A giant step for Black labour THE FOUNDING conference of a united trade-union confederation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) held November 29-December 1, 1985, in Durban marked the end of a stage in the renewal of the independent trade-union movement. It concluded the period in which independent unions had emerged in a scattered way and discussed how to fuse. (1)
The formation of a 500,000-member federation has created a new situation, drastically altering the face of the trade-union movement. The founding congress of COSATU was a major step toward unity, and more than a symbolic one. But now in the superfederation, very important organizational and political questions are going to ment operation would simply fade as it became clear that there really was nothing in it for the nationalist people, although some said it was part of a long-term political plan to isolate SF politically.
It is true that "illusions" about the deal have not yet had the disastrous effects that similar British and neocolonialist maneuvers had in the mid-1970s. But the wreck of those maneuvers on the reefs of Unionist intransigence did not in itself end the relative political isolation of the republican movement. It was only the rise of the H-Block movement that did that.
More fundamentally, it would be hard to explain the duration of the republican resistance since 1969 without the mass civil rights movement of 1968-1972. Although the republicans won the bulk of the Northern Catholic vote in 1955, the guerrilla campaign they launched subsequently ended in defeat in 1961, leaving the Irish national movement at its lowest ebb in this century.
At the very least, this election setback seems to mark the exhaustion of the impetus derived from the H-Block campaign, which was already announced by SF's failure to make a breakthrough in the South and the peaking of its vote even in the North. Hopefully, this warning will revive thinking about political strategy and how to broaden the national movement. The elections have pointed up the fact that SF does not have unlimited time. In the history of no country, not even Ireland, have people been willing to keep up a fight forever that seems to be leading nowhere. • have to be debated and decided. PETER BLUMER
On the organizational side, there will now have to be real fusions of the unions in each industry in order to comply with the provision that there should be only one national union for each industry. Thus, different methods of work, as well as the different traditions of each of the components in this process of unification, will have to be melted together in the same crucible.
On the political side, COSATU and each of its member unions will have to take positions on such major questions as trade-union involvement in political campaigns, relations with the civic associations, relations with the United Democratic Front (UDF), and so on.
This whole body of problems will not be resolved overnight. The discussion will be long and complex. Up until the founding of COSATU, every component of the union movement had built its organization in accordance with its own special project, around which the leadership was consolidated. Now these different conceptions exist in the same organization.
Therefore, the question of internal democracy will not be the smallest problem. (2) However, the most complicated one, at least in the short term, may be for COSATU to achieve some overall cohesion nationally and in the work of all its unions in the various industries. This may not be easy.
In additie, two other questions remain pending. First of all, there is the problem of Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) and the Azanian Confederation of Trade Unions (AZACTU), which for the moment are not in COSATU. (See box.) Second, there is the problem of some unions that have come from the tradition of the Trade-Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA), a white job-trust union movement that has under its leadership Black "parallel" unions, which are detaching themselves from it and showing an interest in joining the COSATU
Many observers have tried to demonstrate that this process of unification has been dominated by a certain competition between two
1. On the debate over the process of trade-union unification, see the articles published in 'International Viewpoint, No. 8, December 9, 1985.
The structures proposed for democratically rooting the COSATU include coordination at the base through Shop Stewards Councils bringing together the various unions at the local level. The representatives of these Shop Stewards Councils will meet every four months in a regional congress, COLE COS. which will elect a Regional Executive that meet monthly. Within this Regional Executive Committee, representation is assured for all the unions affiliated to the COSATU At the national level, a Central Committee made up of two representatives for each affiliated union, including one worker, will meet every three months. Between the meetings of this Central Committee, a National Executive Committee will assure the functioning of the confederation. Finally, a national congress is to be held every two years.
