Although contact and trade between China and Africa dates back to the 15th century and indirect trade some 3000 years, China has not played the same role of dominance and destruction in Africa as the traditional colonial powers. China’s modern engagement begins after the 1949 revolution. During the cold war period China supported Africa’s liberation movements the impact of which however was undermined by the destructive effects of the cold war on Africa and rivalry between China and the Soviet Union in their dealings with the continent. Chinese involvement in Africa has been relatively limited for the past few decades during the time of domination of the Washington Consensus. This is changing. Most agree that this renewed engagement in Africa is driven by China’s economic needs for raw materials to fuel industrialization and markets. In this way it has similarities to the European scramble for Africa in the 19th Century and subsequent colonial and neo colonial periods and is quite different from China’s previous engagement which tended to be more ideological.

If China’s motivation for engagement with Africa is now similar to that of the West, what are the likely direct and indirect impacts into the future and how different will these be from what Africa has come to be used to from the West?

The indirect impact of China’s growth, and India’s for that matter, has already been significant for Africa. China has grown by 9% per year for the last 10 years. China’s need for raw materials is indeed very large. China alone was responsible for 40% of the global increase in oil demand between 2000 and 2004. As a number of observers have commented, the change in foreign engagement by China is quite visible at the point at which China became a net oil importer towards the beginning of the decade.

Africa has certainly started to gain indirectly from the growth of China and India’s economies and markets. As these economies demand huge quantities of raw materials the price of these commodities has gone up. Africa as a supplier of raw materials has benefited. According to the African Economic Outlook Sub-Saharan Africa’s real GDP (i.e. after inflation) increased by an average of 4.4% in 2001-04, 5.5% in 2005 and is expected to increase further in 2006/7, as compared with 2.6% between 1998 and 2000. But growth has not been equal, with the same publication pointing out that oil exporting countries faired better than other countries. The other caution is that whilst there has been significant economic growth this has been slow to impact on social indicators.

Opinions on the potential impact of more direct forms of Sino-African engagement are quite divided. One argument says, it is a bad thing that will lead to erosion of rights and a swamping of Chinese goods and labour into Africa taking African opportunities for local industrial development and jobs. This opinion is explained by deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs Moletisi Mbeki in 2005, saying, “Africa sells raw materials to China and China sells manufactured products to Africa. This is a dangerous equation that reproduces Africa’s old relationship with colonial powers. The equation is not sustainable for a number of reasons. First Africa needs to preserve its natural resources to use in the future for its own industrialisation. Secondly China’s export strategy is contributing to the de-industrialisation of some middle-income countries.”

Others feel that China presents a new development model for Africa. This view tends to see China as a salvation for Africa in terms of infrastructure development and relatively condition free loans to cash strapped African Governments still labouring under years of failed policy interventions of the international finance institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and many western donors and their agencies. Whilst China’s growth in influence clearly is beginning to provide an alternative to the Washington consensus, that has achieved nothing but deepening poverty and misery in Africa, there are also some cautions being sounded here.
 
One such caution states that the undemocratic nature of China which is still enjoying significant growth would serve as a support for undemocratic regimes in Africa who are able to argue that democracy is not a precursor for development. Zimbabwe’s Look East campaign a case in point, Sudan another questionable engagement. It of course depends on whether you define development in terms of social indicators or GDP. Liberal democracy is not a human development precursor, as Cuba has repeatedly demonstrated and neither is it a guarantee against human and labour rights abuses. Other commentators have pointed to the fact that China’s non interference (respect of sovereignty policy) in effect interferes very deeply on the side of ruling elites in divided societies. As such some have argued that India as another rapidly emerging giant, with stronger democratic tendencies also provides alternate models which should be examined.

Another caution in regard to the Chinese model as applied to Africa lies in China itself. Stephen Marks in African Perspectives of China in Africa refers to “Even official sources in China and abroad are aware of the social costs of China’s free-market great leap forward. Members of the legislature have warned of the country’s impending employment crisis and the World Bank has confirmed that China’s poor are getting poorer. As for the environment, no less a figure than Pan Yue, deputy director of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration, sparked controversy with a recent essay On Socialist Ecological Civilisation when he openly charged that: ‘The economic and environmental inequalities caused by a flawed understanding of growth and political achievement, held by some officials, have gone against the basic aims of socialism and abandoned the achievements of Chinese socialism.’ The march of neo-liberalism within China and its impact on the Chinese people has advanced hand-in-hand with China’s growing imperialist role abroad.” The unemployment crisis he refers to as reported in China’s daily on line is 34.5 million people new entrants to the labour market between 2006-2010. To balance this impression, bear in mind China’s economically active population is around 760 million, approximately half of whom are agriculturally based, while the total population is 1.3 billion, again about half of whom are agriculturally based. China measures unemployment in urban areas. Unemployment in urban areas has increased from 3.1% in 1999 to 4.2% in 2005.

