AROUND THE WORLD
A milestone for the trade unions
SOUTH AFRICA Recent developments illustrate the richness of the independent trade-union movement in South Africa. Firstly, there is the actual growth in and 1983 Between 1980 the number of'African' trade unionl'here has also been some progress it the organisational level the unions towards a process of
Also, workers struggles and trade union mobilisations are beginning to extract substantial concessions out of the employers. especially the case at the Sasol factory, a firm making oil from coal, owned by the state. In this firm which has a strategic importance for the regime, 6,000 workers had been made redundant a few
The settlement signed between the Chemical Workers Industrial Union and Sasol will surely go down as a milestone in South African labour history.
Not only has the union to get 70 percent of the 6,000 workers who were sacked for participating in the November stayaway it has also won new rights.
It is remarkable that CWIU survived this attempt by a semi-state company to crush worker organisation, let alone come out of it with better the formal recognition of WIU them during working hours.
The shop stewards also have the right to hold a monthly caucus meeting during working hours and have access to telephones - an important right in plants
*Previously there was a lot of conflict in the Sasol plants between the elected worker representatives who were attempting to act like shop stewards and line management who were trying to stop said CWIU Rod Crompton.
has also been access to the Sasol hostels together with a full time office in the months after an important strike on against the and repressive policy of the South regime mobilised about a million black workers and constitutes the most important political strike in the history of the country
Viewpoint, No 65, 10 December 1984).
The Chemical Workers Industrial Union (CWIU), a member of the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) has just scored an important victory in obtaining the reintegration of 70 per cent of the sacked workers and other rights in connection with the union. about this struggle which appeared February-March 1985. hostels. Before, the union only had an office for three days a week. negotiations between CWIU and Sasol.
In order to get the company to the negotiating table to discuss the reinstatement of the 6,000 sacked workers, the union lauched a national and international campaign.
All the unions involved in the present talks committed themselves to a national strike in solidarity with the Sasol workers.
in the demonstrations apartheid in the United States of America, one of the demands has been for the attended by all the union's shop stewards, it was decided to move the on to a different footing by accepting the company's settlement offer. we have given up on the rest of the Sasol workers whe have not been taken back,' said Rod Crompton.
just decided to rather continue the from within the plants,' he added.
•Management has agreed in principle to hire a further 5 percent and have said that the door is not closed on the other 25 percent, he said.
At present, the union is concentrating on rebuilding worker organisation withir the Sasol II and III plants.
A joint management/union negotiating committee has been established in order to negotiate other aspects of recognition which are not covered by the settlement agreement. And over the next week or two, union members will be put back on stop orders. CANADA
APRIL 20
DEMONSTRATION TORONTO: Chanting "Yankees out of Central America" and "Viva Nicaragua over 1,500 people marched through downtown Toronto on April 20 to protest US intervention and Canadian complicity in the Caribbean and Centra
This was one of several demonstratio in Canada. Others were held in Ottawa, Peterborough, Saskatoon and there was an anti-intervention contingent in the Vancouver "March for Peace"
"We have come together to make a statement to our government in Ottawa and to its so called 'best friend and ally" in Washington" Toronto Anti-Intervention
Co-chair Barry Weisleder told the cheering crowd, "We demand an end to America's dirty war in Central
We demand an end to the brutal occupation of Grenada and the growing militarization of the Caribbean. We demand an end to Canadian complicity in all its forms."
"We must build a mass anti-intervention movement so big and so broad that it will deprive our generals of the money and men to wage war in the interests of corporate profits" , he concluded.
Anti-Intervention Coalition is an alliance of over 75 church Gregory Baum, Dan Heap, New Democ ratic party Member of Parliament for Spadina, and John Donaldson, President of Ironworkers Local 721 President of the Ontario of Labour. They explained their mam reasons for supporting the demonstration what was most important, in the words of Ann Pohl. co chair of the TAIC, "We support the inalienable right of the people of Central Americal and the Caribbean to determin their own future."
SPANISH STATE-
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