Can Saftu break the mould?
New trade union federation has many hurdles to clear, especially in recruiting new constituencies
THE newly launched trade union grouping – the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) – promises to be a voice for the growing numbers of unorganised and marginalised workers in the country. But, as the secretary of the South African Informal Traders Alliance warned delegates: Don’t break our hearts with false promises
Historically, trade unions in South Africa have played a significant role in shaping the political landscape, especially during the Struggle against apartheid. But the union movement has declined globally in influence as the growing informalisation of work has eroded its power and unions are seen as protecting the special interests of those in regular employment.
With increasing numbers of people outside the formal employment net, unions have had a tough time defining their role.
Yet the rights won by South African workers in the Struggle for democracy continues to give them a degree of influence unsurpassed in post-colonial Africa.
The new federation was conceived over two years ago in the wake of the expulsion of National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa from trade union federation, Cosatu.
The expulsion signified growing political realignment in the country given that Cosatu is in an alliance with the governing ANC.
The union’s expulsion was followed by that of then Cosatu general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi.
So what difference is the new federation likely to make to the lives of workers in South Africa, as well as the very large number of unemployed people and those in the informal economy?
Significantly, the new federation is not the outcome of a surge in worker militancy.
Instead, it is a response to the perceived failure of existing unions to provide an adequate voice and service to their members.
The new federation is in fact the product of the crisis facing traditional trade unions across the globe.
A strength of the federation will be its ability to combine the experiences of long standing union leaders with a new generation of unionists disillusioned with the governing party and its two alliance partners – Cosatu and the SACP.
With nearly 700 000 members, it’s the second largest federation in South Africa after Cosatu.
But the challenges facing an attempt to “cross the divide” between organised workers and the growing precariat – those in casual, outsourced and informal jobs – will require strategic leadership willing to move out of the comfort zone of traditional unionism, recruit unfamiliar constituencies and experiment with new ways of organising.
Challenges facing the new federation
The first challenge will be to break with the bureaucratic practices that have seen many union leaders gradually distanced from their members.
If the practices of “business unionism” – where unions come to mirror the values and practices of business – are to be challenged, two big issues will need to be revisited. These are union investment companies and the gap between the salaries of some union leaders and their members.
The new federation could make its mark within the labour movement by taking lifestyle issues seriously and, in particular, the wage gap within its own ranks.
The second challenge is around political diversity. What was striking at the launch was the wide range of political and ideological views. An illustration was the lively debate over the relationship between pan-Africanism and MarxistLeninism.
But there was consensus that there should be no party political affiliation. Saftu, it was agreed, should be politically independent.
The challenge will be for the new federation to be a genuine forum for political debate, respecting different views, and even allowing different ideological factions to be institutionalised.
The most difficult challenge arises from the shift from industrial unions to general unions.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA led the way when it extended its scope to include a variety of economic activities beyond metalworkers. This included, university cleaners and bus drivers.
Also, many Saftu affiliates are general unions. How to deal with the danger of internal “poaching” of members was extensively discussed at the launch. Will the protocols proposed in the report of the steering committee prevent divisive conflict in the future?
Another major challenge facing Saftu is the need for innovative strategies on new ways of organising. It’s not clear how the federation intends to recruit the new constituencies of women, immigrants, lowpaid service workers, outsourced workers and the growing numbers of workers in the informal economy.
Experiments in organising precarious workers, such as the Casual Workers Advice Office in Germiston, need to be examined as they could provide ways of crossing the divide between the old and the new.
Another difficult challenge will be defining the federation’s position on economic policy. Harsh criticisms were made of the proposed national minimum wage of R20 an hour.
But maybe it is time to confront this dilemma: for many workers a bad job is better than no job. Has the time not arrived to go beyond the demand for decent work to explore what kind of role trade unions have in a developing country such as South Africa, in the context of a unipolar world, dominated by neo-liberal capitalism?
