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Labour Law amendments

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Feb 2001
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/111107 , vital:33380
Description: Our National Executive Committee met on 20/21 February and, amongst others, deliberated on the latest developments around the proposed labour law amendments. After consideration of the document circulated at the recent COSATU CEC and the subsequent CEC resolution on the matter, our NEC resolved as follows: SAMWU expresses its concern at the manner in which negotiations on the amendments were conducted and more specifically the lack of a more thoroughgoing consultative process involving workers. Already it would appear, as cautioned previously, that the Millenium Labour Council has usurped NEDLAC as the site of engagement on matters of this nature with the latter simply assuming a rubber- stamping role. Of major concern to the Union is the proposed joint vision that serves as a preamble to the agreement concluded between the negotiators in the Millenium Labour Council. In the view of SAMWU, the vision constitutes the first formal embrace by COSATU, notwithstanding the Federation’s vision of socialism, of neo-liberal globalisation viz. economic growth for redistribution. The COSATU view has always been the opposite - growth through redistribution. SAMWU cannot support any agreement with business that acknowledges their right to a ‘competitive’ profit and secure investments. Profits derive directly from the exploitation of workers. If any agreement between business, labour and government on the proposed amendments has to contain a preamble, then SAMWU is of the view that it should simply recognise that notwithstanding fundamental differences on an appropriate macro-economic strategy for the country, the parties have been able to reach agreement on various amendments to labour legislation.
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Date Issued: Feb 2001

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SAMWU's Anti-Privatisation campaign 1997-1999

Authors: SAMWU
Date: 1999
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/111213 , vital:33414
Description: Last week, SAMWU held lunchtime demonstrations around the country to protest against the privatisation of municipal services. The demonstrations were well attended with reports from the regions indicating that thousands of workers turned out. SAMWU has received an overwhelming show of solidarity from the international community. The General Secretary of UNISON, Britain’s largest public sector union with over 1 million members, wrote that “The UK experience of water privatisation has been huge windfall profits for the companies, record dividends for their shareholders, and massive pay rises for those at the top of these companies. At the same time, employees have suffered job losses, while consumers have had massive price rises. Drought restrictions are widespread and almost one third of all water leaks from old pipes.” The Community and Public Sector Union is Australia wrote that “the Victorian government has pursued similar policies since its election in 1992, and this has resulted in the loss of over 30 000 jobs. Despite the massive effort at privatisation, the state remains the highest taxed state in the nation!” The President of the Public Services Association in Trinidad and Tobago wrote “Our own experience is that Severn Trent of the UK has been granted a loan facility by our government to cover all operational losses for the three year period, thereby taking no risks and collecting management fees of millions of dollars. Water is the most essential commodity for humans and it should never be handed over to the private sector profiteers.” The Executive Committee of Algemene Onderwijsbond, Netherlands wrote: “the evil of privatisation of public holdings is a worldwide problem.. .be convinced of our solidarity and support with your struggle.” SINTAP, the Portuguese Union representing public administration personnel wrote: “We hope the Ministry of Constitutional Development will be able to accept your pilot projects for public sector alternatives to privatisation of water and waste services.” The International Secretary of the 1.3 million member AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) wrote: “given its central importance to sustaining life, water must remain in public hands. We applaud your actions to ensure working conditions for those employed in these critical public services and your leadership in educating the community of the danges associated with privatisation.” The President of the Lithuanian Trade Union Federation of Public Services faxed SAMWU’s President a message saying that “in Lithuania, the capital city of Vilnius has been fighting French multinational Lyonnaise Des Eaux for four years. They want to buy our city’s water system for 5 million US dollars and get 30% of the shares, which is valued at 660 000 US dollars. Its profit the company will get from our citizens pockets.”
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Date Issued: 1999

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Campaigns Bulletin : Anti-Privatisation Campaign Special Issue

