Unions on warpath

NUMSA was unable to approach the high court on an urgent basis to overturn its expulsion from Cosatu. Furthermore, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) had its 15th national congress, where a new general secretary was elected, and where the SACP had a large role to play. Statements were made such as: “Private profit, that cruellest of gods, is the one true object of worship for the bourgeoisie.”

It appears that the ANC is doing everything within its power to ensure the cosy relationship between itself, the NUM and Cosatu is kept intact.

The entire tone of the NUM conference was the highlight of the war between the “capitalist bosses” and the workers. There was an attack on Numsa and Amcu. They have called Amcu a vigilante union and there are plans to try to get back the lost membership.

All this is very exciting, but it is not good news for the business community. In essence, unions are desperately hungry for more members and will stop at nothing to ensure they get workers to join up. The heightened activity and war between the unions mean that the business community needs to be aware of more unionised activity on the shop floor. The activity will not only be about more wages, but will be about membership.

The unions have said that they must develop a working class counteroffensive to the unceasing attacks on the union movement by monopoly capital. All this talk is reminiscent of a bygone era, and will certainly be destructive to job creation and forward-thinking business practices.

One will recall that the unions had a large role to play when it was necessary to politicise the union movement in the 1970s and 80s in South Africa. During those decades the unions had a legitimate goal, and although it was destructive for business, it was necessary to ensure a future political freedom. However, now there is political freedom and the unions are merely trying to destroy the economy so that they can gain political power for themselves.

The problem will result in more activity at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, and will probably lead to more strikes in July and August this year. The wage demands are getting more desperate and we expect the smaller unions to demand double-digit increases, and if not successful, to embark on strike action.

We still see talk about destroying the labour brokers, and we are going to hear a lot about the phrase “equal work for equal pay”.

There is going to be a pivotal election in the second half of 2016, and we are expecting the unions to be very strongly involved in these elections. Again, this will not be good for business. Michael Bagraim