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986
COSATU
At the launching of COSATU (DR) traditions - that of the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) and that of certain unions belonging to the UDF. Be that as it may, it is true that these two pre-existing currents have behaved very different ways on a certain number of political questions. The general workers' unions belonging to the UDF are going to have to divide up along industrial lines in order to take part in the formation of united industrial unions. A complex unification
While FOSATU has built its base mainly in industrial sectors where the working class was quite highly concentrated, the unions linked to the UDF have above all but not exclusively focused on services. Thus, FOSATU's base tends to be constituted by the most stable section of the working class. This does not mean, of course, that antiunion repression by the bosses, relying on the apartheid laws, cannot make the jobs of these categories of workers also precarious. A notable example of this was when the management of the semi-state enterprise SASOL [South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation] fired thousands of strikers and unionists in 1984. (3) However, the base of the unions linked to the UDF represents industries where the workers' status and sometimes also their dispersion are generally greater.
The industries in which the FOSATU unions were the biggest were auto, chemicals, metals, paper, textiles, and transport. In these industries as a whole, FOSATU had 111,500 members on the eve of the founding of COSATU. As for the unions linked to the UDF, they had a majority among the organized workers in agriculture, health, sectors of the railroads, construction, domestic work, and cleaning services, representing a total of 43,400 workers.
Finally, in a series of industries the majority unions were not attached either to FOSATU or to the organizations linked to the UDF. This includes the municipal workers, represented mainly by the Cape Town Municipal Workers Association (CTMWA), with 11,000 members; the retail clerks, for whom the main union was the CCAWUSA, the union of commercial, food, and allied-trade workers, with 50,000 members; the food workers, where the biggest union was the Food and Canning Workers Union (FCWU), with 26,800 members; and finally, the minc workers, where the National Union of Miners (NUM) claimed a membership of 180,000.
This gives a general picture. But it is necessary to make some finer distinctions case by case. For example, the Farm Workers Union (FWU), which has adhered to the UDF and is trying to organize the farm workers, in 1985 claimed a membership of only 350. Such weakness is understandable when you consider that in principle agricultural workers in South Africa have no right to join unions.
Moreover, in several industries, alongside a dominant union there are other organizations with substantial strength, whose existence gives a correspondingly greater importance to the problem of forming single unions for each industry. The weight given to the membership figures of the various unions also has to be adjusted in accordance with the extent of organization of the respective unions' base.
In fact, most of the unions take care to distinguish between their members, in the broad sense of the term, and those who pay dues. Very often, o percent to 50 percent of often, the second figure represents the first.
The debates in the trade-union movement are far from having ended with the founding congress of COSATU. We got a glimpse of such discussions in the final meetings held in preparation for the congress, when the metal workers' union affiliated to FOSATU, the MAWU and the NUM left the hall in protest against the persistant demand of some unions that each union, regardless of its size, have the right to equal representation in the national leadership of the future united confederation. Over and above the problems of organization and democracy, there are very specific political stakes involved in such debates.
The various proclamations of support for the founding of COSATU issued by the various political currents and groups in South Africa highlight
3. On the firing of the SASOL workers and the reinstatement of a large part of them after a victory of the local union, see 'IV', No. 80, July 15, 1985. International Viewpoint 24 February 1986
the stakes involved. Everyone understands quite well that the way that COSATU defines itself in the future will have major consequences for the political movements. political movements.
In an article hailing the establishment of the superfederation, the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), for example, also hailed the affiliation of some unions to the UDF. Understanding clearly the debates that are going to arise in COSATU the article says the following: "SACTU does however stress that as long as the oppressive apartheid regime exists, where the aboveground trade unionists face detention without trial, torture and murder at the hands of the police, the occupation of their townships, and the brutal strike-busting tactics of the regime and bosses, there will always be a need for SACTU. SACTU will, through its underground structures, continue to guide, influence, and persuade the trade-union movement along the revolutionary course of our struggle ... SACTU, through its place in the Congress Alliance (ANC-SA), shows its total commitment to the destruction of the apartheid regime and to the implementation of the Freedom Charter. " (4)
The message is clear. In other words, the creation of COSATU is to revive the debate on the relationship between the trade-union movement and the African National Congress (ANC) current. In the past, one could draw a dividing line between the unions sympathizing with the Chartist current, some of which identify explicitly with the SACTU, and unions maintaining independent or critical positions with regard to the ANC. But today everyone belongs to the same organization. New challenges
The establishment of COSATU will not mean just a greater sum of forces but will promote a qualitative advance in working-class action. This clearly appears already from a reading of the congress resolutions. Their general line bears a broad imprint of anticapitalist and anti-imperialist positions, while being based on the immediate economic and democratic concerns of the workers.
