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Vol.64/No.9             March 6, 2000 
 
 
Unions in South Africa protest job losses  
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BY T. J. FIGUEROA  
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa--In response to continued large-scale layoffs by the employing class, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has launched a campaign against job losses.

According to the union federation, more than 900,000 jobs have been abolished in the past decade here--as many as half a million of these since elections in 1994 that marked the end of apartheid rule. Official unemployment is put at 30–35 percent.

Spokespeople for capital and the big-business press blame rising joblessness on working-class militancy and the introduction of laws guaranteeing workers' rights by the African National Congress government. These laws make labor too expensive, they say, and scare off capital investment from abroad.

"COSATU's demands have helped destroy jobs. Yet each demand has been enacted by this parliament over our opposition. Now COSATU marches against unemployment--the very unemployment caused by the enactment of their demands," said Tony Leon, leader of the Democratic Party, in the National Assembly in early February.

"You cannot accuse COSATU of destroying jobs," said Molohandoa Moloda, a worker in the Gauteng province health department. "Companies only want to invest where there is maximum profit, and in order to make more profit they don't want to pay workers a living wage. The problem is actually big companies that don't want to invest, not workers who are fighting for a share of the wealth."  
 

Capitalist crisis in Africa

Although touted as "Africa's engine of growth" in many big-business papers, South Africa is wracked by the world capitalist economic crisis that is having devastating consequences across the continent.

The brutal imposition of the apartheid system of white minority rule, and the special relationship the regime had with imperialist powers such as the United States and Britain, resulted in development of aspects of the economy and social infrastructure beyond most other countries in Africa.

This was possible due to the superexploitation of the labor of millions of blacks who were driven off the land and into the mines, mills, and factories. Nearly all arable land was forcibly taken and turned over to whites.

Much of the country remained mired in semi-colonial conditions and dependent on labor-intensive mineral extraction, especially of gold whose price has fallen dramatically over the last decade.

With the overturning of the apartheid system in the early 1990s, tens of millions of workers have sought to use their hard-won rights to better miserable social conditions and low wages that marked apartheid.

Moloda's union, the National Education, Health, and Allied Workers Union, joined unions representing teachers and municipal workers in sponsoring a lunchtime picket in Johannesburg January 11. About 100 unionists took part in the action.

"It's about this Growth, Employment and Redistribution program," said Ngcwecwe Bonile, a small construction contractor, who decided to join the picket as he passed by. The government's economic plan places a high priority on "fiscal discipline" and attracting private capital investment into the economy. "If government privatizes jobs our people cannot afford it. There is already too much poverty and too many people who are not working."

The lunchtime pickets are being sponsored by COSATU affiliates and are beginning on a small scale. They will build up toward a May Day rally, to be followed by a national strike if union demands are not met. These demands include forcing employers to consult unions prior to layoffs--or to negotiate them--and other labor law amendments. COSATU deputy general secretary Tony Ehrenreich told those on the picket line that unions also support the call for a minimum income grant for unemployed working people.

Some of the protests have taken on a protectionist character, with union officials supporting a "Buy South African" campaign.

In an interview with the Sunday Independent newspaper, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel of the ANC criticized COSATU's call for demonstrations. "I want someone to tell me how the government is going to create jobs. Workers can go on a general strike against the government day after day and you're not going to create jobs," he said. Instead, he argued, the conditions for small businesses to flourish needed to be created.

Joe Bogatsu, a member of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) at a steel fabrication company, joined more than 1,000 workers for an early February protest as part of the jobs campaign. He supported government efforts to attract investment from abroad, but said that "changing labor laws is going to bring only problems. They are going to retrench a lot of people. Lots of companies want to make people work temporary or on contract. They want to run away from the union. Government says it will try to create jobs. They talk but there is not much action."  
 

Volkswagen walkout

Meanwhile, 1,300 NUMSA members were fired in early February from Volkswagen's auto assembly plant in Uitenhage, in the Eastern Cape province, after participating in a two-week strike that was ruled "illegal."

The workers walked off the job on January 20 after NUMSA officials suspended 13 shop stewards in the plant for "bringing the union into serious disrepute." About 4,000 people work in the factory's production areas, and assembly ground to a halt.

According to an article in the February 6 Sunday Times, the union's Eastern Cape regional secretary, Silumko Nondwangu, said the shop stewards had been "agitating" to nullify an agreement reached with VW on production of its A4 Golf model. The agreement would have forced workers to stagger their annual leave time, which he said was one of the stewards' major objections. He also said they had pushed for the liquidation of the workers' provident fund.

COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi urged the workers to end their strike. NUMSA officials accused walkout leaders of being opportunists, acting undem- ocratically outside of union structures. A central leader of the walkout, they said, was not employed at VW but was a NUMSA shop steward at another local factory.

After VW fired the workers en masse, NUMSA officials said they would try to win their jobs back. Meanwhile, several thousand people lined up to fill out job applications, and VW started hiring.

South African president Thabo Mbeki commented on the walkout during his speech opening parliament on February 4. "We must warn very strongly that illegal and unjustified strikes such as the one recently experienced at Volkswagen in Uitenhage cannot be tolerated.

"Jobs, a better life for our people in the context of a growing economy and our standing in the eyes of the investor community cannot be held hostage by elements pursuing selfish and antisocial purposes," he said.  
 
 
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