Work in Progress issue no.52
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1988
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/173573 , vital:42385
- Description: As this edition of Work In Progress was going to print the state effectively banned 17 organisations and an undisclosed number of individuals, and severely restricted the Congress of South African Trade Unions. By doing this the government of State President PW Botha has escalated its ongoing war against the people of South and Southern Africa. Precisely why the state chose to act this way at this time is not clear. Visible resistance to apartheid in the townships has declined under the burden of emergency rule, and popular political and community organisation has been severely weakened. One possibility is that government is attempting to limit the massive resistance expected against the October local government elections, including the boycott call made by a number of those organisations effected by the latest clampdown. But whatever the reason, there remains no excuse whatsoever for believing that ‘reformers’ within the state hold any power. If the distinction between ‘militarists’ and ‘reformers’ is real, then the militarists have so obviously won ascendency that talk of ‘reformers’ wielding influence in government is absurd. There is even less excuse for those elements which stubbornly hold to the belief that the Botha administration has a reform programme. There is no doubt that it has plans to change the face of South Africa. So did the Nationalist government of Verwoerd. But it was never suggested that this involved ‘reform’. Change can be for the worse - and this is what the changes being made by Botha’s militarists involve. South Africa is a society at war. Government is at war with the majority of South Africans and Namibians, with the Angolan nation, and with the majority of frontline states. In Natal, it seems unwilling or unable to use the might of its laws against the vigilante perpetrators of a bloody and enduring civil war. On the labour front, its proposed amendment to the Labour Relations Act, combined with emergency restrictions on Cosatu, aim to close down trade union organisation or render it impotent. This war against the working class has another side, seen in Botha’s new economic deal, the wage freeze and moves to privatise substantial areas of the public sector. Many of the articles in this issue of WIP deal with facets of this war - from the ANC’s armed struggle to Botha’s economic war against the working class; from the Maritzburg civil war to allegations of riot police on the rampage in townships. Government’s 24 February banning of organisations and individuals, and the restrictions on Cosatu activity, must be seen in this context of a society at war with itself.
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- Date Issued: 1988
Information Digest issue 8
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: Feb 1991
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/119167 , vital:34708
- Description: More than two years of worker struggle, mass action and negotiations resulted last Thursday 14th February in the scrapping of ^ the 1988 amendments to the Labour Relations Act. The State President has to sign the new Act within ten days of it being passed by parliament. Some of the most important changes contained in the new LRA are: The 1988 definition of the "unfair labour practice" is gone, removing strikes and lockouts from this definition. It will now be easier to use the Conciliation Boards and the Industrial Court to help resolve disputes. It will no longer be presumed that a union 0 is responsible for an illegal strike of its members. An employer can’t interdict a strike without giving 48 hours notice or, if shorter notice is given, without informing the union. Unions with public and private sector members can now register. COSATU will be organising regional workshops for organisers to look at the implications of the Act, and how to apply the new provisions.
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- Date Issued: Feb 1991
6th National Congress Resolutions
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1996
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149120 , vital:38806
- Description: COSATU must intervene in affiliates where it has identified problems, where problems have been brought to its attention and / or has been requested to do so. The CEC should draw guidelines on how and under which circumstances the federation and its structures may intervene taking into account clauses 3.9 and 3.10 of the constitution. Such intervention should not undermine affiliates where such problems exist. COSATU leadership must be visible during major disputes between affiliates and employers and co-ordinate solidarity with workers involved in such disputes.
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- Date Issued: 1996
Election Programme for COSATU
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: July 1993
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/113977 , vital:33865
- Description: COSATU must intervene in affiliates where it has identified problems, where problems have been brought to its attention and / or has been requested to do so. The CEC should draw guidelines on how and under which circumstances the federation and its structures may intervene taking into account clauses 3.9 and 3.10 of the constitution. Such intervention should not undermine affiliates where such problems exist. COSATU leadership must be visible during major disputes between affiliates and employers and co-ordinate solidarity with workers involved in such disputes.