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Mar 1998
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/113407 , vital:33768
Description: The SAMWU anti-privatisation campaign goes right to the heart of all members in their role as service providers to the community. Any privatisation of municipal services would mean that people in community not have access to basic services. It would also mean a loss of jobs through retrenchment and restructuring. This has already happened in other parts of the world. Internationally, public sector unions are fighting privatisation. For all these reasons, SAMWU calls on all members to intensify the anti-privatisation campaign! Experiences internationally have shown that privatisation results in increase in tariffs and a decline in quality services. Our communities have never received a quality service under apartheid. Now things will even be worse: under privatisation only those who can afford to pay, will get services. A major political responsibility that confronts SAMWU: we must ensure that we win the struggle against privatisation. We are confident that based on the democratic participation of ‘our gold', SAMWU workers, COSATU and the community we can be victorious.
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Date Issued: Mar 1998

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Workers News - Life in the rural areas

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Mar 1998
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/113292 , vital:33742
Description: Privatisation is the challenge and we need to campaign strongly against it. We seem to lose sight of the fact that the loyal servants of apartheid are still feeding our elected comrade councillors with false information. These officials hide their incompetence in managing Local Government by proposing that privatisation is the route to alleviate poor services in Local Government. During the apartheid era, Local Government in advantaged areas rendered the best service! What is stopping democracy from rendering the best services now in the disadvantaged areas?We must be vigilant and be prepared to go a little further in providing services to the disadvantaged community. The 30th July agreement at the National Bargaining Council developed guidelines which say that the preferred option to providing services is the public sector. We need as workers to use the guidelines and agreement to our advantage. We must also use SAMWU's Emergency Plan. It is important to read page 11 for more information about this Plan. We need to start implementing our resolution on Socialism to its fullest. We need to actively build the SACP which the congress identified as the main vehicle to achieve our resolution.
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Date Issued: Mar 1998

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Workers News March 1998- Life in the rural areas

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Mar 1998
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/137773 , vital:37558
Description: Greetings to all you comrades! I hope that you enjoyed your festive season and are ready to face the challenges facing us as a union. Our Congress in October 1997 came out with resolutions and we need to implement them.SAMWU will produce a booklet with all the resolutions for comrades to refer to. This booklet will be available from your branch offices soon. Unless we are paper tigers and not acting as a collective, we shall fail to achieve the aims of our last Congress. We are starting with our wage negotiations at a central level on the 19th of March and hoping to conclude by the end of April. This is the first time in our history where we hope we will be able to achieve a single minimum in the sector. With constant consultation and mandate process, we hope we will be able to achieve the above.
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Date Issued: Mar 1998

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SAMWU Workers News - June 1997

Authors: SAMWU
Date: June 1997
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/137754 , vital:37556
Description: Welcome to SAMWU’s first magazine. This is the magazine for all comrades so do not take it home and hide it under your pillow - carry it around and share it with other comrades and your family and community. There are many challenges facing SAMWU members and officials at the present time. Our jobs are at risk from privatisation. Our communities are at risk because big business wants to take away the little services we have now. It is our job to politicise communities to take our antiprivatisation campaign forward. Comrades, we must guard against corruption. Multinational companies are prepared to pay a lot of money to get what they want. We are also having a problem with our comrades in SANCO who are bidding for a 30 year contract for Nelspruit’s water and waste services. We don’t want to end up like Britain where people are buying water in bottles from shops because the water from the taps is undrinkable. We don't want to be forced to buy bottled water that is more expensive than beer.
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Date Issued: June 1997

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Transforming Local Government to meet the needs of the people

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Oct 1997
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/111074 , vital:33370
Description: The implementation of our previous resolutions on socialism has always created misunderstanding amongst our members. Believing that an effective, achievable education programme for our members will ensure understanding amongst our members. SAMWU’s continued commitment to socialism requires that it develops a counter to the ideological war against socialism. Socialism is the only system which can solve the social and economic problems of working people across the globe and any attempts to reform capitalism will merely lead to greater levels of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, disease, starvation, crime and civil war. Resolves that SAMWU, with COSATU, shall mount a counter-offensive campaign against ' capitalism aimed at proving the superiority of socialism by: Engaging in relentless public criticism of capitalism By conducting, throughout the Federation, ongoing education on the fundamental ideas of socialism and nurturing a working class consciousness and outlook. Fostering a climate of free and fraternal debate on how socialism is to be achieved. SAMWU should forge links with other working class formations internationally as part of the international fight against neo-liberal globalisation.
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Date Issued: Oct 1997

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Workers News - The war against privatisation 1997