Dorothy Guerrero makes a similar point arguing, “China is now the world’s fourth-largest economy and many developing countries envy its record of economic progress. However, China’s phenomenal growth is producing a big misconception in that it is viewed as a big winner of globalisation.

 Although it is true that market reforms and China’s opening to the global economy gave millions of people there an increased standard of living, more Chinese people are suffering the consequences of its rapid transition to a market-based economy. The majority of the Chinese people are not too concerned about when China will become the world’s largest economy. Rather, they are asking, ‘When will the benefits of China’s rise to superpower status start to affect our lives positively?”

Another argument that has been raised is the human and labour rights abuses commonly associated with Chinese investment. The reality is whilst the track record of many of these companies is appalling it is probably in terms of global impact quite small in comparison to the violations committed all over the world by western MNCs. While some companies have reformed their public image in fear of loosing market share or investment this has largely meant the use of subcontracted supply chains where the pressure around production targets and delivery guarantees the abuse of worker and social rights in any event. The corporations then cynically deny responsibility. Similarly China increasingly makes noises about improving human and labour rights issues as they become more integrated global players. On the eve of the First Africa summit the state council, China’s cabinet, issued ‘Nine Principles’ to ‘Encourage and Standardise Enterprises’ Overseas Investment’. The principles require Chinese companies operating overseas to ‘abide by local laws, bid contracts on the basis of transparency and equality, protect the labour rights of local employees, protect the environment, implement corporate responsibilities and so on’. As state backed companies from china begin to brand and become global players they too will become more sensitive publicly to these issues as result of market influences.

In both instances though, the system that drives these superficial changes is itself brutal, quite literally inhuman, always answering to the logic of competition and increasing returns. In time there will be little to distinguish these investment forms save perhaps the tendency for China to want to export labour along with investment and development initiatives.

There is also a position that the west has never done as well as the economies developing in the east in providing goods cheap enough for Africans to buy. Bicycles, blankets etc. The West has however dumped huge quantities of used clothes, used cars, used parts, used machinery, used computers and the list goes on, on Africa. All have made these commodities more accessible to people, still allowing a tidy profit off of the waste of these societies. Against these two sets of goods, cheap consumer goods from the vast and often super exploitative factories of the east and the scraps of the societies of the west, African industrial development has not progressed. People must buy these cheap things as they have no jobs to buy anything else whilst the price of the things we really need; houses electricity, water and health care go up and become more unreachable. People live in debt to buy the few consumer items they can and in the mean time the social fabric of communities is constantly broken down by competition for scarce jobs and resources. The rolling back of public service provision has only aggravated this situation.  

Whilst there are clear similarities to be found in the motives, practices and potential impacts of Chinese and Western contemporary engagement with Africa the introduction of an alternate power centre (for trade and development engagements) and rising commodity prices certainly presents some significant strategic opportunities for Africa. The stranglehold International Finance Institutions and economic imperialist nations have had on economic policy for over two decades is being challenged. More capital should be available as well as technical cooperation. Increased prices mean a stronger bargaining position in trade terms as well. Achieving positive social benefits from this window of opportunity will however very much depend on Africa’s ruling elite making decisions and taking actions that serve the people and not those of their own pockets and/or egos or the interests of the traditional and emerging global economic dynasties. Internal trade and development must play a central role in spreading the benefits across countries in Africa to avoid these opportunities simply creating new enclaves of wealth and power in an otherwise sea of poverty and destitution. Civil society in Africa has an historical role to play in ensuring this.

HIV/AIDS is probably the greatest challenges facing Africa and directly affects millions of workers on the continent. It has left no African untouched, some are HIV positive, others have close family and friends with the disease and by now there can be no one that does not know someone affected by this epidemic.  With HIV/AIDS comes a whole range of issues for families, communities and workplaces. Trade unions in Africa have confronted many other tough issues in the past and can use the same problem solving skills to address HIV/AIDS.

 should respond to HIV/AIDS but how we should respond. A word of caution though, trade unions cannot take on all the issues brought on by this disease, we are not HIV/AIDS organisations. The truth of the matter is that there is a great deal of money available for HIV/AIDS in Africa and the temptation is to use this opportunity to create programmes because of funder needs and not workers and their organisation’s needs.  This could cause problems for the union, for example, unions that take on HIV/AIDS projects providing HIV/AIDS services directly to members often use a large amount of union staff time taking them away from their work in the trade union organising and servicing members.

This does not mean that the trade union does not have a role to play in the response to HIV/AIDS. Quite the opposite, we have a very important role to play Trade unions exist to represent workers interest and must service the interest of workers on HIV/AIDS. Trade unions should have programmes on HIV/AIDS but these should be directed at addressing specific areas such as education for worker leaders on rights of HIV positive workers, addressing stigma and discrimination in the workplace, how to support a worker that discloses her status to the worker representative and how to handle cases relating to HIV/AIDS. Trade unions also have a role to play in advocating on HIV/AIDS for rights and services at a national level and calling for broader developmental issues that will mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS.

