Organising Workers

In this article, Edson Ntsibande shares the experiences and challenges of organising the unemployed and labour broker workers

The GIWUSA experience

For more than 10years in South Africa, workers and the worldng class ingeneral have experierced new forms of exploitation which is made possible by the new labour laws and practices introduced by the ANC government.

These include:

• Down sizing of bus:inesses

• Privatisation of stateassets

• Free market

All these tendencies have contributed to poverty and unemployment in the country. This has also affected the citizens of the SADC states who, for years, have worked in South Africa. The challenges to the region specifically include the following:

• Businesses with capital have free movement across borders
• Multinational companies conduct their businesses in different parts of the SADC region. The benefits workers receive differs from country to country, and area to area within each of those countries. This is also influenced by the policies and regulations within each of those countries, as well as the strength of the workers’ organisations in those countries.

• Workers are not by law allowed to organize across borders.

• Through exploiting the labour laws, businesses have managed to secure an army of unemployed workers to use against the employed in event of industrial disputes.

In the sectoral meetings at Winter School 2008, the following strategies were proposed to the challenges:

• Sharing of organizing strategies across borders;
• Sector meeting in the region to discuss country specific challenges;

• While acknowledging that the issue of free movement across borders and cross border collective agreements will not be achieved overnight, there is, nonetheless, a need for the working class to demand the abolishment of the borders which only restrict workers.

• To work towards breaking the barriers between the permanently employed workers and those who are employed as casual , temporary , and contract workers at the workplace;

• To begin breaking down the division between the permanent, contract and temporary employees and those who are not employed at all.

• To work towards building a strong regional working class community which includes those who are employed, the unemployed and the larger civil society.

The GIWUSA experience

The General Industrial Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) is a general independent union organizing in different industries. Registered in 1996, the union membership was boosted when a group of union officials were ousted from the Wits region of Chemical Paper, Printing Wood and Allied Workers Union (Ceppawu), a Cosatu affiliate, in 2003 after an internal dispute along with a sizeable number of the general membership.

Organising the unemployed

In 2002, while still in Ceppawu, the ousted members had launched the Masibambane Unemployed Project, targetting mainly the formerly employed and unemployed workers in general.

This project was unpopular with the national office of Ceppawu. The ousted members of Ceppawu brought the project into GIWUSA.

Having recognised the importance of organising in this sector, the project continues within GIWUSA, and has managed to establish itself nearly in all townships of the Wits region. Nonetheless, the project does face some challenges in organising the unemployed. These include:

• The fact that most of the comrades in the project are old enough to qualify for pension and have lost interest in the struggle.

• The difficulty the project is having in recruit- ing youth, who make up a large section of the unemployed, into the project.

• Financial constraints

• The loss of comrades elected as conveners of meetings and co-ordinators within the project to work activities or personal issues.

Organising in the workplace

Over the last ten years, neoliberalism has resulted in dramatic changes within the workplace, to the detriment of the working class. Within the workplace, there is a growing use of labour broker workers who are employed on a contract basis, along with permanent workers, temporary workers and the unemployed seeking work at the gates of factories. This creates divisions among the workers, often with the permanent workers being antagonistic towards those employed on contract or temporary basis, and competition between all workers.

Labour brokers in particular, create challenges for organising workers. Labour broker workers are employed on a contract basis and have no benefits. Often, the contract period is not specified, meaning the the contract can be ended at the whim of the the broker. Most labour broker workers are afraid to join a union under the threat of losing their work. Labour brokers often do not renew the contracts of workers who organise themselves to fight for improving their working conditions. Additionally, labour broker workers are unclear about their rights, leaving them open to exploitation.

GIWUSA, as a general union involved in many different sectors and different bargaining councils, has had experience with several different types of the labour brokers. These different labour brokers, for the most part, all operate in the same way. Nonetheless, GIWUSA is focussing on Capacity, one of the largest labour brokers in the country, with a huge number of workers on its pay roll.

The union has had some small achievements such as gaining recognition of GIWUSA in companies like Nampak in Jetpark and AEL in Modderfontein where Capacity has employees. Additionally, the union has, on a very minimal scale, been successful in bridging the barriers between the permanent and the contract and temporary employees.

Based on the analyses of workplaces, it is clear that most companies are in favor of using labour brokers since it works to their advantage to have contract workers. It is therefore extremely important for workers and unions – including Giwusa – to find a strategy to fight the labour broking monster before it destroys the working class and working class organizations.