Authors: SAMWU
Date: June 1997
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/113667 , vital:33818
Description: SAMWU continues to fight against the privatisation of more and more services. Even’ region is facing different struggles, but let’s not forget that we are all fighting against one thing: the notion that services should be provided for profit and not to meet needs. Let’s learn about each other’s struggles so that we can prepare for united mass action! Local Authorities here are proposing to privatise the security departments of Duiwelskloof and Potgiet- ersrus TLC. In Naboom- spruit, it has been proposed that meter reading services be contracted out to private companies. Council has also spoken of putting out tenders for the maintenance of the Tzaneen cemetry. So comrades can see that we are fighting privatisation on many fronts! In Queenstown, council is attempting to privatise the refuse collection service. IMATU has joined SAMWU in rejecting this. At the moment we are trying to arrange a meeting with community structures in order to put our position forward to them. Umtata municipality proposed privatisation of the ambulance and fire departments, but noting union opposition, scheduled a meeting with SAMWU and IMATU to discuss this further. Our Aberdeen comrades are to be congratulated! We have heard that they have gone from door to door in their communities educating others about the dangers of privatisation!
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Date Issued: June 1997

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Workers News Nov 1997 - Special tenth anniversary edition

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Nov 1997
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/137959 , vital:37577
Description: I started with the municipality in 1970 as a plumber with the technical section of the JCC. There were no unions then that organised Black workers - we were not allowed to belong to any union at that time. We were first given help by the Industrial Aid Society, then the FOSATU Workers Project, and then I became one of the first shopstewards in TGWU in 1980. It was difficult in the early days of TGWU - other workers would be afraid even to sit next to you in case they were victimised by the employer. In those days there were no wage negotiations - we used to get a 20c increase. The process in launching SAMWU was a very difficult one. We started the merger talks even before COSATU was launched in 1985. But when COSATU launched, that Congress took a decision that organiations in the municipal sector should merge. It was not an easy process but because we were all for unity in the end we achieved what we set out to do. My first main challenge as SAMWU President was to unite Local Government workers. In our history Local Government workers had no national union, whereas workers in other sectors had national unions. But in many ways, after SAMWU's first Congress, things became easier for municipal workers. We had established a solid base from which to challenge the employers.
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Date Issued: Nov 1997

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Municipal Infrastructure Investment Framework

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Mar 1996
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/111085 , vital:33376
Description: We enclose our preliminary response to the report. This serves as our contribution to the agenda for the meeting currently scheduled for 22 March 1996 in Cape Town. Intended to commence early and continue until lunch time - if not beyond. We record that we have discussed the representation of different departments which need to be present from Governments side -including yourselves, Constitutional Development, Water Affairs, Finance, and Labour. We would further note that the participants need to understand that we are not impressed in general when we arrange meetings only to have details change at the last moment. From our side you can expect a delegation of between 12-14 persons including representatives of our 9 regions and national office bearers. SAMWU first became aware of the MIIF during the Portfolio Committee Public Hearing on local government legislation held in November 1995. A copy of the full document was received by our office in mid-January 1996. A covering letter indicated that a key issue in the MIIF was the " nature and extent of private sector involvement in extending service delivery". A meeting was held, on 21 February 1996, between the Minister without Portfolio, the Director General in the RDP Office and a delegation from SAMWU. It is necessary to note that this first formal contact was very belated and does not serve to engender trust in any process. We do not accept that any serious attempt was made to involve the union prior to the document being made public. It is our view that the attitude to unions , as reflected in the document, was one of “unions will have to be accommodated “ (our Italics). Implying more of a necessary evil than any concern for a partnership. “ Partnerships” being reserved for business, small entrepreneurs and big capital. We have been assured that the document remain a consultative document and that we can still make our input. The fact is that it is already taken to represent government policy and is being acted upon in such terms. A case in point being the planning already being done by the DBS A in respect to water and sanitation (Municipal Engineer - Jan 96 ). It is necessary that Government correct this impression if further consultation is to be taken seriously. It is our view that in its current form the document is being used as a means of mounting an attack on the direct provision of services by local government.
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Date Issued: Mar 1996

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Restructuring the municipal sector to deliver on the RDP

