It’s about time unions put workers first
It is time for the South African trade union movement to awake from its slumbers because workers cannot keep on sounding the alarm in vain. Empowered with the sole responsibility of ensuring workers are protected from exploitation and other forms of abuse, unions are uniquely placed to influence conditions of work for millions of employees.
Granted, about 70% of workers in SA have shunned the unions, but those who sign up for membership and commit a portion of their salaries to their organisations on a monthly basis do so out of the need for protection. However, the unions are not coming to the party.
Appropriate interventions are not media statements lamenting the state of affairs, nor hurling insults at bosses while leading marches. What workers need in the face of intransigent employers are boots on the ground, willing to act on the Labour Relations Act, Basic Conditions of Employment Act and other progressive worker protection legislation.
These laws exist because it has long been the case that unless forced to do so employers in SA rarely do right by their human resources.
The Star newspaper reported this week that mineworkers interviewed in Carletonville, where seven of their colleagues were crushed to death in a series of seismic events last Thursday, were misled about their safety.
A manager at the Sibanye- Stillwater mine allegedly told the workers to continue working after the first ground collapse was heard. The National Union of Mineworkers and Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union have condemned management, but the mine has neither disputed nor confirmed the allegation.
The bigger question, however, is where the two warring unions’ shop stewards or worker representatives were when a supervisor allegedly ignored warnings and “sent the workers to their deaths”.
If the workers knew they could count on a union authority who prioritised their wellbeing above all else, it is improbable they would have kept working when it became clear they were caught up in a serious seismic event. Similarly, when 20 female staff members were stripped and searched after blood was found in a toilet at a Topbet branch on the East Rand, it was the EFF that rushed to their rescue, not a trade union.
Cosatu spokesman Sizwe Pamla said during a recent interview on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, which found that SA had the worst labour-employer co-operation in the world, that “unions have left workers to their own devices”. He was not shocked by the report, explaining that there was not a single sector in SA where conditions had improved for workers. Citing abuses experienced by farm workers who had nowhere to go after being forcefully removed from farms after their families had been in the employ of the same farmers for generations, Pamla concluded that workers had no one to depend on. This admission by a seasoned union communicator speaks volumes on how the union sees itself.
The unions’ focus appears to have become who has the most members and can command the biggest marches, leaving workers in the trenches having to resort to joining more than one union at a time. This phenomenon, known as “dual membership”, is most common in the public sector and is a direct result of the union leaders’ dereliction of duty.
As the Labour Court roll gets more congested and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration gets busier by the year, workers are having to find alternative means to resolve disputes. The popularity of an NGO, the Casual Workers Advice Office, is testimony to this.
While there are many threats to the survival of trade unions, a loss of members will surely become the most pressing if they do not step up their game.