SAA strike: lessons from history

There is something macabre about deceptive rationalisations that result in the recurrence of German philosopher Friedrich Hegel’s cynical view: “Experience and history teaches us … that people and governments have never learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it.”

The current strike action led by the South African Cabin Crew Association (Sacca) and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) at South African Airways (SAA), now entering its eighth day, arguably falls into such fatalistic categories.

Let us compare the strike with another, which took place in a far-away country at an earlier period – the year-long British mine workers’ strike of March 6, 1984 to March 3 the following year.

Led by the British National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against the state-owed National Coal Board (NCB) over its closure of collieries and job losses in the backdrop of a decidedly anti-union Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the strike is credited for weakening the NUM and, more generally, the British trade union movement.

Thatcher sought to close uneconomical collieries, shift Britain’s energy needs to imported coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy.

Mindful of stiff resistance from the NUM, Thatcher evolved a threefold strategy: stockpiling six month worth of coal reserves, ensuring that as many miners as possible remained at work during strike action and deploying the police to break up strikes.

To oppose Thatcher’s measures, the NUM relied on causing shortage in coal supply as it had successfully done in 1972 and 1974 to secure victory for its wage demands. The union’s 1974 strike came during the “Three-Day Work Order” period – Britain’s version of load shedding – which sought to conserve electricity during the 1973-74 oil crisis.

Perhaps emboldened by its previous victories, the union failed to subject the strike to a national ballot. Illustrating the union’s leadership determination to strike at all costs, Michael McGahey, one of the NUM’s leaders, put it crudely when he said: “We shall not be constitutionalised out of a strike... Area by area will decide and there will be a domino effect.”

A no less significant part of the historical commentary centres around the posture of NUM president Arthur Scargill – who led the union from 1982 to 2002 – a central figure in the strike. Granted, history is more complex than the subjectivities of individual leaders, but their predispositions, commissions and omissions help us to appreciate important trajectories under their tutelage.

One historian described Scargill as “an industrial Napoleon” given to “impossibilist” tactics and “an inflexible list of extravagant non-negotiable demands” amounting to “reckless adventurism”.

The strike was “a dangerous, self-defeating delusion” called “at a wrong time”.

Yet another concluded that: “Exciting, witty Scargill brought coalmining to a close in Britain far faster than would have happened had the NUM been led by some … old-style union[ist].”

The charge from those who are critical of the NUM and Scargill, is that they knew that Thatcher was out to smash the unions and played into her hands by embarking on a strike that divided the union, the union movement and the British left. Thatcher then pounced like a cat, and the rest is history.

Are there similarities between the British mineworkers’ and the SAA strike?

While no two historical incidents can be a carbon copy of each other, there are arguably some significant similarities at least insofar as the state of the South African economy and government finances are concerned.

An unprofitable venture like SAA can only take losses to a point – the airline says it is losing R52 million per day as a result of the strike action.

As Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan pointed out last week, SAA is not too big to fail.

In the last week, passengers have been able to travel from one destination to another without much of an inconvenience. And the ground is shifting under the unions’ leadership as workers either slowly get back to work or make overtures to that end.

The sovereign is unable to offer another bailout and yet operational costs continue to mount. Like the British mines, eventually privatised in 1994, is the strike not hastening the collapse of the airline?

It is frankly difficult to fathom the unions’ perspective and what they think might be the end game. For some strange reason, the unions seem to be oblivious of the fact that there is a growing public impatience about the perennial bailouts with which government has favoured the airline over many years.

A related and important matter one would have thought would feature in the strategic and tactical considerations of unions is that a government bailout for Eskom – which is truly too big to fail – a water utility or, let us say, the national blood service, evokes less negativity than a bailout for a national airline which, in the context of our pressing challenges, is frankly a frill we can do without.

Imperfect as these are delivered, why would a financially-challenged government like ours continue to bail out an airline rather than keep the lights on or provide medicines and social grants – which, if it did not, might send millions into the streets – and other obligations and responsibilities?

This is more so if such bailouts – which the salary increases will amount to – are financed through borrowings, adding to already high levels of public debt. Any social institution which fails to appreciate this reality cannot escape charges of irresponsibility.

Lastly, unions have legitimately raised concerns about corruption and mismanagement at SAA.

Apart from the fact that a union like Numsa has been complicit in the destructive trajectory that brought the country to this end, part of the challenge with SAA is its business model.

Successful airlines like Ethiopian Airlines are not only passenger and cargo carriers. They boast a strong technical division which maintains and services all their fleet – most of which they own and not lease – and those of other airlines, an aviation academy and manufacture components for some of the major airplane manufacturers. If we can’t learn from history from far-away places, we can surely learn something from this sister African publicly-owned carrier.

It’s difficult to fathom the unions’ perspective