Labour and the South African Government
In the course of this year increased confrontations have arisen between the Unions, as representatives of some of the workers and the government. Wages, new conditions of employment, unemployment, pensions, medical benefits and leave conditions have all been thrown into the contest. At this juncture the Public Service Unions are on the verge of declaring a strike in the wake of the governments stubborn adherence to a �no more than 6%� salary increase, coupled with reduced housing, medical and leave benefits and a system of �performance-based� promotions and salary increases. This latter is a monkey-see monkey-do imitation of a system introduced by the South African governments godmother, Mrs. Thatcher during her term as Prime Minister in Britain.
The most prominent demand coming from certain unions is the State�s Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy be reviewed, if not abandoned in favour of a Lazarus-like reincarnation of the RDP � the late �reconstruction and development programme�, laid to rest in President Mbeki�s office in 1995. Nupsaw has rejected the States offer of 6% and the co-joined new service conditions. Numsa and Samwu have called for the review of Gear and their relations with the ANC in the coming local government elections; while the SACP, Janus-like has been scanning the crisis with at least two faces.
The brutal truth of the present situation is that the government has never told the masses in South Africa just what the Gear policy is all about. In the first place, the Gear policy was drawn up under the watchful eye of representatives of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). During the past few years the WB president and the IMF�s chief governors have visited South Africa of several occasions to check on the implementation of Gear. They have expressed complete satisfaction with what the Alliance government has been doing. In addition Trevor Manuel told parliament that the Gear policy was �non-negotiable�, and that the WB and IMF were satisfied that all the economic fundamentals (in South Africa) �were in place�.
What does this mean in plain, unvarnished English? It means that the present government in collaboration with the big business partners with which it sits in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) and the National Economic Forum, is carrying out economic policies which have been dictated to it by the World Bank and the IMF. Gear is the poorly disguised name for the Economic Structural Adjustment Policy (Esap) forced upon the population of South Africa by the United States and its partners in Europe and Japan.
This is why, for Manuel and the rest of the Cabinet and the captive bureaucrats in business and government offices, Gear is �non-negotiable�. Thus to know what Gear really means it is necessary to see just what the ANC government does as it obeys the WB and IMF and carries out their orders. What it says and what it promises are quite different issues. They belong to the political bluff and posturing of the obedient government servants who make policies and whose job it is to get the masses in South Africa to accept what they say; even as they, the masses, are suffering the most devastating loss of jobs, lack of housing, poor health, education and social services, and are writhing under the violence and fear that has gripped the country.
When organised workers in trade unions come out in defence of their wages, their jobs, their working conditions and the lives of their families, they are challenging what the WB and IMF have laid down for this country. It was the failure over many years on the part of the leadership of the unions to understand what Gear really meant that led workers to come out in support of the South African Government, whether under Mandela or Mbeki, in the belief that the government were their allies, their supporters, their hope for �a better life for all�.
Let us see what the government has done to satisfy the WB and the IMF. The WB-IMF, through Gear demands that the government cut down on its expenditure. That is why hundreds of thousands of workers have been retrenched from the civil service, education, health and social services, and support for pensioners, the disabled and orphaned children has been cut.
To make up for the lack of funds for schools and hospitals the State makes parents pay for school fees and buy books for their children. The sick and elderly no longer get free medical help, except for a few. The WB-IMF rule is that the �users� must pay for such services.
The WB-IMF instructs the State to reduce taxes on companies. Company tax has been reduced from 48% to 30% within 10 years. The argument is that company profits must not be used to provide free education, health and social services. The savings on company taxes can then be used by the companies to invest in the economy, provide jobs and reduce unemployment and the scourge of poverty. But what have the big companies done, with the government�s support? The Anglo American Corporation, De Beers, the Rembrandt (Rupert) Empire, Barlow-Rand (now Barlow World), SA Breweries and the Old Mutual have moved their companies to Britain, Belgium and Switzerland. They have invested hundreds of billions of rands in North America, Britain, Europe, Asia and Australia during the past 10 years. Sanlam, another giant corporation has invested massive sums overseas through its mining arm, Billiton, and its paper monopoly, Sappi. And the government has crawled on its knees begging overseas companies to invest in South Africa even as the powerful one-time South African companies make huge profits here and invest overseas the money they drained from the economy.
