The last resort
FIGURES on strikes last year released by the Department of Labour are a reminder of the enormous personal sacrifices made by workers who strike for better working conditions.
About 240 000 workers – 80 percent of them in the mining industry – were involved in strikes last year, and they lost a total of R6.6 billion in wages. Most of the strikes were over wages, bonuses and “other compensation issues”, the department said.
No worker willingly goes on strike. The income sacrifice and the prospect of the employers’ anger and possible punishment (even if the strike is formally protected by law) are powerful disincentives to stop work, especially in today’s economic conditions in which households are increasingly indebted and the striking worker may be the only breadwinner.
A strike is a last resort when all other attempts at negotiations have failed. The decision to go on strike is not taken lightly and must be constantly reviewed if there is no resolution of the dispute.
As the days go by without a settlement, and the strikers use up savings or slump deeper into debt, their hostility to colleagues who have opted not to strike but who will benefit from any wage increases won through the strike can only mount.
This explains – but does not of course excuse – the violence that has marred some strikes over the past year.
In spite of this, though, most strikers do not resort to violence, and it is important to remember that in the past year it was not striking workers but police – at Marikana – who were responsible for the single most violent incident during a strike.
The SA Institute of Race Relations has calculated that 181 people were killed in violent protests in the 13 years up to last year – a number which, shocking though it may be, must be seen in the context of the hundreds of thousands of people involved in protest action, the vast majority of whom do not resort to violence.
Most people do not kill, injure or intimidate. Nor do they relish the thought of days or weeks without pay. If they down tools, at considerable sacrifice to themselves and their families, it is because they see no other way out.