The most significant role that unions can play in responding to HIV/AIDS is in the workplace by securing access to HIV/AIDS services for workers and protecting the rights of HIV positive workers. The establishment of workplace policy can secure these services and rights.  

Prevention is a key strategy in addressing HIV/AIDS. Workers should be encouraged to go for testing, if they are negative they should be given information that will enable them to understand the risks and how they can reduce these risks. Role of the union is to negotiate such access and also make sure that treatment can be made available for workers. To keep in line with other union strategies unions could argue that such initiatives are extended to casualised workers. It is also logical such efforts should include workers families who may also be infected or affected by the disease. Workers can receive information and education on HIV prevention and risk reduction, counselling and testing and treatment at the workplace. The unions can get involved in or demand such programmes at the workplace and support initiatives such as peer educators where workers can educate in their workplace and can take this knowledge into their communities. 

One of the most important things unions can do to support a member with HIV/AIDS is to help the worker stay on the job. Staying on the job means the worker keeps his or her livelihood, pride, dignity, and benefits. People living with HIV or AIDS should be allowed to work as long as they can perform their jobs. The workplace policy should establish reasonable accommodation of HIV positive workers that may need to be given tasks and responsibilities that they can perform if they are weakened by the disease. Reasonable accommodation may include job restructuring, modifying work schedules or reassignment, however this must not be a demotion and must not affect the HIV positive workers wages and benefits.

Staying on the job means the union may need to help protect workers from discrimination on the job. Examples of discrimination at work are when co-workers have refused to work with a person who has or is regarded as being HIV positive, an employer has tried to fire a person because they have or are regarded as being HIV positive, an employer denied benefits, like sick leave, to a HIV positive worker with AIDS, unfair restrictions were placed on a HIV positive worker, like having to eat lunch alone or take breaks away from the other workers, and a qualified worker was passed up for a promotion because he or she has HIV or AIDS.

Unions can use workplace policy to develop the principles on which an agreement can be negotiated to address the needs of HIV positive workers, for example granting adequate sick leave so that HIV positive workers so not use this up meeting appointment requirements for health check ups and collection of treatment drugs and can still have time off when they are sick.

Sometimes the argument is made that by negotiating comprehensive policy and programmes, especially those that provide access to treatment through the workplace, that workers lose bargaining power at the negotiating table on wages and other areas. It is true that there is a risk of this happening and safeguards are needed. For instance, workplace policy could cover that HIV/AIDS programme provisions cannot be used as bargaining chip in negotiations on wages and other substantive issues. Provisions must also be made for treatment access in the case of dismissal, retrenchment or retirement until such time that treatment can be sourced elsewhere. The policy should empower HIV positive workers, not put workers lives at the mercy of employers whim. 

Unions can drive the process for the development of sound workplace policies on HIV and AIDS by following established principles of collecting a mandate from workers and negotiating as their representative. A top down approach should be avoided, the policy must be driven from the shop floor and meet the needs of workers. It may be possible to establish policy on HIV/AIDS at sector level with the bargaining council, this should be seen as a starting point and unions must keep in mind that the needs of workers may differ from one workplace to another and programmes in the workplace must address these specific needs.  

There are many organisations in Africa specialised in issues of HIV/AIDS. Unions can act as a bridge between workers and such organisations by building alliances on the issue. In this way a union engagement strategy can focus on the workplace whilst its efforts into communities and facilitating direct services can be achieved through cooperation. This can and should extend to supporting activist organisations making national demands where a union may throw its weight behind a protest march or a parliamentary submission. This actively engages memberships and contributes towards an organising culture in the union

As a last point, unions are also employers, and as such we should concern ourselves with the development of workplace policies that protect the rights and dignity of their own staff members.    

 Workplace Policy and Programmes

A workplace policy provides the framework for action to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS and manage its impact. It:
• commits the workplace to take action
• ensures consistency with national laws
• lays down a standard of behaviour for all workers
• helps workers living with HIV/AIDS to understand what support and care they will receive
• helps to stop the spread of the virus through prevention programmes
• assists a workplace to plan for HIV/AIDS and manage its impact.

A policy may consist of a detailed document just on HIV/AIDS, setting out programme as well as policy issues. It’s important that the policy should promote action, not hold it up. For this reason it may be better to have a simple policy, and include more details in workplace agreements or contracts including the workplace programme.

Workplace programmes translate paper policies and commitments into practical action. Comprehensive programmes include prevention, care and protection of rights. If a company can only provide some services in-house, refer staff to public health services for others. Targeted programmes means work with defined groups, taking into account their particular needs and the factors affecting their knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. Programmes may have activities for men and women separately as well as together, but should in any case be sensitive to gender issues.

