CommentOur union continues to struggle for the best interests of its members in hard and difficult conditions. The capitalist economy in our country and in particular our sectors, continue to be faced with a sharp decline.

In the first quarter of 2009 alone, the automotive assembly plants shed 2571 permanent jobs. This excludes a much bigger number of short-term employment contracts that were terminated as the capitalist crisis deepened.

In the same period, the automotive component manufacturing sector shed even more jobs. Salaried employees were cut by 7.4 percent, hourly employees by 11.6 percent and temporary employees by 53 percent.

On August 4 2009 the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (NAAMSA) announced that vehicle sales had plummeted by 27.4 percent. Export demand had dropped by 60 percent.

The loss of more than 40 000 jobs at the beginning of the year, the fact that the economy has been confirmed to be in recession and our own research, confirm that we are in an economic crisis equalling the global economic crisis of 1929.

ResponsesI have been part of tough Nedlac negotiations that have produced the progress that the president of the country, Jacob Zuma, has announced.

As Numsa leadership we know that life is hard for workers on the shopfloor – from workers in a big factory to a small ‘kotoi’ company, from a panelbeater worker to a garage worker. Workers’ take home pay is severely affected by long lay-offs and perpetual short time.

In the Nedlac negotiations, we have agreed in principle that if workers in distressed sectors (in Numsa these are the auto assembly and motor components manufacturing sectors) are on short time or lay-off, they must be taken to training schemes and paid while they receive training.

But we haven’t agreed how much workers must be paid. Negotiations are at a sensitive stage. We could end up in dispute.

In your workplaceIf you are faced with short-time, lay-offs or retrenchments in your companies, build maximum unity – both within the shop steward committee and between the shopsteward committee and yourselves.

We need this if we are to succeed in finalising this agreement at Nedlac that will benefit you during this crisis.

Disunity among workers weakens, fragments and undermines a worker controlled union and it undermines the working class struggle.

Hold your leaders accountable – your shop stewards, organisers, educators and office bearers right up to the general secretary.

Be loyal to yourselves and your organisation and remain vigilant. Not all those who say (Thixo Thixo) (who call the name of God) are on the path to heaven’s door.

Defend your organisation when it is under attack. Identify opportunists who will cheaply exploit and manipulate our genuine organisational weaknesses and genuine challenges of our members.

Identify those who will put their frustration in the vicious hands of employers for their selfish opportunist reactionary gains. We are raising this because the challenges confronting our country’s economy and our organisation are huge.

We can’t afford opportunism within our ranks when we are trying to pull our country out of this deep national and international crisis of capitalism.It’s time to put our differences aside, and isolate those who have vowed to destroy Cosatu.

Their only device is to divide Numsa and Cosatu affiliates to form something they themselves don’t know.In their attempt to create political confusion, they say this animal that they want to form must not be political.

Is this not political hypocrisy? Workers are retrenched, casualised, outsourced, suffer labour broking and short term contracts, endure privatisation and are exploited.

Cope and the DA are busy forming an alliance now to fight the ANC and defend the sweat shop slavery conditions created by these practices. Recently they announced that they find no difference among themselves.

These individuals who are working hard to destabilize workers’ unity, worked very hard during elections to form this funny federation. Now they are in parliament they don’t have time to do it. What they can do on weekends is to work on individuals in our plants.

They mandate them to form groups who must coordinate grievances against the union. They move from one grievance to another and destabilise our unions.

What is surprising is that some of our members get carried away with this deep ideological reactionary confusion in the name of democracy. They inflict pain on themselves to create, to form, and be party to launching what took many years to defeat with many casualties – workers were sold to sweetheart unions with liaison committees.

What is not for debate is the defence of our organisations. Our members must defend their organisation Numsa and all Cosatu affiliates – in the church, in the shebeen, in the bus, in the locker room, in the staff room, in the canteen, in the bank queue, in the lift club.

You must defend it against opportunistic managers who will leave no stone unturned to exploit this reactionary agenda. We are calling on the young workers to defend their heritage and their federation Cosatu.

We must do this very humbly by sticking to our slogans: “each one teach one”, “an injury to one is an injury to all”, “one industry one union, one country one federation”Numsa members must be organisers.

Ensure that all workers in your company or factory where you work belong to Numsa or a Cosatu affiliate. You must be able to win the hearts and minds of unorganised workers or workers who might be victims of the publicly announced plot to destroy Cosatu on the basis that Numsa and Cosatu affiliates are busy with ANC politics.

We must refute this propaganda. For many decades, members of Azapo, PAC, have been members of Numsa and Cosatu affiliates without any problem.The reasons why are very simple – Numsa firmly believes in the trade union principle advocated by Comrade Joe Slovo in a 1988 article “

The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution”. “A trade union is the prime mass organisation of the working class.

To fulfill its purpose, it must be as broad as possible and fight to maintain its legal status. It must attempt, in the first place, to unite, on an industrial basis, all workers (at whatever level of political consciousness) who understand the elementary need to come together and defend and advance their economic conditions.“

It cannot demand more as a condition of membership. But because the state and its political and repressive apparatus is an instrument of the dominant economic classes, it is impossible for trade unions in any part of the world to keep out of the broader political conflict. “Especially in our country, where racist domination and capitalist exploitation are two sides of the same coin, it is even clearer that a trade union cannot stand aside from the liberation struggle.

Indeed, the trade union movement is the most important mass contingent of the working class. Its organized involvement in struggle, both as an independent force and as part of the broad liberation alliance, undoubtedly reinforces the dominant role of the workers as a class.

In addition, trade unions’ and workers’ experience of struggle in unions provide the most fertile field in which to school masses of workers in socialist understanding and political consciousness.

“The very fact that the workers’ economic struggle cannot be separated from the struggle against national domination has helped to blur the border-line between trade unionism and the political leadership of the working class as a whole.

It is, however, vital to maintain the distinction between trade union politics and overall revolutionary leadership. A trade union cannot carry out this dual role; if it attempted to do so it would have to change its basic character and risk committing suicide as a mass legal force.

In addition, the very nature and purpose of trade unionism disqualifies it from carrying out the tasks of a revolutionary vanguard.”That is why Numsa insists that we must recruit all workers regardless of their political affiliation, their colour and their creed, or their levels of political consciousness to join Numsa. Workers are exploited as a class.

We are not a vanguard party with the condition that you must be a communist to join.All Numsa members join it voluntarily.

Therefore all Numsa members and its leadership must keep Numsa as a voluntary organisation as defined by its constitution. Members can’t suddenly in a particular plant or a firm decide to change its policies, culture, organisational and political traditions.The only platform to effect any changes in the operation of the union is the national congress.

That is why we condemned the view in some of our plants that the leadership of the union should not address political matters.We advise our members to distance themselves from such a position. Any different view must be taken and won democratically in the national congress.

In the absence of a national congress, the central committee can make changes in policy on those matters that are urgent in between congresses.Outside of congress, right from a plant, local, region and head office, nobody has a right to change policies and the operations of the organization.

Any such acts will be violating the constitution of the organization. The organisation cannot tolerate such behaviour. That is why it can’t be right that workers in a general meeting can take a stance that no political input can be made by organisationally elected leadership.

Workers’ exploitation by both capital and the state is political. We would urge and appeal to all our members to respect their constitution and change whatever they want to change in the organisation using constitutional structures of the organisation.

Irvin Jim, Numsa general secretary

Source

Numsa News