Nicole Ulrich reflects on the birth of the modern non- racial trade union movement in the early 1970s, and draws lessons for the social movements of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Lennie Gentle looks at the relationship between trade unions and other sections of the mass movement, at the ideological contestation in the labour movements and the liberation struggle, and the current debates about the role of trade unions.

In this contribution John Appolis argues that there is a need for trade unions and the left in general to open a debate on whether to participate in the present state institutions

Mondli Hlatswayo argues that the wave of militant socialist struggles led by the trade unions over the last 30 years are now coming to an end, and that the unions have been co-opted into the capitalist system.

Linda Cooper argues that the struggle between education as a tool for social transformation and political practice and education as a human resource development is no longer an evenly balanced one, and that the balance has shifted decisively away from worker education as ‘political practice,’ in favour of human resource developmen

Sakhela Buhlungu argues that while white activists played an important role in the development of black trade unions, there were unequal power relations between them and black workers.

Oupa Lehulere argues that over the last ten years COSATU has moved from being a militant socialist organisation to becoming an organisation whose policies are now acceptable to the capitalist class in South Africa.

Maria Van Driel argues that the social dialogue, which is the policy of the main South African trade unions, cannot advance the interest of the working class under conditions of neoliberalism