearers of the red, militant National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa to greet and welcome you to this important National Bargaining Conference.
This conference is an ultimate mandating meeting for our negotiators in all sectors that are negotiating this year. It was preceded by a vigorous process where hundreds of general meetings took place where the owners of this union, the members, mandated you to truly represent them in this bargaining conference.
You dare not fail them.
At this point I want to borrow from Cde Joe Slovo's seminal work of 1988 about trade unions;
A trade union is the prime mass organisation of the working class. To fulfil its purpose, it must be as broad as possible and fight to maintain its legal status. It must attempt, in the first place, to unite, on an industrial basis, all workers (at whatever level of political consciousness) who understand the elementary need to come together and defend and advance their economic conditions. It cannot demand more as a condition of membership. But because the state and its political and repressive apparatus is an instrument of the dominant economic classes, it is impossible for trade unions in any part of the world to keep out of the broader political conflict.
Especially in our country, where racist domination and capitalist exploitation are two sides of the same coin, it is even more clear that a trade union cannot stand aside from the liberation struggle. Indeed, the trade union movement is the most important mass contingent of the working class. Its organised involvement in struggle, both as an independent force and as part of the broad liberation alliance, undoubtedly reinforces the dominant role of the workers as a class. In addition, trade unions' and workers' experience of struggle in unions provide the most fertile field in which to school masses of workers in socialist understanding and political consciousness."
I urge you to remember these pointed words from the departed General Secretary of the SACP, Cde Joe Slovo for the duration of this Bargaining Conference.
Hands Off Collective Bargaining!
This NBC takes place when the Free Market Foundation has gone to the constitutional court to argue that collective bargaining agreements must not be binding to other employers who are not members of different employer bodies.
This body has been there for many years, it has published papers where they were arguing for the scrapping of collective bargaining and progressive labour legislation in our country, but in my recollection, it is the first time, they have gone to the constitutional court. Why now? Let me try and make sense of this action by Mr Herman Mashaba, the man who made his money from hair products called "Black Like Me". I thought long and hard, and recollected an analogy of what was happening in my province when the IFP was still fighting with the ANC.
This is what was happening; when a member of ANC defected to IFP or visa versa, that new member would become the worst aggressor towards his former organisation in an effort to prove to the new organisation that he/she indeed belongs to them. The moral of the story is that, this man who use to sell hair products at the boot of his car in black townships have joined the capitalists class and he wants to prove a point that he can brutalise the working class better than capitalists who were born as capitalists.
The other important observation is that workers must see what we have always said that capitalists are the same; there is no better one, black like me or white like them. We must take the campaign to the Free Market Foundation and Mr. Herman Mashaba to defend our hard won rights.
Collective Bargaining in 2013 is also taking place when the mining and agricultural sectors' strikes are still fresh in the minds of the owners of our union. It is a fact that collective bargaining post Marikana and De Doorns will never be the same. It is fundamentally important to remember the struggles of these workers.
We have felt the pain of the National Union of Mineworkers through statements and a march of NUMSA Youth Forum that took place on that unfortunate Saturday, where Cde Billy Zulu of Ceppawu was attacked by people who claim to be leaders of workers in Rustenburg.
We did this out of love of workers and the class that they belong to, without expecting to be praised by anyone.
We remain convinced that a worker that is not organised under a COSATU union, is an unorganised worker.
Hands Off Cde Irvin Jim
The open letter linking us to problems in NUM came as a shock and more shocking was the attempted isolation of Cde Irvin Jim from his union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. Given what the late Cde Joe Slovo theorised about trade unions above, one expects the SACP leaders to go an extra mile in working for the unity of the workers organisations irrespective of their level of political consciousness.
Now when you accuse the General Secretary of NUMSA of being a pseudo communist, you are totally negating the intervention of Cde Joe Slovo that I read here. To respond for Cde Jim, he has done well himself in his response. We did not demand a level of political consciousness, we needed a General Secretary in 2008, he was available, we elected him and in 2012 we reaffirmed our confidence in him. It is a bonus that he is a communist and that we do not doubt his commitment to the cause of workers and the working class.
The target of 400 000 members in 2016
We pride ourselves with the impressive growth in our membership and we remain resolute that we want to achieve the target of 400 000 members when we go to our next Congress in 2016. I am proud to inform you that we have surpassed 315 000 members as we gather here. A logo for this important campaign will be unveiled here for comments and adoption by the special Central Committee that will take place on Friday, 19 April 2013.
