ACCORDING to Labour Minister Tito Mboweni, South Africa has to choose "either to orient upwards and base its economy on quality, reliablilty and inventiveness, or to orientate downwards and take on the Chinas and Indonesias of the world.. We do not hesitate to recommend the road of high productivity." (Business Day, Sept. 9, 1994).
This is the kernel of the transformation of labour relations in the new South Africa. The ambitious economic Reconstruction and Development Programme can only be carried out if the black trade union movement is enlisted as a social partner of the government and employers.
To attain this goal Minister Mboweni set up a working group last July. February it published proposals for a new Labour Relations Act.
One of the recommendations is to supplement contract negotiations with a "second channel" at the workplace level. The draft bill proposes a model of "workplace forums" similar to German and Dutch works councils.
It foresees the creation of an extensive apparatus for mediation and arbitration in labour conflicts. Employers' existing obligation to negotiate with unions over working conditions is to be abolished.
Right to strike
Furthermore, the existing freedom to strike over any dispute is to be restricted through a prohibition on strikes over issues that should go to arbitration or the courts.
WORLD UNIONS The intention is to. "lead to increased productivity and profitability" (Government Gazette, February 1995).
Employers are unenthusiastic. They are wary of taking on extra expenses at precisely the moment when have to be pushed down in order to compete on the world market. They also limit management's ability to run their companies as they see fit.
There are justifiable fears in the trade union movement that week place forums will compete with trade unions, at a time when many unions are having a hard enough time maintaining their bargaining position.
The bill requires consultation over production-related issues, but rejects COSATU's demand that employers be required to negotiate over these issues. From this standpoint the proposals look like a way to restrict collective bargaining.
COSATU is encountering problems in the new South Africa. Almost three million employees are union members, of whom 1.3 million are in unions affiliated with COSATU. But after rapid growth in the 1980s membership has hardly increased since 1990.
Since the elections the unions' leading bodies have been substantially weakened by the diversion of many union leaders into the government and politics at national, provincial and local levels.
This has resulted in a substantial decline in the leadership's ability to lead. A certain level of doubt has also arisen in the rank and file at the sight of former leaders and activists who now occupy portion of power alongside the old white oppressors.
The employers, and daily life in the companies, have scarcely changed since April 1994. Even The Management Brief admits that an "archaic mentality" exists among South African employers. Management's attitudes often remain "colonial" (The Sun, 10 March 1995).
These are the circumstances in which the unions are being asked to give up the strike weapon. Activists are unconvinced.
There is not much evidence of a new spirit of co-operation in either the public or the private sector. Black workers expect more from a democratically elected government than from the old white regime. Mandela, like McAvoy, Is warning union members against extremists "You can't put Jabu Xulu, who is earning $50 a wook after 15 years and supporting a family of five, In the same room with John company who is earning $5000 a week, and expect that [reaching agreement] will be a poaceful, easy process. But we have to manage to bring them together, because otherwise we will be shipwrecked on the (John Gomomo, COSATU President, Financial Mail, 24 Feb 1995)
The first three months of this year were relatively peaceful, (60,000 strike days compared with 295,000 in the same period last year). But these actions were characterised by an exceptional bitterness, particularly in the public sector. At the same time the government is under pressure to decrease public sector expenditure, particularly the wage and salary costs of the post-apartheid civil service. In February Mandela warned trade unions against "anarchists" in their ranks: COSATU President John Gomomo warned the government against starting a "witch hunt". The economy is expected to grow 3 per cent this year: the first meaningful growth since the 1980s. Investment also increase last year, and there is already talk of a shortage of skilled labour. According to economist David Mohr, this means "the end of declining salaries and loans". In the private sector, wage demands account for half of all the strikes. The key contract negotiations will begin in the next few months. Expect conflicts. Socialist Outlook exists to build a new type of working class leadership, based on class struggle and revolutionary socialism.
The capitalist class, driven by its own crisis, and politically united by its need to maximise profits at the expense of the workers, has had determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal Tory high command.
The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions, and to fragment and weaken the resistance, allowing them to pick off isolated sections one at a time.
In response, most TUC ana Labour leaders nave embraced the defeatist politics of 'new realism', effectively total surrender, while ditching any pretence of being a socialist alternative. Every retreat encouraged the offensive against jobs, wages, conditions and union rights.
New realism is the latest form of reformism, seeking only improved conditions within capitalism.
We reject reformism, not because we are against reforms, but because we know that full employment, decent living standards, a clean environment, peace and democracy, can never be achieved under capitalism.
Nor, as we argued long before the collapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achieved under the bureaucratically deformed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes survived only by repressing the working class.
We are a marxist current, based not on the brutish totalitarian parodies of state marxism, nor on the tame, toothless version of 'marxism' beloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
Our socialist alternative is not based on parliamentary elections or illusions of peaceful legislative change.
We fight to mobilise and unleash the power of the i porter. ¡ Name .. ¡ Address. Post cod L UP AGAINST mass unemployment, rampant employers with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won public services, the working class in Britain faces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership.
working class to topple the corrupt and reactionary rule of capital and establish its own class rule. We struggle against fragmentation by building solidarity, to unite the various struggles of workers, the unemployed, of women, of pensioners, of the black communities, of lesbians and gay men, of students, of youth - and of those fighting imperialism in Ireland and worldwide. Socialist Outlook is above all an internationalist current, in solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises in over 40 countries. Unlike some other groups on the British left, we do not believe a mass revolutionary party can be built simply by proclaiming ourselves to be one. This degenerates into sectarian posturing and abstention from struggles in the labour movement, playing into right wing hands. Nor do we believe that the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland and Wales should be left to await revolution. The oppressed must organise themselves and fight now for their demands, which are a part of the struggle for But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The fight for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers in struggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight for their rights. To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key issues such as racism and fascism - in which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to debate differences. If you agree with what you see in Socialist Outlook, and want to join with us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in towns across the country. Contact us now, get organised, and get active! CONTACT US NOW! I O YES - I want to become a Socialist Outlooksup| • Please tell me more about Socialist Outlook Phone Send to Socialist Outlook. PO Box 1109, London N4
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 84, May 27 1995, Page 13