Steps to establishing workplace policy and programmes:
1. Talk to workers and find out their needs. This serves as a starting point for organising and mobilising.
2. Research the issue in the factory trying to find out potential impact on workers and the company
3. Approach management and engage them in negotiations on the issue
4. Develop a policy dealing with rights and responsibilities on HIV AIDS in the workplace, through these discussions
5. Develop a programme that delivers access to services and education regarding HIV/AIDS (e.g. counselling, testing, treatment, nutrition support, condom access, peer education etc.)
6. Continuously refer back to workers to keep them involved in the process.
7. Monitor that employers are implementing the process.

Some unions have used special joint HIV/AIDS committees with the employer to achieve the above. This is fine so long as unions represent the interests and demands of workers at all times.

 

The Congress for the Metal and Allied  Namibian Workers Union took place on 22 to 24 March 2007 in Windhoek.  

Representatives at the Congress discussed the future of the union and challenges that the union faces.

The Congress discussed  service delivery to its members and one strategy was to begin weekend study groups including in this programme worker rights, occupational health and safety and HIV/AIDS.

The Congress grappled with how to implement the unions gender policy including participation of women in the unions structures and leadership and affirmative actions towards better employment of women.  

One of the biggest issues discussed was is labour hiring practices and subcontracting especially in the construction sector where workers are retrenched when building contracts end. MANWU is not alone on this issue, the Namibian National Centre, NUNW has recognised this as an important issue to address for its affiliates and has planned a demonstration in June on concerns over ongoing retrenchments.     

At the Congress new leadership was elected and IMF congratulates the new General Secretary Bernard Simaata Milinga, President Jacobus Shirunga, Vice President Martin Mwoonde and Treasurer Birgitta Amukwa.

MANWU has about 3250 members and organises in several sectors including metal, construction, garage and service stations and vehicle retail.

 

Women from across the Africa Region met in May in Durban to discuss strategies for building their unions and integrating gender equity in this process.

After examining the challenges faced by Africa politically and economically and analysing current problems for the labour movement, participants of the June workshop considered ways of building gender as a fundamental component of union building in the region. Issues and problems were explored in particular the reasons for poor implementation. As a result it was felt that a number of guidelines are needed to inform the strategy and that the strategy would have to bear some of the differences in the situations of unions in mind to ensure that it was possible and implementable. Funds shortages whilst important were seen as symptomatic of deeper problems that the strategy must account for. As a result, a number of principles were determined that should guide any strategy developed and implemented.

Principles
Scarce resources means we must allocate where the greatest impact can be achieved: it does not make sense to allocate resources where there can be little impact or because the impact will be short term and not sustainable.
Gender development is  fundamentally linked to union development: gender activities and structures should not happen in isolation to the union. They must be integrated by union and gender strategies and systems relating to each other. The idea is also that as you build and service women workers you build the union.
Good practice shows use of constitutional structures/resolutions is the most effective gender development strategy: where gender structures and practice are well integrated  unions have generally reached this situation by gender activists driving the agenda through constitutional meetings, by passing resolutions making issues a responsibility of leadership.
Building practical union to union solidarity: if gender priorities are seen as representing a common interest throughout the region activities in a strategy must bring people together to actively support each other. One practical way is for unions to develop relationships where women from an established gender structure may share and support others still in the process of establishing such a structure. This also means building a core group of gender activists in the region that can act as a common pool of resources and experience to be drawn on from the region.
Top down gender structure development does not work: different experiences of participants at the conference revealed that simply establishing a gender structure at a central point in the union seldom effectively dealt with issues. Structures should be built bottom up from the shop floor through using gender focused organising and then feed into constitutional structures to establish structures, secure financial allocations and achieve equity in representation amongst other processes.
Building sustainable unions is core to gender development: It was agreed that there is no point in developing gender structures and activities where the union itself in its current form and activities is unsustainable. Sustainability relates to self funding and self reliance and the absence of donor dependence. If funding allocations exceed union subscriptions the organisation is not sustainable and therefore by definition neither are the activities.
Women typically focused in precarious work: a disproportionate number of precarious jobs are occupied by women and this increases insecurity, maintains systems of social dependence and increases the burden of coping with other work in the home. Addressing gender means the impact of precarious work must be dealt with.
A regional gender strategy must be located in broader regional strategies: the approach adopted by the Southern Africa sub region was used as an example to demonstrate this principal. Here the strategy is defined by a number of drivers (core, support and contextual). Two of the core drivers are for example sustainability and service to members. A gender strategy should therefore reflect these issues at its core as seen in some of the principles above.

Strategic Categories
Using the inputs from participant unions it was felt that four groupings or categories could be created which would allow specific strategies and activities to be developed that are most appropriate to the unions concerned and in keeping with the principles already developed.