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- Date Issued: July 1993
Information Digest - Number 8
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: Feb 1991
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/110183 , vital:33244
- Description: More than two years of worker struggle, mass action and negotiations resulted last Thursday 14th February in the scrapping of the 1988 amendments to the Labour Relations Act. The State President has to sign the new Act within ten days of it being passed by parliament. Some of the most important changes contained in the new LRA are: The 1988 definition of the "unfair labour practice" is gone, removing strikes and lockouts from this definition. It will now be easier to use the Conciliation Boards and the Industrial Court to help resolve disputes. It will no longer be presumed that a union 0 is responsible for an illegal strike of its members. An employer can’t interdict a strike without giving 48 hours notice or, if shorter notice is given, without informing the union. Unions with public and private sector members can now register. COSATU will be organising regional workshops for organisers to look at the implications of the Act, and how to apply the new provisions. COSATU has stated that the scrapping of the amendments are only the first step in the process of creating a workers LRA. Immediately on the agenda, in terms of the agreement reached with employers and the state last year, is our demand for rights to be extended to farm workers, domestic workers, public sector workers, and workers in the bantustans. June is the deadline which has been set for real progress to be made in these areas. COSATU is also calling for the restructuring of the Labour Appeal Court and the National Manpower Commission.
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- Date Issued: Feb 1991
Debate on globalisation
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1997
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/172083 , vital:42156
- Description: At the Cosatu National Congress, a debate around the issue of globalisation erupted. At the core of the debate was whether the federation was opposed to globalisation or not. Some unions fell that as a federation we should be opposed to globalisation and all what it represents. Others felt that we should be opposed not to globalisation but its negative effects or the current form of globalisation.
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- Date Issued: 1997
Negotiations Bulletin - Workers speak with one voice
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: May 1995
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/137411 , vital:37521
- Description: Almost two million organised workers from COSATU, NACTU and FEDSAL are speaking with one voice on the Labour Relations Bill. The country’s three major federations have identified a number of areas in the draft LRA that need to be dealt with for the benefit of all workers.
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- Date Issued: May 1995
Southern Africa perspective - In South Africa: The Bloody Campaign Against Organized Labor
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1991
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/169033 , vital:41677
- Description: A year after African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, South Africa’s Black trade unions, particularly the million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), remain at the heart of the movement for political democracy and economic and social change. Union activists have been instrumental in revitalizing mass opposition to apartheid — launching ANC branches, organizing local consumer and utility boycotts, and leading strikes over wages, job security and workplace racism that cost the white-run economy over four million work days during 1990. But labor’s role in the struggle for political and economic democracy has increasingly made the unions the target of state-sponsored political violence. Black labor’s resistance to oppression goes back to the 1920s, when the militant Industrial and Commercial Workers Union built a national membership of over 100,000. But it was not until 1981, after a wave of illegal strikes forced the apartheid regime to lift the ban on Black unions, that labor began to emerge as a major anti-apartheid force. With Mandela’s African National Congress and other organizations still outlawed, Black workers increasingly saw their unions as a vehicle for their political aspirations.
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- Date Issued: 1991
6th National Congress Resolutions
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1996
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/134883 , vital:37214
- Description: COSATU must intervene in affiliates where it has identified problems, where problems have been brought to its attention and / or has been requested to do so. The CEC should draw guidelines on how and under which circumstances the federation and its structures may intervene taking into account clauses 3.9 and 3.10 of the constitution. Such intervention should not undermine affiliates where such problems exist. COSATU leadership must be visible during major disputes between affiliates and employers and co-ordinate solidarity with workers involved in such disputes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
Namibian workers organise
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 2000
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139645 , vital:37762
- Description: In 1987, long before Namibian independence was even on the agenda, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW) decided to produce a joint book on the Namibian trade union movement. At that stage the Namibian trade unions had just begun to assert themselves. The idea of the book was to provide information useful for both Namibian and South African workers on the history of the working class struggle in Namibia. It was hoped that this would help to build a powerful working class solidarity between South African and Namibian workers. The International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG) - a research and educational service organisation specialising in working class struggles internationally — was commissioned by COSATU and NUNW to research, write and produce the book. Work on the book started in 1988. Between then and May 1989, two ILRIG workers visited Namibia a number of times - once with comrades from COSATU - and gathered a vast amount of information on the struggle in Namibia. Information came from workers, from trade unionists, from SWAPO, from documents and from observation. At all times in the process of writing the book, material was referred back to COSATU and NUNW for discussion and approval. The final chapter on solidarity was done at the end of August 1989, when a delegation of COSATU leaders visited Namibia to discuss setting up a permanent Working Committee with the NUNW. The book is coming at a time when Namibia is about to achieve her independence from South African colonial occupation under UN Resolution 435. The Namibian workers’ struggle for a living wage, for the right to strike, for decent houses, for jobs for all and against privatisation will not end with independence. The need for strengthening and extending trade union organisation in Namibia will not end with independence. The necessity for building solidarity between the Namibian and South African working class will not end with independence.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2000
New Labour Bill attacks workers rights
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: June 1997
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English, Afrikaans
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/135293 , vital:37255
- Description: The new Labour Relations Bill is a fundamental attack on many of the rights that workers have won over the past ten years. Just a few years ago the bosses and the government were complaining that unions are going on too many illegal strikes. Now that unions are more and more going on legal strikes, they want to make it as difficult as possible for unions to strike legally.