As trade unions, we are often accused of dabbling into politics more than we dabble into worker issues. We want to reiterate that our founding preamble as NUMSA does not give us a choice but to fight until the economic exploitation is abolished. It is an undisputed reality that economic exploitation does not take place in a vacuum, but a highly political environment. It is politicians who pass laws that allow capitalism to rise from terminal illnesses that it has suffered.
It was politicians who decided to bail out the banks in the United States and Europe. It is politicians who allowed Europeans banks to undemocratically remove democratically elected leaders in Greece and Italy when they could not guarantee the implementation of the austerity measures. In fact, as far as we are concerned, worker issues are political issues. We must refuse to be converted into a yellow union.
Our continued growth is a proof that we are doing things in a manner that our members expects us to do them.
NUMSA AND APARTHEID
Minister Manuel has raised a matter here about whether we can still blame apartheid as South Africans. There have been many responses to him, from the President of our country, the Secretary General of the SACP, the General Secretary of NEHAWU and an interesting defence of Minister Manuel by his Cabinet colleague Deputy Minister of Public Works Cde Jeremy Cronin.
As a metalworkers I can speak about the experiences of members in our workplaces where some hearings and charges are still racialised in nature, where black graduates are never ready to appointed as supervisors and managers, where it is not hearsay to hear cases of workers being called kaffirs, where all black workers still wake up at 3 am to go to work because of apartheid spatial designs, where in the Standard Bank, a highly educated 45 year old did not qualify to be a CEO of the bank because he is black, the Bank decided on a "joint CEO" appointment with a white colleague because he is black.
Once again Cde Joe Slovo talks about race tyranny hereunder;
Socialist ideas take root not just through book knowledge but through struggle around day-to-day issues. And, for those who have to live the hourly realities and humiliations of race tyranny (at the point of production, in the townships, in the street, etc.) there is no issue more immediate and relevant than the experience of national oppression. This is certainly the starting point of political consciousness for every black worker.
Should we not than be worried when a senior Minister says we must stop blaming apartheid? This done in the absence of political education classes renders our people incapable of grasping necessary political consciousness to struggle against capitalism in our country. As NUMSA, we must join those who reject the view that were expressed by Cde Trevor Manuel, finish and klaar.
Where I agree with Cde Jeremy is that the NDP failed to diagnose the real problems that have faced the South African state since 1994, including the impact of the sunset clause. I warmly welcome this from him especially after he had written an open letter to my General Secretary which was very unfortunate as I have already indicated above.
People are condemning open letters, but they all forget it all started with Cde Jeremy isolating Cde Jim from his union, NUMSA. It is worth noting that in the defence of Minister Manuel, a reference to the "maverick" response from Cde Fikile Majola is acknowledged by Cde Jeremy as that of a General Secretary of NEHAWU writing on behalf of his union.
I duly advice Cde Jeremy Cronin for consistency, which communists are known for, to also continue to engage with Cde Jim, as a General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
NUMSA and NDP
As NUMSA, we are humbled by the number of voices within our alliance that are agreeing with NUMSA that the NDP must be put back on the table and be dissected again. We are looking forward to a COSATU process and an Alliance process that in our view should have taken place already.
I just want to take this opportunity and clarify a few matters that have been wrongly reported in the public.
1. NUMSA did not only wake in 2013 to engage the NDP
2. NUMSA engaged with NPC from the appointment of the Chairperson of the Commission
3. NUMSA released a statement after the publication of the Diagnostic Report
4. NUMSA invited Cde Kuben Naidoo from the NPC Secretariat to come to NUMSA, he came and we engaged.
5. NUMSA made a submission to the NPC and published its views on the NUMSA website last year
6. NUMSA through the COSATU delegation engaged in the commissions in Mangaung.
I want to refer to number two above where we raised reservation with Cde Trevor Manuel being made the Chairperson of the Planning Commission, not because we had something personal against him, but because of his location in class terms.
I want to borrow from the three "obvious" that Cde Joe Slovo uses in 1988 to explain what was our concern with the leader of the planning commission;
"It is obvious that the black capitalist class favours capitalism and that it will do its best to influence the post-apartheid society in this direction.
It is obvious that the black middle and upper classes who take part in a broad liberation alliance will jostle for hegemony and attempt to represent their interests as the interests of all Africans.
It is obvious that (like their counterparts in every part of the world) the black middle and upper strata, who find themselves on the side of the people's struggle, are often inconsistent and vacillating. They are usually the enemy's softest targets for achieving a reformist, rather than a revolutionary, outcome."
Our view was that Cde Trevor Manuel's performance since 1994 was locating him on the third ‘obvious' and we were worried about what would become of the final product of the NDP.