The first group was where there are a large number of potential women members that could be organized given the unions current scope but are not being reached because of organizational or structural problems. The strategy must deal with these issues in the union as a whole and support the establishment of gender equity through activities. Union to union cooperation on better organized structures and systems is of significance to this category.

The second grouping was seen as where the unions have very limited scope for growth of women membership and this membership is relatively small. These unions often are characterised by a lack of sustainability. Strategies  relate to building the union towards more sustainable forms with support for activities that have the potential to draw manufacturing unions together through cooperation on issues of gender priority.

The third grouping was where the unions were clearly sustainable and functioning in this way. Women membership is large and gender well integrated into the functioning of the union including budget allocations. Regional support strategies for such unions include specific skills development and assistance in the process of assisting other unions in the region.

The final group was characterised by uncertainty either because of expected changes in the union or the environment they were operating in. Action based research that must itself build union capacity can be used as a starting point after which unions would move into one of the afore mentioned categories and be integrated into the regional strategy in this way.

A focus for the regional strategy that should underpin work in all four categories is the development of a core group of gender activists in the region. This group would develop skills, provide mutual support and review implementation and effectivity of the regional strategy.

The planning process concluded by identifying different types of approaches that could be implemented and the processes necessary for these over the next two years. In the implementation of strategies unions would need to actively cooperate and adopt the processes underpinned by the principles in the whole organisation. In this way it was felt that women could become a driving force in union development in the African region.

In May 2007, thousands of metalworkers across South Africa
celebrated 20 years of struggle and achievement of NUMSA at
mass rallies organized in several provinces.

Founded in May 1987, Numsa leaders paid tribute to shop stewards and metalworkers from the Metal and Allied Workers Union (Mawu), as well as unions like the Motor Industries Combined Workers Union (Micwu) and the automobile unions that came together under the auspices of the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) to form a single, united metalworkers union in the country.

Past and present shop stewards and members graced the podium to recall historic moments in the union’s history.  At the Johannesburg celebrations, NUMSA remembered its member, Kortman Vilakazi from Tembisa, who in that very stadium was shot dead by police at a Numsa wage negotiations rally in the 1980s. “The police came and started to provoke members outside the stadium,” remembers ex-Numsa member, Alpheus Makhadi who is now a councillor. “When members ran away, the police shot at them.” Vilakazi was shot dead. And just down the road from the stadium was Joko Tea hall (now a supermarket) where the first union meetings that nurtured worker control, local shop steward councils and strong shop floor structures that gave rise to Numsa, took place.

While tributes poured in to honour past heroes of the union, NUMSA also celebrated 20 years of struggle and spoke of milestones in South Africa from the 1980s apartheid period to the challenges faced by the country in the new millennium and NUMSA’s proactive and reactive actions in response to the political, social and economic climate and developments in the metal sector. Trade union leaders also spoke of the future and the need for a strong and vigilant union. Cosatu’s general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi in his address at the celebrations in Port Elizabeth urged workers to remain united and play a leading role in all corners of society and in the fight against poverty.

But the events were not all about speeches and struggle, local artists performed for the crowds keeping everyone in high spirits. The events were colourful, the crowd was dressed in NUMSA colours of black red and yellow carrying flags bearing the unions logo. Shouts of Amandla! echoed through while others blew on their vuvuzelas. Fallen heroes can rest assured that Numsa members celebrated their history that day!

Constructed from reports by NUMSA reporters, Woody Aroun, Mating Mosia, Jenny Grice and Mncedisi Phaphu.

The average Zimbabwean metalworker makes approximately 140,000 Zimbabwean Dollars per month. With inflation climbing daily, now at a world record of 1,700 per cent, workers’ salaries are worth less and less each day, while the cost of basic goods continues to soar. In a country where the price of cooking oil is half a month’s salary, and a bar of soap is almost a third of a worker’s monthly wages, Zimbabweans must struggle more each day to survive.

 Zimbabwe, once considered the “breadbasket of Africa”, enjoyed a robust economy and thriving workforce in the mid-1990s. Today, the situation for Zimbabweans is dire. Chronic shortages of food, electricity, petrol and medicine has reduced the life expectancy to a tragic 34 years for women, the lowest in the world, and to just 37 years for men. Most Zimbabweans live on one meal a day, some even less. Eight out of ten workers are out of work, and the unemployment rate continues to rise.

Led by Robert Mugabe, independence hero cum dictator, the country’s steady decline has been punctuated by a series of bad governmental policy at best, and shocking human rights violations at worst.

“Operation Murambatsvina” which is Shona for “Operation Drive Out Trash”, has had undoubtedly the most devastating effect on Zimbabwe’s working poor. In May 2005, Mugabe unleashed what he called an “urban renewal program” to squash illegal vendors. The result was the demolition of 94,460 urban homes which left 700,000 people homeless and affected 2.4 million people directly or in directly, according to the United Nations. Between May 2005 and May 2006, prices for accommodation jumped by 3,000 per cent. Because many of the homes destroyed were outside of industrial complexes, metalworkers were largely impacted.

