Oliphant in the room: minister brings home some hard truths

LABOUR Minister Mildred Oliphant walked into the lion’s den. And once there, she did not wither but dared to challenge the kings and queens of the jungle.

It took courage and conviction for Oliphant to tell union bosses and members gathered in Midrand for the Cosatu congress that they had abandoned workers.

We really ought to pause and reflect on the significance of Oliphant’s decisiveness. Whereas invited speakers from parties, the government and business often say what the audience wishes to hear, Oliphant took her message to the very people she was challenging.

She accused some Cosatu affiliates of misleading workers and being less than candid about their investments. Oliphant basically accused them of hypocrisy for being the most vocal critics of labour brokers while their investment arms had stakes in such companies.

Similarly, she lambasted some unions for being investors in e-tolls, yet publicly galvanising the public and workers to reject them. She called this the worst kind of corruption as it poisons the mind of the public.

Cosatu’s investment company, Kopano Ke Matla, has a stake in Raubex, a construction company that made close to R800-million on the R21 as part of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project — and we know that e-tolls were established to recover that money.

Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini stopped the minister from naming and shaming those affiliates.

He told journalists that this would frustrate efforts to unify the federation — then told a radio station that “Cosatu was not aware of this and had not benefited from the investments”.

Oliphant said: “The public and workers must know the leadership are doing these things . . . because immediately when you invest in a company, you become an employer and how can you organise in the very same company and come and make demands from the company?”

There was thunderous applause, but, instead of seeing this as a message from the audience, Dlamini petulantly responded: “Don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house.”

There is plenty for which the government can be blamed, but unions should grow up and see the minister’s bold message as a golden opportunity to reflect and initiate change, for the benefit of the workers. A friend who tells you the brutal truth is a friend to keep. That friend is certainly better than one who flatters you and tells you what you think you need to hear.

I am sure it was much more pleasant for union leaders to listen to President Jacob Zuma’s rant against capitalism than to Oliphant’s direct and emphatic challenge. But they are much better off heeding Oliphant’s message and warning.

The minister was not done. She had strong words for union leaders who are quick to call workers to strike when there is no potential for success.

While workers have a right to strike and have their grievances addressed, Oliphant is correct to challenge protracted strikes whose final outcome has very little value.

She said such strikes were becoming fashionable and used by union leaders to boast about how long they had kept workers away.

The leadership, she said, did not consider strikes as a last resort and they certainly did not consider their psychological impact on workers.

Cosatu’s role in the struggle for liberation cannot be understated. It mobilised workers during the darkest days of apartheid, when exploitation of labour was a powerful tool to further apartheid’s repugnant goals. Its history is glorious.

But its inability to address workers’ needs, to rise above the slogans, chanting and singing to actually put its finger on the pulse of workers’ reality, could very well be its undoing.

Societies are dynamic and change is inevitable.

The old is always pressured to give way to the new and it is only the institutions that can successfully manage this transition that survive. It is no different for unions, whose membership has been declining. Infighting and jostling for positions and influence will surely render unions irrelevant to workers.

Unions should grow up and see this as a golden opportunity to initiate change