Rejuvenated Cosatu ready to defend workers

Cosatu’s 12th national congress heralds a new beginning for the 30-year-old federation, writes Bheki Ntshalintshali.

Cosatu’s 12th national congress convened last week heralds a new beginning for the 30-year-old federation. It represents a new chapter that will be characterised by organisational renewal.

The 2 500 delegates who attended the congress and participated in the vigorous, forthright and fruitful discussions that took place over four days, made it abundantly clear that the federation is still very much alive.

We emerged more united and with a very clear and crucial mandate from the workers – they want a united federation that will focus on shop floor issues and defend them against the brazen arrogance of monopoly capital. Workers are clear that their federation should remain rooted and dedicated to its founding principles. They want a strong shop floor organisation, with the ability to wage militant struggles in defence of worker rights, collective bargaining and political activism. We remain committed to the total emancipation of workers in particular, and the working class in general, from the shackles of exploitation and poverty.

Congress proved that we remain a democratic and transparent organisation, controlled by workers. Organisationally, our members expect us to put divisions behind us and to confront our real class enemies, monopoly capital.

We shall step up efforts to organise the overwhelming majority of workers, especially the vulnerable, who remain unorganised, especially in the private sector.

They include young workers, community care workers, domestic workers and all the other vulnerable sections of the labour force. We will also improve our presence in sectors such as catering, wholesale, hotel, cleaning and private security.

The “buzzwords” for all our unions will be recruitment and membership service.

Minimum wage

We will be aggressively campaigning for the abolition of an apartheid wage structure and the introduction of a national minimum wage. We want to make it clear that we will intensify our campaign against outsourcing and labour broking.

We will be engaging with Minister of Labour Mildred Oliphant to find out the basis for her allegations that some unions make use of labour brokers.

She needs to substantiate her allegations, and if they are proven to be true, we will act to ensure that such levels of hypocrisy are decimated within our ranks.

To consolidate our organisational power, we shall be working hard to implement our resolutions on mergers and on the building of super unions. The congress mandated us to reduce the backward practice of Cosatu unions competing with each other, instead of practising solidarity.

We shall fight the scourge of business unionism. We will systematically develop binding policy frameworks, which must address challenges arising from our investment arms, union-linked retirement funds, procurement of goods and services and fund raising.

The congress reaffirmed that the alliance remained the only vehicle available to the workers to advance a second more radical phase of our transition. We need a reconfigured alliance that will be at the centre of driving the national democratic revolution, an alliance that will collectively develop and implement policy in line with our vision as enshrined in the Freedom Charter.

The radical second phase of transition must decisively address the triple crises of poverty, inequality and unemployment.

As part of the task to develop political consciousness, we will run joint programmes with the SACP focusing on the ideological training of our leaders and members. We will mobilise for a overwhelming victory of the ANC in the forthcoming local government elections. We will escalate our fight against corruption in our ranks and in the broader society, exposing corruption in both the private and public sectors and demanding decisive punitive action against perpetrators.

We are going to intensify our focus on the struggles of women in the workplace and shall also ensure that our progressive labour laws deliver for the workers.

Right to strike

We will defend our hard-won labour rights and will resist any attempts to threaten our right to strike. We will defend our right to collective bargaining and also demand expansion of centralised bargaining across all sectors.

We will launch a massive campaign to demand the withdrawal of the Taxation Amendment Act of 2013, which is aimed at taking away the right of workers to decide on how to spend their deferred salaries.

We shall launch a campaign demanding the implementation of the National Health Insurance with immediate effect, the transformation of our education system and will also work hard to strengthen the student worker-alliance at universities and colleges. We shall campaign against police killings. We demand that the government tightens the Criminal Procedures Act and SAPS Act in order to defend police officers.

We reject the situation where the black majority remains enslaved in waged labour, while our economy remains highly monopolised and foreign owned and also in the hands of a white minority.

We will launch a radical campaign against privatisation. We are calling for the convening of an alliance economic summit to discuss issues relating to policy differences in the alliance.

We shall be demanding the following:

* The transformation of the colonial and apartheid structure of the South African economy through an industrialisation-led economic growth path.

* Decisive interventions to stem the unfolding de-industrialisation and ongoing job losses.

* Introduction of capital controls to stem the tide of capital flight, including the rejection of the SABMiller-Anheuser-Busch Inbev merger.

* Implementation of the alliance summit decision calling for the redrafting and fundamental overhaul of the core economic and labour chapter of the National Development Plan.

* Review and withdrawal of the Employment Incentive Tax Act.

* Lifting of a moratorium on the freezing of vacant posts in the public service.

* Abolition of e-tolls and labour brokers.

* The implementation and adoption of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value.

* Abolition of apartheid wage structure.

* Reversal of the decision to introduce the preservation of provident funds.

* State-owned enterprises (SOEs) must stop outsourcing, labour broking, retrenchments and other unfair labour practices.

* The Treasury must ensure that the SOEs are properly funded to fulfil their developmental and decent work agenda.

* The government must intervene to ensure that the sector education and training authorities deliver upon their mandates and spend their budgets to ensure that workers receive the necessary training to help them find decent employment.

We will continue to be a campaigning federation of workers.

* Bheki Ntshalintshali is Cosatu’s general secretary.

** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.

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