Some of these motions sum up and systematize a coherent political point of view on certain questions. Formerly, the elements of the response given in these documents appeared only in a scattered way in interviews by the union leaders, press communiques, and statements of congresses. The body of resolutions of the founding
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986
The unions that opted out
The Council of Unions of
South Africa (CUSA) and the
Azanian Confederation of Trade
Unions have not joined COSATU.
The main criticism they make of the superfederation is that it has not adopted as a principle the need for a "Black leadership," that is, in fact, it has accepted whites into the union leaderships. This is a significant difference between the approach of these unions and the
"non-racialist" orientation of the unions in the COSATU.
To make its position clear,
CUSA writes, "We do not want whites coming into our organisation from the top. We accept them joining us from the grassroots and working themselves up just like our black members do." (Izwilethu,
November-December 1985.)
This argument may seem rather insensitive inasmuch as the whites concerned have been involved for a long time in building the independent unions. This question, however, is related to a more general assessment of the content of the anti apartheid struggle. COSATU's
"non-racialism" is not the refleccongress of COSATU, which are published in the following pages, constitute a veritable action program for the trade-union movement, which in itself is an important step forward.
Some of these resolutions, moreover, indicate attempts to widen considerably the field of activity of the independent trade unions. The document on the Bantustans states that COSATU is determined to build its organization inside these reservations. However, in general, the puppet regimes of these Bantustans refuse to the labor laws won by the Black workers in the rest of South Africa. In the Bantustans of Ciskei and Bophuthatswana, for example, no trade-union rights are really recognized. COSATU has thrown down the gauntlet to these "governments," which are really just pawns of Pretoria.
Another resolution takes account of the existence of immigrant workers coming from neighboring countries and working mainly in the mines. COSATU announces not only that it intends to organize these workers but that it also wants to establish relations with progressive unions in southern Africa. No sooner said than done. In early December, Jay Naidoo, general secretary of COSATU, spent five days in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, where he met leaders of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).
According to the Sunday Times of tion of the presence of some whites in its leaderships but the consequence of its conception of a future united, democratic, and nonracial
South Africa.
For its part, the CUSA leadership seems to underestimate the process of unification underway when it writes: "Talk about a super-federation in South Africa is a myth since only about 15% of the working class is organised in this country."
COSATU certainly does not claim to hold a monopoly in the trade-union field. But it represents an acceleration in the history of the South Africa workers' movement that threatens to leave CUSA and AZACTU far behind. In a joint communique these two organizations defend their position as follows: "Our belief of a new federation is a federation which would unite the majority of organised Black workers in our country, expressing the true aspira tions of Black workers and not accomodating the aspirations of a minority leadership." (Iz wilethu,
Vol. 3, No. 5-10, November 1985.) the Cape, Nadoo declared on that occasion that COSATU's "commitment to forging links with democratic African trade unions must be viewed in the context of multinational corporations operating throughout the continent. The meeting with ZCTU must threfore be seen as the first in a series of talks with trade unions outside South Africa."
It was evident that sooner or later COSATU would seek to measure its positions against those of the ANC. There are several reasons for this. First of all, there is the special weight of the ANC in the mass movement. But there is also the fact that in this new phase in the political situation -in which a lot of people, starting with the bosses of the big capitalist enterprises, are saying that it is necessary to negotiate with the ANC and some of whom have been going to Lusaka to discuss with the leadership of that movement - the unions could not remain apart.
On the other hand, inasmuch as the question of relations with the Chartist current is going to remain a disputed political question within COSATU, the leadership may decide to meet the problem head on and not beat about the bush.
This is undoubtedly why Jay Naidoo took advantage of his trip to
A complete version of this message was published in Intercontinental Press' (New York), January 27, 1986.