As in many parts of the world, the labour movement in Zimbabwe has been a leading force for change. The Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), to which the National Engineering Workers’ Union (NEWU) is an affiliate, has been at the forefront in addressing the workers’ suffering under Zimbabwe’s economic collapse. Viewed by Mugabe as enemies of the state, members of the ZCTU have been attacked with a force that has astonished the international community, including government-sanctioned beatings, torture, abductions and arbitrary arrests. Mugabe has banned political demonstrations, he has shut down the independent press, and declared war on any and all that criticize his policies.

On April 3 and 4, the ZCTU organized a mass stay away after talks broke down within the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF) regarding payment of salaries in accordance with inflation. The TNF is a joint negotiating body that comprises representatives from business, labour and the government, in which the ZCTU has played an active role.

In the days leading up to the action, and those that followed, ZCTU offices were ransacked, staff beaten, and workers and trade union leaders were arrested.  Witnesses in the townships reported that people were forced to go to work at gunpoint, many of them had no “work” to go to. Helicopters hovered over downtown Harare and businesses were threatened with losing their operating licence, should they shut production down.

The media was quick to call the worker action a failure, however, given the nature of the stay away, its success is hard to measure. Only 20 per cent of the country is formally employed. Of that number, 70 per cent work for the government. Journalists are denied access to Zimbabwe, so those who operate in the country risk arrest, or worse. In April, Edward Chikombo, a cameraman for the state-run broadcaster ZBC, was found pummelled to death in a shallow grave on the side of the road after he leaked images of a beaten Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and former mineworker and ZCTU General Secretary.
NEWU general secretary, Japhat Moyo, who is also acting assistant general secretary for ZCTU, referred to the recent attacks as, “kicks of a dying horse,” and explained the reasoning behind the stay away. “Last time we went to the streets we had our limbs broken,” he said, referring to the strike on September 13, 2006 that resulted in the arrest and torture of 15 unionists, many so severely beaten they had to be hospitalised. “If you demonstrate in the streets, you are going to be butchered. We are not going to be sending other people’s kids to the war front. We are supposed to be on the front lines ourselves,” Moyo said. “The workers decided that we cannot risk our leaders, let’s stay at home as a sign of demonstration. Every three months we are doing these activities, and we are not limiting ourselves to only stayaways. If the situation improves, if government upholds human rights principles, we will be able to go to the streets instead of sitting at home.”

Many workers believe collective action is the only way change will come. “I have to participate. To make sure that things get better for me, I have to take part in the action,” said Brighton Munyaradzi, a serviceman for AFA PVT LTD and NEWU member a few days before the stay away. “If you want to have a better life you have to do something.”

Charles Chirowdza, a metalworker at CT Bolts and a member of NEWU doesn’t flinch when asked if he is worried about being attacked by police during demonstrations “being beaten is okay,” he says. “Because the situation is getting out of control. People are suffering, people are dying. We are suffering so much, ” he said as he placed his hand on his stomach, “being beaten is better than this. At least we are trying to accomplish something.”

Three months from now, workers will again risk arrest and torture in a brave attempt to win basic worker rights and a living wage.

The Response of IMF

The IMF has taken a three-pronged approach to addressing the problems Zimbabwean metalworkers face.

First, for the past 15 years, the IMF’s Africa office has assisted Zimbabwean metal unions in building one strong national metalworkers union through the merging of smaller unions. Their growing strength has helped metalworkers weather the difficult economic climate.

Second, the IMF regional office has been an outspoken critic of Mugabe’s attacks on human and labour rights and has worked to encourage IMF affiliates to support change in Zimbabwe through their national centres. “We condemn the current government’s terror campaign on the people of Zimbabwe, especially the gross violations of workers rights,” said IMF regional representative for Africa, Steve Nhlapo.

“The sub-regional meeting two years ago adopted a resolution calling on all of our affiliates in the southern Africa region to work with their respective national centres to put pressure on the Zimbabwe government to stop the brutal attack on workers and their leaders. We are also encouraging our affiliates in the region to participate in all campaigns that are organized by the national centres and NGO’s which focus on changing the situation in Zimbabwe,” Steve said, noting that international solidarity will only be as strong as the participation of the affiliates in that region.

In South Africa and Botswana, national centres have demonstrated at the Zimbabwean border in solidarity with the ZCTU. Their criticism of Mugabe’s actions have been key to private discussions taking place among the leaders of the Southern African Development Community.

Third, the IMF has supported the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) initiatives to block Zimbabwe’s participation in key international summits and its work with the International Labour Organization to bring about change. The IMF regularly reports on developments in Zimbabwe, and is urging its affiliates to work through their national centres in supporting the work of the ZCTU.