In addition to all this a spokesperson for the South African banking powers recently claimed in the Cape Times Business Report that �labour�, that is workers, was the cause of a lack of capital investment in the economy. The same Report declared that adversaries in Nedlac � which met during September � had �died away� and that it was �easy to forget about labour�; the new labour laws, with the amendments recently introduced by Minister Mdladlana, were now �in place�.
What makes the picture worse is that most investment has gone into Information Technology developments. This requires relatively small numbers of highly-skilled fairly young workers. There is little or no development at present to absorb the millions of unemployed, both skilled and unskilled.
The Unions are only too well aware of the millions of jobs lost in mining, agriculture, engineering, manufacturing and service industries. Gear can never reverse this national disaster; it can only make it worse as all the many demands of the WB-IMF bite into the lives of people.
Thus when the recent conference of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) took place, the real meaning of Gear was raised partly with workers.
The meetings with the Public Service Employees Unions deadlocked as the Minister refused to agree to pay increases of more than 6%. Nupsaw, it will be recalled, withdrew from the negotiations when the Minister first dug her heels in. At this late stage � and it is not too late � both Unions made strong demands for a review of Gear and the Labour Law amendments proposed by Minister Mdladlana. This took place against previous warnings by both Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki at Cosatu conferences and at the most recent ANC July conference in Port Elizabeth that the Unions should toe the line or face disciplinary action, with the inference that those who agreed with present policy could look forward to a safe career in government! In its resolutions the conference duly evaded economic policy, unemployment and political issues. Of the about 2000 delegates at the conference, about 105 represented Cosatu and the SACP � the Alliance Partners � and the SA National Civics Organisations (Sanco).
The unions� late wake-up call to their members to challenge the Gear policy was joined to a �threat� to review for support of the ANC in the coming local elections. Sanco, which is actively involved in securing contracts in townships and similar areas for installation of services, resolved in the Eastern Cape to put up its own candidates because, it alleged, the ANC had sidelined it in its election campaign. With local councils being reduced from 843 to about 250, the competition for the sinecures in the local councils will be more than jus a cut-throat one.
The opposition if the Unions to privatisation is being undermined by the �comrades� of yesteryear. Mr. Jeff Radebe, Minister in charge of Privatisation is an avowed Communist Party member, dedicated to the sale of national (the people�s) assets to cover debt created by capitalist abuse of the country�s assets.
And jobs will be bled from the SA Airways, from Telkom (which already shed 12000 jobs in 1 year to increase its profitability for the foreign capitalist purchasers), from Eskom, Sasol � and that too will be �non-negotiable�. That Nedlac will have created a new partnership between labour and business, with increased joblessness, is assured. Its new chief executive officer is Phillip Dexter, a member of the SACP executive. And in the Public Service Minister Fraser-Moleketi, an assistant secretary of the Party, will in response to the demand for a 10%� 15% salary increase for Public Servants adhere to her 6% increase in a display of the obduracy that is required of her in terms of the WB-IMF diktats.
This new phase in the relations between the organised unions and the government-in-office is an extension of the outcomes of the Gear policy. But the crisis is basically and extension of the global crisis in which capitalism-imperialism has floundered for years. In that crisis the paramount interests of the oppressed and exploited majority are imperialism�s least concern. South Africa with Gear is no more than a new-style colony in which investors, national and foreign will regularly steal the hog and reluctantly give the feet for alms.
That is the nub of a crisis which the Unions are just beginning to understand. It is not their private, internal crisis; it is the crisis which faces all the oppressed and exploited people of this country. If the Unions do hope to sort out their members� demands by jousting with the different Ministers, they will need to learn all over again that through Gear and related policies they are dealing with the obedient servants of the World Bank, the IMF and their hit-men in the World Trade Organisation which has crippled several of South Africa�s industries and their exports.
[THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL, PUBLISHED BY NUPSAW EDUCATION SECTOR, NOVEMBER - SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2000]
EDITOR: Mrs. HN Kies, 15 Upper Bloem Street, Cape Town, 8001
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