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Trade unions affiliated to COSATU 1. Amalgamated Black Workers Union 1,000 2. Brick Clay and Allied Workers Union 748 3. Cape Town Municipal Workers Association 11,097 4. Chemical Workers Industrial Union 20,700 5. Cleaning Services and Allied Workers Union 850 6. Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union of SA 50,345 7. Food and Canning Workers Union 26,455 8. General and Allied Workers Union 19,076 9. General Workers Union 10,000 10. General Workers Union of SA 2,205 11. Health and Allied Workers Union 1,111 12. Metal and Allied Workers Union 36,789 13. Motor Assembly and Component Workers Union of SA 3,100 14. Municipal Workers Union of SA 9,249 15. National Automobile and Allied Workers Union 20,338 16. National General Workers Union and the Retail and Allied 6,057
Workers Union (Pretoria) 17. National Iron, Steel and Metal Workers Union 976 18. Commercial Distributive Workers Union 1,600 19. National Post Office and Allied Workers Union 2,163 20. National Union of Textile Workers 23,241 21. National Union of Mineworkers 100,000 22. Paper Wood and Allied Workers Union 11,856 23. Retail and Allied Workers Union (Cape Town) 3,830 24. South African Allied Workers Union 25,032 25. South African Domestic Workers Association 4,500 26. South African Mineworkers Union 3,029 27. South African Railways and Harbour Workers Union 8,220 28. SA Scooter Transport and Allied Workers Union 4,700 29. SA Textile and Allied Workers Union 1,900 30. Sweet Food and Allied Workers Union 19,596 31. South African Tin Workers Union 581 32. Transport and General Workers Union 11,000 33. United Metal Mining and Allied Workers Union of SA 8,335 steps in mobilizing the countryside.
Such are the great challenges the united federation took up at its founding. But eventually the independent trade-union movement in South Africa is going to be confronted with very important questions of analysis and orientation related to the political and economic situation of the country. No one could dispute the fact that South Africa has entered into a period of major political confrontations. But apartheid is not only being put in question by the revolutionary people's movement. It is also at the center of debates running through the ruling class and the political establishment. A part of the liberal current, that is, of big capital is beginning to challenge the main legislative underpinnings of apartheid in the name of seeking a solution to the economic crisis. Giving the working class a voice
Within the government itself criticisms and proposals are being raised that would have been considered inadmissible only a few years ago. The President's Council has set about dreaming up substantial reforms bf apartheid. In a report entitled "An Urbanisation Strategy for the Republic of South Africa," dated September 1985, the Council proposed a policy involving the abandonment of the goals of territorial segregation and advanced the idea of an abolition of Influx Control (which regulates the movements of Black labor) and the laws on internal passports (passes) for Blacks.
This report starts off from the principle that the urbanization of the Blacks is both inevitable and economically necessary. Linking the search for a new doctrine to a determination to limit the rise of the people's movement, the report of the President's Council looks to a sort of dispersion of the residences of nonwhites, or a reduced concentration, which would require a major change in the allotment of residential zones based on the racial criteria set up by the Group Areas Act. President Botha himself has just declared that "apartheid is outmoded." (5)
While it would be wrong to think that the South African bourgeoisie is going to saw off the branch that it is sitting on, it is necessary to take all these debates seriously. A part of the ruling class, and not just bourgeois liberal circles, is looking for a longterm structural solution to the present social and economic crisis.
Cf. le Monde, February 1,2, 1986. International Viewpoint 24 February 1986
Harare to meet the leaders of the ANC and SACTU. According to the Cape Times, he said in passing that "it was apparent that representatives of organisations outside South Africa agreed with the necessity for COSATU to unite all workers while remaining independent and accountable to the needs and aspirations of the working class as expressed through its leadership and the structures of COSATU."
First of all, this was a response to Gatsha Buthelezi, chief of the KwaZulu Bantustan, who had just declared that COSATU was a "new front" of the ANC and had asked the Zulu workers to leave this federation. But it can also be understood as an answer to a nudge from SACTU to get COSATU to become a link between the trade-union movement and the ANC.