This article is an edited version, the full report appears in the latest Metal World available on the IMF website. The report is based on a visit to Zimbabwe by IMF Regional Secretary and  Metal World Reporter Kristyne Peter. Text by Kristyne Peter.

As employers refuse to listen and carry on doing what they want in retrenching workers we use this case study of Nissan South Africa to ask hard questions about our strategies…

Read these two articles reported in COSATU news and Numsa news on-line.

Article 1: Nissan 2001
“About 916 metalworkers at the Pretoria plant of Nissan-SA, the motor manufacturer, will sign voluntary severance packages agreement, ending a six-month-old retrenchments dispute at the plant between the NUMSA and the company. The union, which said it did not want to worsen the dispute on issues that can be resolved through extensive dialogue, said it hoped and trusted that workers will respond favourably to the package. “The agreement signals the reversal of unilateral trend and parties consulting time and again on all issues affecting workers. We hope this bad history of unilateralism will end the current agreement. It added that the agreement would protect workers from the tyranny of forced retrenchments, which has negative consequences in terms of pay. “We hope that the company will learn from this process, it will be possible after all, for the company to create jobs in the long term…we have broken new ground in the realm of retrenchment agreement,” it said.”

Article 2: Nissan 2007
Nissan SA Motor which threatened to retrench 410 employees this week has been plunged into another controversy – this time after demanding to offer meagre voluntary severance packages equivalent to amounts it awarded five years ago. The furore erupted after Numsa reached an in principle agreement with Nissan to replace anticipated forced retrenchments this week with negotiations for voluntary retirement packages for longest-serving employees.
Angry Numsa negotiators now have expressed “disgust and revulsion”, fearing that employees who gave dedicated service to the Japanese-based car manufacturer would never accept starvation packages considering the high inflation. The union favoured the severance packages to be more than the double amounts currently offered.

Yesterday Nissan management expressed grave concern over globalisation effects, increased international competition and refused to consider alternatives to reducing the high number of those earmarked for voluntary packages, Numsa local coordinator Ali Makhusha said.
Nissan had earlier introduced unilaterally retrenchment packages with effect from April 12, 2007. But, it later changed its position after union staged mass demonstrations at Japanese embassy, appealing for intervention of the Japanese government.”

Some hard questions
Other retrenchment processes have occurred at Nissan bringing the number of workers employed by Nissan down from 7500 in 1998 to about 1500 in 2007. The reality is that Nissan has employed flexible workers after various retrenchment exercises that have taken place over this period. The company retrenches not because of insufficient work but to maintain high levels of profitability. The problem is that growth and profitability is measured against the previous year so that each successful year for a company means that the pressure is even greater the following year to increase productivity and profitability. This is done through cutting costs and getting workers to work harder for less. How do you get workers to do this? You use a number of methods including replacing workers with technology, increasing workers fear, and of course keeping workers desperate and hungry through ensuring they are in precarious work. In both cases NUMSA was able to stop a unilateral retrenchment process started by the company and secure more money for workers than would have been the case if there was no union. But to do this the union was forced to fall back to the use of voluntary retrenchment packages to soften the blow of the retrenchment.

Whilst NUMSA went on to secure sufficient size packages in 2007 the impact on the workers leaving and those staying behind is likely to be negative. Such packages represent a short term cost to the company but can often be a long term industrial death sentence for the workers. Often times workers that take such packages do not use the money wisely and soon find themselves penniless and outside the labour market. Worker representatives in the factory are often longer serving workers and opt for the package, breaking down leadership. In the 2007 example 5 shop stewards and the branch chair opted for the voluntary package. The union’s power is undermined at the plant making it easier for the company each time they wish to make changes at the plant. In the end management get what they want; a more flexible work force.
. Employers who repeatedly do the same thing and then reverse their action are either stupid or employing a strategy. It is clear that Nissan uses a cynical strategy; they declare retrenchments unilaterally placing workers and unions on the back foot where they must fight even to get to the table. In 2001 NUMSA threatened to march on the Japanese embassy and Nissan attempted to interdict the march. In 2007 NUMSA did march on the Japanese embassy. These efforts were focused on getting to the table where it was clear workers would be discussing how much severance as opposed to disputing the need for replacing full time workers with precarious jobs.

Whilst we must acknowledge the difficulties of dealing with such issues and the importance  of the resistance shown by the union to these unilateral actions by profit crazy company we can learn lessons from these examples by asking some hard questions. We have no ready answers to these questions. They are asked in the spirit of being self critical and for the purpose of reflection and analysis of strategy.