New ways of organising
The leaders of the new federation are confident that a number of Cosatu affiliated unions will join, or if they don’t, their member will come across.
But will the federation be able to break out of the old organising strait jacket?
To organise the low paid and the precarious is an ambitious task. There is growing evidence that innovative strategies to bridge the informal-formal “divide” are emerging in the Global South with successful attempts emerging in other parts of Africa. In Ghana an alliance of informal port workers with national trade unions has been formed and is proving to be effective.
Labour scholar Rina Agarwala has challenged the conventional view that informalisation is the “final nail in the labour movement’s coffin”.
Informal workers in India, she says, are creating new institutions and forging a new social contract between the state and labour.
New informal worker organisations are not attached to a particular party, nor do they espouse a specific political or economic ideology.
It is too soon to pronounce on the future of the new federation. But it is clear workers are increasingly rejecting traditional trade unions and forming new types of organisations that bring workers together to promote their rights and interests.
The future lies with forwardlooking unions that see the global economy as an opportunity for a new kind of unionism. Saftu needs to draw on these experiences if it is to fulfil the promise of its launch.
Webster is a professor emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, at the University of the Witwatersrand. He will launch a collection of research-based essays on precarious work in India, Ghana and South Africa,
Crossing the Divide: Precarious Work and the Future of Labour,
together with Akua O Britwum and the late Sharit Bhowmik, next month.
MAY Day seems to have lost its gravitas. There could not have been a more joyless May Day holiday in our democratic history than the one we will observe on Monday. The economy is limping, job creation is static, unemployment is rising and our national politics is in self-destruct mode.
Then there are the spectres of an unjustified cabinet reshuffle, Nkandlagate, Guptagate and Marikana, which represent the tragedy of post-apartheid South Africa – the desperation of disempowered workers, living in squalid informal settlements, and doing dangerous work deep underground, earning a pittance while management and shareholders rake in millions each year.
What does May Day mean for South Africa today?
Peter Linebaugh, the US radical historian who has been called the “world’s greatest living historian”, has written a superb series of articles on May Day.
Since that first call by utopian socialist Robert Owen, to the Chicago labour unions of machinists and blacksmiths, that led to the momentous demonstration by 100 000 workers in New York in 1872, winning the right to mark May Day as a workers’ holiday, has been a painful and long process.
Following the 1889 International Socialist Congress, a series of huge workers demonstrations shook the
New struggles are against unemployment, retrenchments, full pensions and equal pay
US and most of Europe. It became a national event with resounding success in Russia and Brazil in 1881.
In South Africa, workers, under the banners of the Social Democratic Federation, the Industrial Socialist League and the SACP, filled squares in the major urban centres, where Jewish leaders, such as AZ Berman, and their Muslim counterparts, such as Abdullah Abdurahman, led workers with Clements Kadalie and John Gomas.
For workers, colour, religion and creed meant nothing, they were brothers in struggle; they had nothing to lose but their chains.
Workers and workers’ parties came to power in many countries following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
This was followed by Mao’s worker and peasant excesses and Fidel Castro’s triumph over the dictator Batista. There were successes and failures, victories and disappointments, new challenges and questions.
There were also the realities of the technological revolution, the rise and fall of Stalinism, the splits and revisions, the globalised triumph and collapse of sections of financial capital, epitomised by the 2008 crash.
Perhaps the greatest theme linking the global struggle to be able to celebrate May Day as a workers’ holiday was the demand for an eight-hour day. This demand was eventually won in many countries, but often at cost.
Today workers face the future head-on. Their new struggles are against unemployment, retrenchments, full pensions, equal pay for equal work, and human treatment of non-unionised workers.
The workers are older these days, with a sprinkling of young people who have lost their jobs to cheap imports of final products and extremely cheap labour, new technologies, casualisation and multi-skilling.
South Africa’s army of unemployed has nothing to lose but its chains.
Buccus is a senior research associate at the ASRI, research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Social Sciences.