Dr Bernie Fanaroff must go down in history as the first doctor of astronomy and an astrophysicist to be a trade union leader. A trade union organiser with Mawu and then Numsa from the 1970s to the 1990s, he shared some of his memories with NBC delegates. “I sometimes feel sorry for you,†he told delegates. “In those days things were very clear.
We knew that government hated us and we hated them. We knew that employers hated us and we hated them. Nowadays it's ‘our government' and the employers, and it's not very clear where you stand.â€
And those that thought that recruiting is a difficult task now, were reminded of what it was like then: “In those days workers hadn't seen unions for many years from the early ‘60s when Sactu was smashed. They didn't know about unions. We had to explain what a union was. Every time we went to a factory, employers would call the police.
We had to go at lunchtime and sit outside the factory and convince one worker. In those days we called each other ‘brother' and not ‘comrade'. “And we told each worker that we organised that they must organise another worker. But we had to tell them, ‘be careful brother, because if they catch you, there is nothing that we can do for you.
When you go back into the factory you are on your own. We are asking you to join, but now you don't have power. If you all join, then you will have power.' “Remember there was no CCMA or Labour Relations Act, no industrial court, if they dismissed you, they dismissed you and if you didn't have section 10 you went back to Transkei .
If management walked into the factory and didn't like your t-shirt – they could just say you ‘are fired' and you would be out the door. If he didn't like you, you must just get out. The old guys will remember that.â€
On centralised bargaining
A vast majority of our engineering members are too young to have been workers when we used to bargain at plant level. They won't know about the debates that took place when Numsa's predecessor, Mawu, decided to give up plant level bargaining for centralised bargaining.
And they won't know that the biggest fear then was if you go into centralised bargaining, “you will be selling out workers, you will be taking negotiations away from workers.†Fanaroff remembers: “Seifsa wanted us to go into the Industrial Council.
It was a very hot debate. Some were saying, ‘when you go there, you will be selling out workers, you will be taking negotiations away from workers'. When you bargain inside the factory, workers could see what was happening, but when bargaining is further away from the factory, workers can't see so clearly. “So we joined in 1983 and we had a good time because there were lots of other unions there and we were small. We would come with very unreasonable demands and we would not settle on anything.
But other unions would settle and we would then go to factories and say, ‘you see, those other unions sold you out, you must join us'. “So workers joined. And then we became the biggest union on the Industrial Council and we couldn't play that game anymore. So instead of saying we want 300%, and never settling, we had to reduce our demands. Now it was much more difficult to come down from 300% to 12% so that we could sign the agreement. There was always a lot of argument about that."
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Numsa Source