BY GREG ROSENBERG
The 1.4 million member Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) announced that it will launch a two-week campaign of rolling mass action, culminating in a half-day nationwide strike June 19, to win progress on negotiations with employers on the draft Labor Relations bill. The labor bill is scheduled to be debated by the South African parliament sometime in June, but deadlocked negotiations threaten to prevent its passage in this year's parliamentary session. "We simply came to the conclusion that short of pressuring business through mass action no decision will be reached before the current session of parliament comes to a close," said COSATU general secretary Sam Shilowa.
"It is the considered view of COSATU Exco [Executive Committee] that the positions tabled by business are not a serious basis for negotiation, but are calculated to prevent agreement on a new Labour Relations Act [LRA] in 1995," said a May 28 Executive Committee statement.
"The proposals of business," the statement continued, "are out of line with the spirit of transformation contained in the draft LRA Negotiating Bill proposed by the government. In short, business is refusing to move into the democratic era- Examples of this are employer demands that they have the right to: lock out workers to force them to accept lower wages; sack workers in legal strikes; hide information on their profits; attack majority unions and create splinter unions in every workplace; ban union facilities like the closed shop; employ scab labor; and refuse to negotiate with unions at industry level."
COSATU spokesperson Neil Coleman, in a telephone interview from Johannesburg, said the union campaign would attempt to draw in workers from other trade union federations. Coleman reported that the Federation of South African Labor Unions, a grouping of historically white staff associations, has agreed to join the campaign.
"Beginning on June 5, there will be a whole series of regional actions, including a mass march in Johannesburg on June 6, and protests and demonstrations in factories," across the country, Coleman said.
Burying apartheid labor law
The labor laws on the books in South Africa were drawn up
under the apartheid regime. Through an explosion of working-
class struggles beginning in 1976, and subsequent advances
in the democratic revolution, workers' rights have been
expanded. Prior to last year's first-ever nonracial
elections, some of the new space that had been carved out
was incorporated into the interim constitution.
The old laws codified the overriding goal of the apartheid state - the superexploitation of African labor by capital. Employers were given free reign in virtually every sphere, and workers' most basic rights, including the right to form trade unions and strike, were drastically limited.
The Labor Relations bill, unveiled by Labor Minister Tito Mboweni of the African National Congress, would establish a single code covering all workers and employers in South Africa for the first time. Previously, myriad labor codes governed the bantustans, different regions of the country, and different occupations. Domestic workers were not even covered under the old Labor Relations Act. The draft bill would establish basic rights in law, including the right to join and form trade unions and strike after a mediation period.
The draft labor legislation is currently under negotiation in the National Economic Development and Labor Council (NEDLAC), which brings together representatives of the labor movement, business, and government.
While COSATU supports many elements of the draft bill, it is demanding progress on several of its provisions, which the employers have not budged on.
The first is the right to strike. COSATU wants provisions in the legislation limiting employers' right to lock out workers. This was also a feature of multiparty talks in 1993, during which the unions put up stiff resistance to a lockout clause being incorporated into the interim constitution. COSATU is demanding that the right to lock out be left out of the final constitution being drafted, and that the law should ban the use of scab labor.
COSATU wants the draft legislation to compel business to enter into centralized bargaining arrangements.
The federation also demands that the formulation in the bill on so-called workplace forums be changed. The forums would be set up on a factory by factory basis, grouping representatives of management and workers. COSATU leaders have expressed concern that the current language concerning these forums would circumvent the trade unions and limit the issues around which workers can strike.
Labor minister Mboweni, who is pressing to get parliament to take up the legislation in its current sitting, scheduled immediate talks with labor and employers' representatives immediately following the call for mass action.
The South African Chamber of Business said COSATU was trying to exert undue pressure on business with the campaign and appealed to the federation to reconsider. It said mass action would have a negative effect on attempts to woo foreign investment. One employers' representative on the NEDLAC termed the planned action "dreadful."