This year’s increased level of industrial action – with close to a million workers involved in strike action, some over an extended period of time – would seem to indicate a confident mood in South African trade unions.
And certainly, times have never been better in terms of legislative protection for trade union activity. The post-apartheid period has seen unions integrated, to a greater or lesser degree, into a political and labour-relations dispensation with a democratically elected government. This is not to say that the labour movement does not still face many challenges. Organised labour is at a watershed. Not only are the vibrant, formative years of the democratic labour movement over, but the hopes and expectations for rapid social transformation expedited by a democratically elected government are receding. Many of the new challenges facing unions are the direct consequence of socio-political change in South Africa.
Irreversible changes to the nature of work have been taking place over the past decade. These changes have resulted in the division of the formal workforce into permanent, casual and contract workers, whilst unemployment figures remain far too high. The unemployed do not entirely drop off the radar of economic activity, however, but try to extract a livelihood wherever possible, creating what has globally become known as the informal economy. The workers who are fuelling the growth of the informal economy bear little resemblance to wage earners in formal employment in terms of their status, working conditions and especially their general standard of living. In South Africa, according to a recent survey, the number of people working in the informal sector increased from 965 669 in 1997 to 1 873 000 in 2001. The question is – how do unions organise within this vulnerable sector, where precarious work arrangements and conditions are a daily reality?
Another source of concern is the continuing trend to externalise and casualise work, where employers reduce the amount of permanent workers (with benefits and associated support) and replace them with casual or contract workers (who become responsible for their own benefits). Employers are actively working around the existing regulatory framework to shed many of the traditional responsibilities and costs of employment. Labour market processes are undermining trade union organisation as different types of workers are encountering completely different, sometimes counter-positional, problems.
The area where unions have historically played a major part is also being threatened. Collective bargaining remains a central drive to trade union organisation. The level at which this engagement takes place has become a contentious issue, determined by the power and preferences of employers and unions. As a result, bargaining takes place at a great variety of levels: from big, nation-wide bargaining councils to small, local bargaining councils. While in some sectors unions are making major gains through collective bargaining, these are generally sectors with a history of centralised bargaining and strong employers’ organisations. Unions in sectors that do not have these characteristics are struggling to make headway. And government is keeping its distance.
The challenge facing unions is how to develop mechanisms that will ensure equitable distribution and prevent the income gap from growing. The exponential rise in the salary gap between workers and directors, non-executive directors and CEOs reveals the high concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people in South Africa. The average worker in South Africa now has to work 273 years to earn what an average CEO is paid annually. Unless appropriate tax proposals are developed to penalise the companies that pay exorbitant salaries to their directors, as well as the directors themselves who receive such lucrative salaries (and other numerable forms of income), the gap will continue to grow.
Another area that is crucial to deal with is the maintenance of gender standards in collective bargaining, to ensure equitable and non-sexist workplaces for men and women. The entrenchment of parental rights such as maternity and paternity leave, the creation of work environments more sensitive to pregnancy and sexual health issues, the provision of childcare facilities
and more research into the gender wage gap need to be kept on trade union agendas until satisfactory conditions are achieved. To attain gender equality one needs to challenge existing power relations in the workplace – and collective bargaining is not being used enough for this purpose. If unions are to make a constructive contribution to the
crucial area of gender relations, they need to make changes. Unions need to develop education and training policies and programmes that not only take into consideration gender but also set clear targets for the education and training of women. They also need to look at developing practical measures for dealing with discrimination and creating tolerance.
As different manifestations of work and employment become established features on the socio-economic landscape, so too must different methods of organising workers and new approaches to work-related issues be developed. One such example would be the Expanded Public Works Programmes (EPWP), which by the end of 2005 had created some 297 880 jobs. While employment is restricted to a certain time period, the sheer number of people employed and the impact that the EPWP can have on people’s lives are reasons enough for unions to get involved. To date, they have not, and it is unclear why they appear to be ignoring the EPWP. Unions need to be involved to ensure that the EPWP is extended to those areas and groups most in need and that it is impacting optimally on poverty without lowering labour standards. Also, unions need to be engaging with the EPWP around the critical area of training.
As new strategic challenges for union organisation have emerged, it is imperative to develop contemporary yardsticks to measure organisational strength and to monitor union performance. There is a need to monitor whether unions are working in solidarity with one another, whether they are actively involved with working-class issues, and whether they are functioning as democratic, worker-controlled organisations. One such monitoring tool has been developed by the Labour Research Service (LRS) and is called the Trade Union Development Indicators (TRUDI).
Last but by no means least, the charting of an independent and unifying political identity for the South African labour movement, located within the current South African environment, remains an ongoing necessity. Gone are the days when the labour movement was an integral component of a broad-based movement intent on bringing down an apartheid government.
As the recent industrial action demonstrates, the issues have been redefined and as the wage gap shows, the stakes are getting higher. For contemporary unionists to operate effectively, they first need to know what faces them – and then how to deal with it.