Scorched earth approach to change has too high a price

If we want to know why economic change will work only if it is negotiated, the state of the trade union movement gives the answer. It is a sign of the unions’ woes that it takes a national Cosatu congress to draw public attention to the labour movement.

But the focus on Cosatu that has come with this week’s congress is not flattering. It has lost 600,000 members in five years. While this reflects splits in the movement or changes in the economy more than workers ditching unions, its influence and ability to mobilise support have also dwindled.

Its chief rival, the SA Federation of Trade Unions, may be in better shape but it too has yet to show the strength unions once enjoyed. The unions’ chief problem is that they have become part of what they are meant to fight — an economy divided between insiders and outsiders.

This does not mean their members are fat cats who prosper at the expense of the jobless. Wages are spread among jobless dependants, so the unemployed benefit from unionism. But leaders have often become part of the insider club, creating a gulf between them and their members and blunting labour’s voice.

Given these weaknesses, why must economic change be negotiated with unions? Can’t those for whom change means strengthening the private sector at the expense of the public, business at the expense of workers, simply ignore them?

The answer was given at Eskom not so long ago. Its management did exactly what those who would ignore unions want: it said it could afford no pay increase at all. This tough stance ended rapidly when worker action forced the power utility to resume load shedding.

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan insisted that the economy could not afford power interruptions and Eskom began negotiating an increase with unions, having learned that though the unions are weakened, their members are still able to make themselves heard. Refusing to negotiate meant the lights went out.

Those who want the government and business to ignore labour should have expected this, because it happened in Britain, the country they love to cite as an example of how toughness can weaken unions. They forget the costs: disruptions to the economy there lasted months.

It might be possible here to sideline unions and their members, but only at the cost of similar pain.

Calls for the government to bypass the unions are also calls for months of load shedding and other disruptions. If those who want to ignore the unions are happy to put up with this, their view would be consistent.

But, as Gordhan realised, they are not. Nor is anyone else, so the only route to change is through negotiation.

Eskom is far more likely to change if management, instead of trying to back unions into a corner at bargaining time, invited them months before to see the power utility’s books and begin talking about how to deal with its financial crisis.

The bargaining would be tough but would be far more likely to produce a solution than the “fight, don’t talk” strategy. If this is true of a weakened union movement, it applies even more to all the other economic actors. None of the interests is strong enough to force the others to do what it wants, so all will be able to get some of what they want only by conceding to others some of what they want.

Scorched earth change is possible only if people are prepared to pay a price most South Africans will not pay.

This makes negotiation the only way forward.