Towards unity of
SOUTH AFRICA Industrial Councils remains open, it no longer represents a Rubicon.
The appearance of differences over these two questions gave the first union summit meeting the character primarily of a demonstration of a common the nonracial unions will to struggle against the oppressive apartheid system, without this involving any organizational choices in the plants or regions.
and third summits pointed up this impasse.
LANGA, AUGUST 8, 1981 - Durban, November 30, 1985. In the four years between these two congresses, a lot of things have changed in South Africa. There have been the new labor laws, the rebellions and the imposition of the state of emergency, to say nothing of the founding of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the National
Forum, or the deep economic recession into which the country has plunged. But these two dates are the milestones of the transformation of the trade-union movement in South Africa.
NATHAN PALMER
The first unity conference of the independent unions was held in August 1981. The gathering on November
30, 1985, will mark the formation of independent
"superfederation,, with a half a million members.
The road between these two markers has not been a straight one. Not all of the differences that have arisen have been smoothed.
remained outside fusion. However, achieve an accord among forces with different political sensibilities around the most dynamic pole of attraction,
One such split occurred, for example, in the case of the rapidly growing
National Union of Mineworkers. It disaffiliated from the Council of Unions of
South Africa (CUSA) when the latter proved too reticent about the fusion.
The last four years have seen the growth of the independent unions.
Sometimes, this has taken on spectacular proportions, as in the case of the NUM. It was founded in 1982 in an industry that up till then had kept out noncollaborationist unions. Today, it claims 230,000 members out of a total national workforce of 400,000 miners. In this period, there has also been an evolution as regards the questions under debate, around which differentiations took place.
One of the first questions posed for the independent unions was that of registering. This was required by the new laws passed after the work of the
Wiehahn Commission concerning rec-
Through this change in the law, the government sought to exercise a tight over the young trade-union movement. Moreover, the legislation
International Viewpoint 9 December 1985 denied immigrant workers the right to registration on a racial basis. All the unions condemned together this law and its constraints.
But a division then developed at the Langa conference between unions such as SAAWU and the GWU, which opposed to accepting conditions; and FOSATU, most of whose affiliated unions complied with the formalities of registration. For the latter, the tactical advantages of registthat is, the dues checkoff and outweighed the disadvantages, which could be combated. In fact a victory was won with respect to the principle and the government finally agreed to register the FOSATU as a nonracial 1981, which did represent a significant problem for the union. In fact, today, this question has receded into the back-
The next question to arise was that of the Industrial Councils, the national framework for negotiating by industry that combined representatives of the employers, the workers, and the state. Several FOSATU unions managed to get representation in it. This was the case notably of the auto workers union, NAAWU; the metalworkers union, MAWU; as well as of the textile workers union, NUTW. This option was indicated by the strength of these unions in their respective industries. But FOSATU posed the condition that the workers should retain democratic control of their representatives.
The growing pressure of the recession, with its panoply of layoffs and restructurations, called for waging national battles in the industries affected. The result has been that while the tactical question of participating in the
1982, several small unions left the second conference on the question of nonregistration. The discussion at the following meeting in July of the same year ran into the same stumbing blocks.
Despite the unity achieved in the protest after the death in detention of
Neil Agget in February 1982, fusion of the unions seemed in that year to be relegated to an indefinite future.
A gap widened between one pole represented by FOSATU, the FCWU
[Food and Canning Workers Union],
Town Municipal Workers Association];
and another where the unions put as much stress on building a base in the communities as in the plants. The latter group evolved toward an outlook close to that of SACTU/ the South African Confederation Unions, which is influenced by the African National Congress (ANC).
The question of the community organizations was not
For not the unions ties to these groups or It involved a debate on tactics for construction and mobiliThe unions and the communities
The pole represented by FOSATU put primary stress on organizing the working class in the workplaces. This did not exclude broader actions involving other sectors of the population, in particular in boycotts in solidarity with strikes. Examples of this are the Colgate-Palmolive action in which FOSATU was involved in 19801981 (a 14-month boycott or the Fattis and Monis action in the Cape in 1979, in which the FCWU was involved.
Quite recently, the long strike that the FOSATU fought this year in the British firm SARMCOL-BTR illustrates the linkup between workers struggles and mobilizing the community.
The opposing pole in the trade-union movement considers that the independ. ent unions would act on all of the problems of the Black communities. Thus, the SAAWU was very active in opposing the proclamation of the independence of Ciskei a bantustan in which this union has the bulk of its forces.
On this level also, the situation and
5
Unions supporting unity
ACCORDING to the South Africa Labour Bulletin, the unions involved in the
"superfederation" are the following:
ests of the population in the townships. This is one of the major questions that the unified federation will have to resolve.
The new major questions arose in 1983 that had not been posed before.
- The nine affiliates of the FOSATU, with 130,000 members.
- The National Union of Mineworkers, with 100,000 members.
The commerce workers union CCAWUSA, with 50,000 members. The food and canning-workers union, the FCWU, with 25,000 members.
- The Cape Town municipal workers union, CMTA, with 12,000 members.
- The General Workers Union (based mainly in transport) with 12,000 unions, which are called "unity unions," have been joined by the unions affiliated to the UDF, which have 40,000 members. the latter are South Africa Amalgamated Workers Union (SAAWU) and the National Federation of Workers (NFW) with 12,000 members in nine unions.
In total, the superfederation will start out with 380,000 regular dues paying members and 500,000 adherents.
The five basic principles of the superfederation are the following:
At the time of the fourth summit meeting held in Athlone on April 9 and 10, 1983, a fresh optimism appeared. The "united" unions and the "community" unions agreed to set up a parity commission, like that which was established at the time of the formation of the FOSATU. Its brief will be to prepare the founding documents of the future federation and organize the discussions. The principle of industrial unionism is under discussion.
Nonracialism One union per industry. Workers Control Representation on the basis of the number of regular dues payers. Cooperation on the national level in the framework of the new federation. positions are going to evolve. A union like the SAAWU, which has been hard hit by repression, retained its organization as a general workers union, rather than being structured on an industrial basis. This question is going to assume more and more weight as the fusion comes closer.
On the other hand, the unity unions, which did not suffer repression on such a massive scale owing to their superior organization in the plants, were also to commit themselves on openly political questions. Their opposition on the local level to the expulsion of camps of squatters and above all the national campaign that FOSATU waged against Botha's constitutional reforms indicate the incorrectness of schematic analysis of the positions of the two union bloes on this question. The regime fears workers' unity (DR)
Nonetheless, it would be wrong to think that the tensions between some community organizations and the unions have disappeared. While the November 1984 "stay-away" in Transvaal province was a united action, we have not always seen the same unity when similar calls have been issued in one or another township without real prior discussion or collaborative preparation.
For example, in the Port Elizabeth region unionists, essentially FOSATU members, were attacked by elements claiming to represent the UDF simply because they did not heed a unilateral call for a strike.
The present situation has not opened up any clear road forward to combining the strengthening of the union base in the factories and taking up the inter-
The various unions were invited to provide information on their activists, members, and dues payers, and on their base.
The community unions, as well as the CUSA, did not meet these requirements during the various parity meetings. Moreover, the transformation of general workers unions into industrial unions did not proceed fast enough to suit everybody. Once again, the process of unity seemed to bog down.
Another development that was to transform the political scene was the formation in 1983 of two groupings in opposition to the regime, one of which, the UDF, was rapidly to gain a commanding lead over its rival the National Forum.
Thus, the debate that had arisen over relations with the community was raised to the national level, becoming a debate over the general conception of the struggle to bring down apartheid. International Viewpoint 9 December 1985