With ‘enemies’ like the ANC, who does Numsa call friends?
Despite being treated with astonishing favouritism over the past 20 years at great cost to the country, metalworkers are somehow aggrieved at the new order, writes Ray Hartley
YOU may or may not recall the classic Monty Python scene set in biblical times in which the left-wing leader Reg, played by John Cleese, addresses an underground meeting of rebels who want to overthrow their Roman overlords.
After some spirited rhetoric about the shameful greed of the Roman oppressors, he asks: “What have they ever given us in return?”
There’s an uncomfortable silence before one of the rebels ventures: “The aqueduct?” This leads to a string of suggestions from the others. Eventually Reg cries out, exasperated: “Apart form the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
This classic piece of comedy came to mind after the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa left Cosatu, claiming that the alliance with the ANC was no longer serving the interests of its workers. But what is the answer to Numsa’s question: “What has the ANC ever given us in return?”
It is fashionable to claim that the ANC has done nothing for many South Africans — the jobless, the overtaxed and the victims of crime. This may be true. But it simply is not true for the members of trade unions.
You could go further and argue that the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse have been the metalworkers of Numsa.
What the unions have craftily done is weld themselves to the unemployed and the poor, creating the impression that they are in the same boat. They aren’t.
It is manifestly obvious that the employed have been protected at the expense of the unemployed.
Let’s start with the labour relations framework that’s in place. There can be no question that it strongly favours the unions. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how it is that, after its recent strike, Numsa concluded a three-year wage increase of between 7.5% and 10% a year, way above inflation and way above what any other employee could hope for?
It accomplished this because the labour relations regime allows unions to embark on lengthy (in this case four weeks) legally protected strikes, which force employers to the wall financially. They eventually have no choice but to buckle to inflationary demands or close their factories. Of course, once they start paying the inflated wages, their thoughts turn to how they might exit the business or invest elsewhere.
Not surprisingly, the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP has been steadily shrinking. None of that matters to the unionised workers, who are paid more and more even as investment dwindles.
That’s not all. The strike was
SHELTERED EMPLOYMENT: Numsa workers secured themselves above-inflation increases after a violent four-week strike notable for many instances of violence. Instead of arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators, the state turned a blind eye, buying the more-than-laughable proposition offered by the union that the violence was being committed by “agents” trying to ruin its public
It is manifestly obvious that the employed have been protected at the expense of the unemployed
image. Among the benefits reaped by trade unions over the past 20 years is immunity from arrest or prosecution for members on strike.
The state’s largesse doesn’t end there. When the strike entered its bitter fourth week, what did the government do? It got involved in the collective bargaining process, making it clear that it expected employers to cough up the increase, which they duly did.
The deal included “clause 37”, which prohibits individual workplaces from negotiating their own deals. This forces small companies to pay out the increase negotiated by big companies whether or not they can afford it. The minister for small business must have been at a conference that day, or maybe she knows that the many ministers for the trade unions are actually running the place.
These are not the only benefits that trade unions have amassed from a sympathetic government at the expense of business. There’s more, much more.
There’s progressive taxation, which has benefited workers more than others. This is a good thing, but it is nonetheless evidence that the workers are the primary beneficiaries of tax breaks.
In the case of Numsa, the ANC government has spent tens of billions of rands subsidising the otherwise uneconomical motor industry. The Financial Mail quoted Canadian academic Frank Flatters as saying: “At my last count, the government was giving subsidies of well over R10-billion a year to a few auto firms, and imposing a cost on consumers of close to R20-billion a year.” That’s a lot of money.
Why has the government spent these tens of billions of rands? To make the motor manufacturers richer? I don’t think so. This has been about preventing the workers of Numsa from losing their jobs. Just look at Australia, which has lost its entire motor industry because of low government subsidies.
Don’t get me wrong — it’s a good thing that the government subsidises the motor industry because we desperately need the jobs and we need the revenue that comes from the cars that are sold overseas. But there can be no gainsaying that the major beneficiaries of this spending are the workers of Numsa in the car factories who have been rewarded with increases way out of line with inflation. If you take component manufacturers into account, that’s more than 100 000 unionised workers who are effectively kept in employment by the state.
How has Numsa responded to the generosity shown to it and other unions over the past 20 years? By doing all it can to keep this labourfriendly government in power? By passing resolutions thanking the ANC for keeping metalworkers in jobs that yield annual increases well above inflation? Of course not.
On the contrary, Numsa feels aggrieved. That’s right — aggrieved. It feels that it can no longer support the ANC because of “the worsening material conditions of the working class as a result of neoliberal ANC policies”.
So much so that it has fallen out with the party, which it regards as an enemy of the workers. Wow. What would a friend look like?
The ANC’s policies are described as “a cut and paste of DA policy”.
The National Development Plan, which is about as soft a social democratic programme as you are likely to find, is described as “a neoliberal programme which entrenches existing property relations and attacks the working class and the poor in the interests of mining and finance capital”.
To reach this conclusion, you have to be quite a few yards out of touch with the reality I have mapped out above.
At this point you have to picture Numsa’s general secretary, Irvin Jim, addressing his shop stewards in their rebel grotto. After hearing of the worker-friendly actions of the state, he might be saying: “Yes, but apart from installing a labourfriendly industrial relations system, making it impossible to fire unproductive workers, decades of above-inflation increases, turning a blind eye to strike violence, legal protection for protracted strikes, forcing small companies to pay the same increases as large companies, intervening on behalf of the workers in collective bargaining, and tens of billions of rands in subsidies to keep us in our jobs, what has the ANC ever done for Numsa?”