Unions draw battle lines for year ahead

Focus on unbundling of Eskom, freezing of public servants salaries and school safety

THE country’s biggest trade unions and political parties are gearing up to fight the planned unbundling of power utility Eskom, banks, the freezing of public service wages and to ensure schools are safer this year.

One of trade union federation Cosatu’s biggest affiliates, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu), is planning to march to Parliament during Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s Budget speech next month as it suspects he will announce the government’s decision to freeze public servants’ salaries to achieve savings in the state’s wage bill.

Nehawu was angered by Mboweni’s deputy, David Masondo, who announced that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration was seriously considering not increasing public servants’ wages. The union has threatened to mobilise all its 274 000 members and other workers to shut down the government indefinitely and render the system ungovernable should the planned march not yield positive results.

It promised the mother of all fights against austerity measures introduced by the National Treasury and also to mobilise society at large.

At its central executive committee meeting in December, Nehawu, which adopted its 2020 programme of action, decided to convene a national bargaining and organising conference.

The current three-year public service salary agreement runs until the end of March 2021 and preliminary negotiations are also expected to start this year.

Another Cosatu affiliate, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), at its two-day national executive committee meeting last month reaffirmed its resolution to continue with the planned march to the ANC’s head office, Luthuli House, to express its displeasure at the proposed unbundling of Eskom without consulting its employees.

“There is no way the unbundling of the power utility could continue or be implemented without any buy-in by labour. We reiterate our position clearly and unequivocally that unbundling is not an end in itself, but a means of engaging private capital,” the union stated.

NUM will announce the details of its march as soon as it has secured the date.

In December, the ANC denied it would privatise any state-owned entities, instead saying it would insist that the government owned majority stakes in them.

Teachers’ union Sadtu plans to increase its membership of 264 000 by 20 000 as it celebrates its 30th anniversary on October 6.

Sadtu has set its sights on tackling violence in basic education facilities through its ‘I am a School Fan’ campaign to ensure that communities play an active role in ensuring safety.

The union hopes that in the first quarter of the 2020 academic year all its branches will convene community-based multi-stakeholder engagement forums to deal with school safety and form local community engagement forums.

Improving reading is another Sadtu priority, with the union’s Curtis Nkondo Professional Development Institute planning to embark on a reading campaign and support reading coalition activities in the new year.

It wants all reading programmes and related intervention activities to be integrated and to be compliant with Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements.

Meanwhile, the country’s third largest political party, the EFF, has announced that it is taking on the banks and the financial services industry this year while also fighting King Mswati’s regime in eSwatini.

EFF leader Julius Malema has mandated the party’s Mpumalanga structures to occupy the border between South Africa and eSwatini in the new year, while the DA will have a busy year as it holds its policy conference in April and its federal congress to elect permanent leaders in May.

After the resignation of party leader Mmusi Maimane last year, chief whip John Steenhuisen replaced him as both parliamentary and interim leader.

This followed the return of Maimane’s predecessor, Helen Zille, in what many saw as the return of the party’s old guard.