AROUND THE WORLD
SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH AFRICA
A milestone for Recent developments illustrate the richness of the independent trade-union movement in South Africa Firstly, there is the actual growth in the numbers of workers Joining unions. Between 1980 and 1983 the number of African' trade unionists went up by 200%, from 220,000 to 670,000 members. There has also been some progress at the organisational level within the unions towards a process of unity.
Also, workers struggles and trade union mobilisations are beginning to extract substantial concessions out of the employers. This was especially the case at the Sasol factory, a firm making oil from coal, owned by the state. In this firm which has a strategic impor tance for the regime, 6,000 workers had been made redundant a few
The settlement signed between the Chemical Workers Industrial Union and Sasol will surely go down as a milestone in South African labour history.
Not only has the union managed to get 70 percent of the 6,000 workers who were sacked for participating in the November stayaway taken back, it has also won new rights.
It is remarkable that CWIU even survived this attempt by a semi-state company to crush worker organisation, let alone come out of it with better worker rights.
The most important of these is the formal recognition of CWIU shop stewards who now have the right to represent workers and report back to them during working hours.
The shop stewards also have the right to hold a monthly caucus meeting during working hours and have access to telephones - an important right in plants the size of Sasol.
'Previously there was a lot of conflict in the Sasol plants between the elected worker representatives who were attempting to act like shop stewards and line management who were trying to stop them' , said WIU general secretary, Rod Crompton.
The union has also been given 'unlimited' access to the Sasol hostels together with a full time office in the International Viewpoint 20 May 1985 the trade unions months after an important strike on November 5 and 6, 1984. This strike action against the racist and repressive policy of the South African regime mobilised about a million black workers and constitutes the most important political strike in the history of the country (see International Viewpoint, No 65, 10 December 1984).
The Chemical Workers Industrial Union (CWIU), a member of the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) has just scored an important victory in obtaining the reintegration of 70 per cent of the sacked workers and other rights in connection with the union.
We publish below an article about this struggle which appeared in FOSATU News, No. 35-36, February-March 1985. hostels. Before, the union only had an office for three days a week.
The settlement follows months of negotiations between CWIU and Sasol.
In order to get the company to the negotiating table to discuss the reinstatement of the 6,000 sacked workers, the union lauched a national and international campaign.
All the unions involved in the present talks committed themselves to a national strike in solidarity with the Sasol workers.
And in the demonstrations against apartheid in the United States of America, one of the demands has been for the reinstatement of the Sasol workers. American unions have also taken up the issue individually.
On March 2 at a CWIU Congress, attended by all the union's shop stewards, it was decided to move the campaign on to a different footing by accepting the company's settlement offer.
"The settlement does not mean we have given up on the rest of the Sasol workers who have not been taken back,' said Rod Crompton.
•We have just decided to rather continue the campaign from within the plants, he added.
*Management has agreed in principle to hire a further 5 percent and have said that the door is not closed on the other 25 percent,' he said.
At present, the union is concentratin on rebuilding worker organisation withir the Sasol II and III plants.
A joint management/union negotiating committee has been established in order to negotiate other aspects of recognition which are not covered by the settlement agreement. And over the next week or two, union members will be put back on stop orders. CANADA
APRIL 20
DEMONSTRATION TORONTO: Chanting "Yankees out of Central America" and "Viva Nicaragua Libre" , over 1,500 people marched through downtown Toronto on April 20 to protest US intervention and Canadian complicity in the Caribbean and Central America.
This was one of several demonstrations in Canada. Others were held in Ottawa, Peterborough, Saskatoon and there was an anti-intervention contingent in the Vancouver "March for Peace" on April 27.
"We have come together to make a statement to our government in Ottawa, and to its so called "best friend and ally" in Washington" Toronto Anti-Intervention Coalition Co-chair Barry Weisleder told the cheering crowd, "We demand an end to America's dirty war in Central America. We demand an end to the brutal occupation of Grenada and the growing militarization of the Caribbean. We demand an end to Canadian complicity in all its forms."
"We must build a mass anti-intervention movement so big and so broad that it will deprive our generals of the money and men to wage war in the interests of corporate profits" , he concluded.
The Toronto Anti-Intervention Coalition is an alliance of over 75 church, labour, women's, solidarity, and community groups.
The demonstrators listened to speeches by Catholic theologian Gregory Baum, Dan Heap, New Democratic party Member of Parliament for Spadina, and John Donaldson, President of Ironworkers Local 721 and Vice President of the Ontario Federation of Labour. They explained their ma reasons for supporting the demonstratio but all agreed that what was mos important, in the words of Ann Pohl. o chair of the TAIC, "We support th inalienable right of the people of Centra Americal and the Caribbean to determi their own future."
27
SPANISH STATE