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Oct 1996
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/118076 , vital:34593
Description: One of the biggest threats to RDP delivery in the municipal sector is that of privatisation. The Conference re-affirmed the long standing anti-privatisation position of SAMWU. In order to advance this position, the following proposals are made: That the Union develops a clear campaign to promote our opposition to privatisation and our support for the retention of basic services under public control and ownership through the “turning around” of local government services. That Regions discuss the elements of this campaign and that this is finalised in the next NEC. That for the campaign to succeed, it must be mass based. We should focus on getting worker and community support for our fight to retain services in public hands. An essential element of the campaign would be to ensure implementation of the last COSATU CEC resolution which calls for basic services like water, electricity, housing etc. to remain under public ownership and control. This includes identifying those services which should be brought under public ownership and control(nationalisation). Another important feature of the campaign should be the integration of the research findings(the joint ILRIG/SAMWU Research Project) into the programme. The research should both illustrate international and national consequences of past privatisation experiments as well as illustrating public sector superiority in the delivery of basic services(democratic alternatives to privatisation).
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Date Issued: Oct 1996

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Workers News - 1998 A fighting year for SAMWU

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Nov 1996
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/137970 , vital:37579
Description: You will all remember that in past editions of this magazine we have touched on the anti-privatisation campaign which all comrades have been active in. I must say it is a great pleasure for me to write this message, to thank all the NGO's, international labour movement, individuals, COSATU and community organisations for all their support. The process of implementing the antiprivatisation campaign has not been an easy one. Just after we started with the campaign, the union was attacked and claims were made that SAMWU was counter-revolutionary. The attacks were clearly intended to shift the focus from the campaign to mud- slinging. They could not match us when it came to knowing the facts of privatisation and it’s terrible effects on the community, and the role politicians play once services are in the hands of the private sector. Despite these attacks, SAMWU still feels that the resolution we adopted to oppose privatisation was the correct one and we hope it will be the correct position for years to come.
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Date Issued: Nov 1996

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SAMWU NEWS Volume 1 - Rebuild and Unite

Authors: SAMWU
Date: Sep 1995
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/113303 , vital:33743
Description: As a democratic Union and driven by its members, it is imperative for us to bring about the transformation within the Cape Town Branch and the City Council. The Shopstewards, our elected representatives, cannot do it by themselves and therefore need the support and input from their members they represent. We need to: develope new leadership and build capacity within the organisation, seriously address workplace democracy and joint decision-making address gender equality at the workplace, develope the skills and competencies of workers, vigorously implement education, training and development programmes through Affirmative Action for those previously disadvantaged. WHAT IS YOUR ROLE ? We should also dissuade other SAMWU members from crossing over to other Unions for material benefits but that they look closely at the history of these Unions and whether they can adequately protect the rights of workers and whether they have the interest of workers at heart. We have seen how other Unions are recruiting members by offering them all kinds of elaborate schemes, but not addressing the fundamental issues of workers’ rights, protection of job security, the right to strike and the question of narrowing the discriminate wage gap. We need to protect and fight against these policies of differentiation between workers. As we can see from the above, many challenges and work are lying ahead of us to build and unite the strong union. Now is the time - let us face the challenges together to build strong union and worker leadership.
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Date Issued: Sep 1995

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Conditions of service of SAMWU staff

Authors: SAMWU
Date: 1994
Subjects: SAMWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/178916 , vital:43019
Description: This document is as adopted by the SAMWU NEC in November 1994. It serves to define the wages and conditions of employment applicable to all SAMWU staff and is the only conditions of employment document of the union. Employees who were staff of a pre-existing trade union which merged with SAMWU who have conditions which were previously declared personal to holder ( in terms of merger agreements ) are required to examine this document and to individually register where they, consider that their terms differ from this document. No improved condition hereby introduced can be taken to apply to such employees as a matter of right . They have a choice of registering specific conditions as ” personal to holder " or converting to the full set of conditions as contained herein. Where they register a condition as personal to holder the NEC will decide whether new conditions hereby introduced are also applicable to them. It is further recorded that whilst these conditions of service are open to be ammended from time to time ; as-the NEC may decide , any representations for amendments shall normally only be considered during the later part*of-each year.
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Date Issued: 1994

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