Moreover, it seems that COSATU wants as soon as possible to launch a union for agricultural workers,
TABLE 1:
SHOP STEWARDS
SHOP-STWEARDS COMMITTEES
FULL-TIMERS
WORKPLACES ORGANIZED
Source: A Survey of the South African who total 1.5 million in the country. But, as the Sunday Times noted, "COSATU could come up against a web of legal problems mainly because agricultural workers have no access to legal bargaining machinery or protection against sacking."
In addition to being excluded from the existing labor legislation, farm workers have no access to the unemployment compensation fund. Their wages start at 60 rand a month for more skilled (about 30 U.S. dollars), but they go down to 40 rand a month (17 U.S. dollars) for other categories on certain farms.
Organizing such a very special layer of workers would not be an easy task, nor without risks. However, even a partial organization of the agricultural workers could profoundly change the social situation, inasmuch as it would establish a link between the urban mobilizations and the first
1983 1985 6,000 12,462 1,443 - 306 756 3,421 Labour Bulletin, cited by John Lewis and Estelle Randall in the Weekly Mail, November 29, 1985.
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The trade-union movement is going to be confronted with this political question in particular since it often finds itself in day-to-day struggles at grips with bosses who proclaim liberal positions outside the workplace.
COSATU will have to put its proposals loudly and clearly in this debate, because, while it has not brought together all of the independent union movement, it is seen as its backbone. In fact, it may be the troublemaker in the great debate that is starting up on the future of the country and of its institutions. For example, it was not without malice that the South Africa economist Duncan Innes wrote in the Weekly Mail of January 10, 1986:
"Gavin Relly flew off to Lusaka to ask the ANC what kind of South Africa they would like to see in the future. I can't help wondering why Mr. Relly doesn't also put that question to the hundreds of thousands of Black workers who are employed on its mines and factories. Our current on Its mines and tactories. Our current rulers are forever telling us that racial Black political organisations like the ANC, UDF and Azapo don't really represent the views of the people. The best way of finding out whether or not this is true is simply to ask people. And where better for the business community to start than in its mines, farms, factories, shops and offices? . We have already heard cries of horror emerging following the formation of COSATU, which is seen to be a more militant trade union federation than its predecessors. Businessmen and women may well feel reluctant about approaching a federation of this kind either directly or through its affiliates. But if they don't talk to organisations like COSATU, then whom do they talk to? It would be foolhardy in the extreme to ignore an organisation with a membership of half-a-million because one is afraid of the views it holds." (6)
In the immediate future, COSATU will have to count more than ever on the tradition of grassroots organization associated with some of the big industrial unions affiliated to it. Such organization is reflected by the rooting of the trade-union movement at the shop-steward level. Table 1 gives an idea of this.
There is no question about the fact that the independent trade-union movement has first organized the most stable layers of the Black proletariat. The emergence of the miners' union was an initial spectacular step in organizing the broader layers whose jobs and the conditions under which they are hired could be a lot more precarious. The great mass of the proletariat has not yet been organized by the trade-union movement. But under the conditions of
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986
SOUTH AFRICA apartheid and repression, could anything else have been expected? The trade-union movement has already contributed a great deal by giving a voice to the industrial working class as such.
The trade-unionism represented by COSATU is qualitatively superior to that of the Industrial and Commerce Union (ICU) of the 1920s or even the SACTU of the 1950s. (7) The Black working class of South Africa has changed. Its weight, its concentration, and its level of consciousness have risen apace with the economic development of the country and the industrialization of the last twenty years.
If you look at the last ten years that have seen the formation of most Resolutions of the of the unions that have now created COSATU, you can see that one of the main contributions of this trade-union movement is that it has given an organized and centralized form to the struggles of the industrial working class. In so doing, COSATU has emerged in the mass movement as the specific expression of these working-class layers.
6. Gavin Relly is one of the bosses of the powerful Anglo-American Corporation. He led the delegation of bosses that met the ANC leadership in Lusaka, Zambia, in September 1985. This meeting inaugurated a deliberate policy by liberal and later church representatives of holding open contacts with the ANC. contacts thie the is the exile trade-union organization linked to the ANC. The ICU was the first attempt at organizing Black workers, an experiment that came after the first world war.