Meeting workers’ ire in workplace and outside
LABOUR union movements are facing a decline on a global scale. In South Africa, however, those unions that are able to successfully connect wider social injustices to their members’ cause and mobilise people around this are increasing their membership numbers.
As a result, they are increasing their political influence.
In general, the perception of injustice alone, be it at the workplace or outside, isn’t sufficient to produce group action such as a strike. The role of union leaders is to convert perceptions of individual injustice into collective action by promoting group cohesion.
The South African environment — characterised by high unemployment, high wage inequality, low education levels, low service delivery, high levels of migrant labour in the mining industry and high levels of social unrest — has provided fertile ground for unions to blur the boundaries between workplace issues and social injustices.
The unprecedented number of unprotected strikes that took place in 2012 occurred in the midst of a record number of service delivery protests. These strikes were fuelled by communities’ anger.
Workers do not necessarily see their work and living environments in isolation
A lack of leadership at government, business and organised labour level further highlighted these problems.
But the use of social issues to mobilise members is not a sustainable strategy to prolong the life of the local labour movement. As social conditions improve, unions risk becoming institutionalised.
The close relationships between trade unions and political parties have shown that union leaders lose the focus on servicing their members’ needs when they are in conflict with political objectives.
In South Africa, an abundance of breakaway splinter unions — including the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) — has revealed growing dissatisfaction among rankand-file members with leaders who appear closer to the political elite than the concerns of the workers.
This dissatisfaction can appear even more acute when the unions are seen as institutionalised players of the establishment.
To some extent, institutionalised relationships are almost inevitable as, over time, unions win concessions and are tied to deals implementing those agreements. Amcu will face the same tension eventually; the metalworkers’ union Numsa is trying to escape this inevitable tension right now.
A potential danger of the inclination of unions to inflate workplace issues into social issues is that it places companies in an untenable position. A company may have limited control over many of the socioeconomic conditions of their employees outside wages and training.
But workers do not necessarily see their work and living environments in isolation, so any protest over wages can easily be further inflamed by issues outside the workplace.
This means companies need to do more to address the socioeconomic conditions affecting their employees, including forming partnerships with local authorities and improving living conditions and the education levels of their employees.
The government must provide communities with basic infrastructure as a short- tomedium-term solution, which will help to take undue pressure off employers.
In fact, the only way to counter unions that are growing by using social rather than workplace issues is through proper service delivery. Mining companies, which aren’t democratically elected or accountable to a broader electorate, only have a limited opportunity to fill the vacuum left by failed local governments by doing this.
But if we are to save the mining industry, we must look for alternative models of improving people’s lives and communities.
Long-term solutions must involve employee share schemes as one way to reduce wage inequality, because the alternative scenario — in which the government takes a hard line against unions — is unlikely to happen.
Wöcke is an associate professor at the Gordon Institute of Business Science