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- Date Issued: June 1997
Towards developing a long term stratergy for COSATU
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1994
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/176133 , vital:42662
- Description: The aim of this discussion document is to begin a debate about the future role of COSATU. Its success will depend on concrete debate, discussion by membership and criticism of issues and/or direction. The analysis of the past three years will be addressed in a separate paper in preparation for the CEC and 5th National Congress] Since our inception, our guiding principle has been to bring about the transfer of power to the people. The present political settlement, no matter how flawed, takes us a step closer to that goal. All polls indicate that barring a miracle, the ANC will have around 60% representation in the next parliament and Government of National Unity and Reconstruction. This will indeed represent a break with the past and a real victory for workers and the country as a whole.
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- Date Issued: 1994
Insurance Second Amendment Act and the Demutualisation Levy Bill
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: Aug 1998
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/109835 , vital:33194
- Description: COSATU has for many years been campaigning for the democratisation of the Mutuals in order to see to it that their considerable resources could be used more effectively in promoting economic development. In our 1996 Social Equity and Job Creation document COSATU, together with the other major trade union federations, argued that: "Mutual insurance companies such as Old Mutual and Sanlam are nominally controlled by policy-holders, but in practice are controlled by their managers. These companies control and manage large sums of provident fund contributions from workers yet grant no real ownership rights to workers". On this basis we proposed that: "Organised labour and other representatives of policy holders, be given immediate representation on the governing structures of the mutual companies, and that these companies be requested to commence negotiation through Nedlac on this proposal. Thereafter, appropriate legislative changes should be introduced through parliament."
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- Date Issued: Aug 1998
6th National Congress Resolutions
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1996
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/173694 , vital:42401
- Description: COSATU must intervene in affiliates where it has identified problems, where problems have been brought to its attention and / or has been requested to do so. The CEC should draw guidelines on how and under which circumstances the federation and its structures may intervene taking into account clauses 3.9 and 3.10 of the constitution. Such intervention should not undermine affiliates where such problems exist. COSATU leadership must be visible during major disputes between affiliates and employers and co-ordinate solidarity with workers involved in such disputes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
Behind the barricades
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: 1987
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/172098 , vital:42159
- Description: I saw a badly injured and handcuffed man pushed down the stairs of Cosatu House in central Johannesburg during this week’s police siege. After hitting the bottom of the stairs head first with a dull thud, he lay still. A young policeman moved up to him and hit him once on the rib with rubber pick-handle. The man didn't stir. He was dragged on the ground to a police truck before being thrown in head first.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1987
COSATU Submission on the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill
- Authors: COSATU
- Date: Oct 1997
- Subjects: COSATU
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/109824 , vital:33193
- Description: Twenty Months ago, the Minister of Labour, Comrade Tito Mboweni, released a Green Paper on the Basic Conditions of Employment. From April 1996, government labour and business engaged in negotiations in NEDLAC, first over the Green Paper and later various drafts of the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill (the Bill). The primary aim of these negotiations was to agree on the purpose and content of the Bill. COSATU views this piece of legislation as very important as it replaces the current Basic Conditions of Employment Act and Wage Act and provides a floor of basic conditions of employment for all workers - organised and unorganised- including the most vulnerable, such as domestic and farmworkers. Business on the other hand want to preserve apartheid cheap labour practices in the workplace by protecting the current BCEA passed by the apartheid regime at the time when employers had a cosy relationship with government, and the majority of workers were disenfranchised. Employers, using globalisation and international competition as their cover, want to remove obstacles to further oppression and exploitation of workers. If employers have their way, South African workers, who, as the Green Paper points out, already work long hours by international standards, would work even longer hours, with very little or no protection. The challenge facing you as the elected representatives of the people is to send out a signal to workers, through this Bill, as to what you consider to be the minimum employment standards to which every worker should be entitled, concerning basic things like hours of work, periods of sick and maternity leave and rates of over-time pay. Parliament's choice is stark: to lead the process of eradicating apartheid's legacy from South African work places by improving and securing employment standards for ordinary working people or, to give in to those forces who want to turn back the clock and retain the patterns of apartheid cheap labour and worker insecurity.
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- Date Issued: Oct 1997