Our view was that the planning commission was a victory for the left axis that worked together within the ANC in Polokwane and our thinking was that at least a person from the left should have led the planning commission because it was always going to be better to have a person who believe on central planning by the state then a person who believes markets must be left on their own.
We fully understand that the ANC is a multiclass organisation, but this we believed was an area that required a person who believed in command planning by the State.
We had just defeated the Harvard group that was brought it to give legitimacy to ASGISA which was a continuation of GEAR. And in our minds to get a person who was the brainchild of the continuation of GEAR by another name was a challenge.
It was the intervention of the Secretary General of the ANC who pleaded with us in that COSATU Congress in Gallagher Estates that let us not play the man, we approached the microphone to tone down our opposition, but before that we registered a fact that historically, individuals leave imprints in history.
The imprints that we see in the NDP vindicate the fears that we had as NUMSA then and we urge the leadership of COSATU, ANC and SACP to prioritize a thorough discussion on the NDP in the coming Alliance Summit that according to the NEHAWU NEC Statement will take place in June.
We welcome the pronouncement by NEHAWU NEC that there are issues that they also want to raise with the NDP.
The discussion must pose pertinent questions, some of which we have raised and others are continually being raised by other sections within the liberation movement.
The discussion must remember that President Jacob Zuma said the following in his Political Report to Mangaung Conference;
"When we took a decision on national developing planning, we were very conscious of the fact that, firstly the transition to a national democratic society will face complex challenges which cannot be addressed on an ad hoc fashion or solely left to the forces of the market"
We must then pose a question if the majority of proposals in the current NDP do not outsource the responsibility of a developmental state to the markets that must first grow the economy which is what GEAR said in 1996 and hence the stubborn triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality that is still with us today.
I want to congratulate the ANC leadership for allowing us space earlier this year to engage on the Eskom application to NERSA and remind the leadership that even there we followed a dual process of a public campaign and engaging the leadership, we see no contradiction in our awareness campaign to our structures and the readiness to engage with the leadership. Even now, we are ready to engage with the leadership.
UNITY AND COHESION OF COSATU
Dear comrades, this is the first big meeting that takes place after the tough CEC of our beloved federation. You have seen faceless people saying all manner of things in the media about the General Secretary of COSATU. In that CEC, NUMSA was accused for very bad things and I shudder to think if the facilitated process will be able to find closure on some of them because they were insensitive and very brutal directed to NUMSA.
As a President, it is my responsibility to ensure that COSATU is united and NUMSA refuses to be dragged into factional fights that are becoming the order of day in the CECs when thousands and thousands of workers face problems that need a strong and united COSATU.
We will give the process a chance as requested by the leadership of COSATU; however our Central Committee that meets on Friday cannot escape a discussion that has been put in the public domain by FAWU. FAWU seems to believe that we have taken too long to resolve the hangover from COSATU Congress and maybe a Special COSATU Congress can be a better solution. I think I will reserve my views here and share them in the NUMSA Central Committee or our closed session later.
ANC VICTORY IN 2014
Our country will have national elections next year. As NUMSA, our last Congress resolved that we must ensure decisive victory for the ANC as it has been like that since the first democratic elections. The last CEC of COSATU has reaffirmed the decision that is in line with the 2015 to once again ensure the victory of the ANC.
I think the coming Alliance Summit in June shall have to add two more matters on its agenda, on top of the NDP;
1. Labour brokers
2. E-tolling
I think our government must still endeavour to further engage on these matters to find a solution. The Alliance Summit might be a platform to provide solutions for our government.
The recent challenges of the Alliance are being watched by many, some who were historically against this Revolutionary Alliance. I want to remind you what Cde Joe Slovo wrote on this question in 1988;
The alliance of the working class with forces which reject its long-term socialist aspirations is never unproblematic and without tension. It requires constant vigilance and, above all, the safeguarding of the independence of the vanguard and mass class organs of the workers.
I think this quotation does not need interpretation. It is self-explanatory and it explains exactly the current situation. However an important warning was issued in the same piece by Cde Joe Slovo which is always ignored by those who were originally opposed to the Revolutionary Alliance;
"If the working class and its vanguard and mass organisations were to get locked up with themselves, the greatest harm would be done to the cause of both national liberation and social emancipation. By rejecting class alliances and going it alone, the working class would in fact be surrendering the leadership of the national struggle to the upper and middle strata."
I declare that this National Bargaining Conference is opened.
I thank you.
Issued by NUMSA, April 16 2013
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