Anthony Butler
9 November 2009
column
Johannesburg — THE two-million strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is really two workers' federations sheltering under a single umbrella. In one camp we find industrial, manufacturing and mineworkers unions. The main powers are the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA, aligned with numerous substantial unions representing textile, chemicals, retailing and food workers.
The second camp is made up of public-sector trade unions representing prison and police officers, nurses, teachers, communications workers, and parastatal employees. The giants in this group are the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu).
Four observations about these two broad groupings help to explain the recent politics of the tripartite alliance. First, the two types of union have different class bases. Teachers, health workers, police officers and government bureaucrats are, or aspire to be, members of the new middle class.
Second, deindustrialisation and a growing state mean public-sector unions will soon dominate the federation. This will bring a major culture shift. In the past, unions such as the NUM have produced the workers' political representatives: Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe , African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, and Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi are all products of the NUM machine. Industrial and mineworkers' unions, moreover, cultivated extended historical links with powerful factions of the South African Communist Party (SACP), relationships which their petty-bourgeois public-sector counterparts far less often enjoy.
Third, the two types of union have quite different organisational and political logics. Mineworkers and metalworkers survive in marginal industries facing intense international competition, in a country in the throes of deindustrialisation. Union leaders working in the private sector battle hard with employers but they know ideological posturing and unreasonable wage demands directly destroy members' jobs.
Public-sector workers are paid from the public purse. Their earnings are immune to swings in the global economy, and their job security and living standards are strongly influenced by relationships with national political leaders. The effects of their pay increases on society are mediated by the state's budgetary and tax systems, with the result that any unemployment and welfare destruction for which they are responsible is usually "invisible".
Fourth, and most important, industrial unions are locked in a struggle with capitalist employers producing goods for profit. Public-sector unions, by contrast, are involved in delivering the "social wage" of decent health, education, transport and municipal services. A fault line is developing in Cosatu around these public services. Mantashe told the South African Municipal Workers' Union last week that money-obsessed public-sector unions have delivered "shoddy services to communities". Last month, he told the Black Management Forum Sadtu should not blame apartheid for the work-shy attitude of many of its members. This follows ANC Gauteng provincial secretary David Makhura's attack on Nehawu for "failing to provide proper services to our people".
Public-sector union leaders claim system failures in provinces and municipalities are caused not by unionised state employees but by those who manage them. They focus on interests shared with industrial and mining union comrades in addressing class pathologies such as elite enrichment, corruption, mismanagement and abuse of labour broking.
When the tripartite alliance meets next weekend, public-sector unions may face a unique pincer movement. The industrial and mining unions and their SACP friends may join the ANC in insisting that public sector unions contribute more to achieving government objectives in schools, clinics and hospitals, policing and municipal services.
If they do not respond positively, conflict within the union movement may quickly escalate.
Butler teaches politics at Wits University.
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