• What role do shop stewards play in negotiating such deals which end with them taking the very retrenchment deals they have negotiated? Does this impact on a genuine will to stop the retrenchments?
• Can we ever think that a retrenchment exercise is an isolated event or part of an ongoing process?
• If we knew in 1998 that Nissan planned to make 80% of its jobs redundant and employ casual and temporary workers would the fight not be different to an approach that loses a few hundred workers here and a few hundred workers there?
• Is the power of the union on the shop floor greater today than it was in 1998 or has it been reduced?
• What has happened to the 6000 workers since they left Nissan?
• The industrial strategy for the auto sector which would have informed some of the unions long term thinking on retrenchments, was to revive the industry and create more jobs, but what kind of jobs have these been?
• The reasons given by management each time use different words but amount to the same thing, so are these separate exercises or part of a longer strategic process?
• Can we ever expect a different result if as labour we do the same thing in response to management’s attacks?
• Given that many of the jobs lost are casualised can we fight such issues at the workplace without a comprehensive strategy for organizing casual workers being given organizational priority?

Think about some of these questions and respond with any answers to the editor of UMOJA.

The rapid increase in precarious work is being driven both by corporations and governments. Across the world, national labour laws are being amended to better enable employers to create yet more precarious jobs at the expense of stable employment. This stands in the way of development and keeps Africa chained in poverty. In this article we take a closer look at the issue of casualisation of jobs in Africa and what unions must do to deal with this problem. We discuss three levels that we can fight precarious work concluding that unions becoming more sustainable organisations and changing how they operate is the prerequisite for really impacting on the issue.

 Most workers in Africa will have become used to the increasing number of casualised workers around the shop floor and often outside the factory gate. The formal sector in many countries has gotten smaller in terms of jobs while informal workers have gotten more plentiful and the informal sector as a whole has grown. Unions have stagnated or are much smaller often to the point where the number of workers in the narrow industrial sectors they organize in are not sufficient to sustain the union as an organisation. In such an environment developing and implementing a strategy for dealing with precarious work seems like an impossible task ultimately meaning that many unions will become irrelevant to most workers in Africa.

Companies are continually restructuring, downsizing, retrenching and generally putting more pressure on workers. Capital used to argue that they deserve the profit because they take the risks in establishing a business and yet using precarious work passes that risk on to workers who can least afford it. Any unionist will tell you that it is a very difficult fight to win because this precarious nature happens gradually in a workplace by workplace fashion isolating workers struggles on the issue. It is also done in a specific workplace over time. Employers frequently hold the upper hand in terms of labour law that has in more recent times become more flexible to attract business investment, making it easier for employers to lay off workers and use casuals. In fighting these issues in the workplace it is critical we remind ourselves of old lessons of solidarity and ensure that all workers understand that even if they are not immediately effected by a change in the long term every move to flexibility ultimately makes their job and working

 conditions more insecure and erodes the power to bargain for a better quality of work life. This is not to say that workers do not fight back and sometimes win, but the labour market statistics tell us that these victories are the exception and not the norm.

Three Levels of Strategy

Workplace struggles
The workplace level of resistance will be very familiar to most unions who have engaged in battles over these issues. One of the principal points to remember in this arena is that restructuring to casualise jobs is never a one off process and what concessions you agree today weakens you tomorrow. Unions are pulled between two issues when engaging in restructuring. At one level the unions tries to protect the individual member through getting the best deal possible for those workers affected but also needs to balance the interests of the workers left behind whose position is almost always weaker after the loss of fellow workers to retrenchment.

Some unions have tried job security agreements which have served to stall the process and technology introduction agreements have also proved useful. Where the company is not in danger of closing down more powerful forms of industrial action have sometimes stopped employers as well as tactics such as embarrassing the employer internationally or to its government. Labour law has improved in some countries e.g. South Africa in dealing with retrenchments whilst it has got worse in others but in general labour law has always proved a weak instrument in stopping retrenchments and the casualisation of jobs.
In any event even if employers don’t retrench at all they still introduce flexibility by allowing attrition to reduce the number of full time jobs and then using precarious work forms to do these jobs. This suggests that even the strongest of unions will battle to stem the tide of precarious work and that other forms of engagement will be necessary to deal with this issue. In fact the process of making labour more flexible and responsive to the needs of capital has been going on for so long now that already huge numbers of workers have lost full time jobs and swelled the ranks of the ‘semi employed’.

Development Policy and Campaigning
This suggests that a single union resisting the transformation of jobs to precarious work will always be limited in what can be done about the overall problem. Solidarity for this reason alone needs to be taken more seriously and unions have to become less isolated in their approach to these issues. Failure to do this is a failure of the organisation and its leadership. Currently IMF is preparing an initiative on precarious work and it is critical that unions put their full support behind this effort. The ITUC along with the global union federations have also begun a global initiative on decent work for development. This was launched at the recent world social forum and covered in the last edition of UMOJA. Again unions must come together and build real solidarity. Behind these types of campaigns lies a call for governments to use job creation as a way of creating sustained development as opposed to the failed and discredited policies of structural adjustment and the like.

Global solidarity must pressure both local governments and global bodies to rethink their development paradigm and move jobs to the top of the agenda. Other initiatives such as the decent work programme of the ILO add momentum to these efforts. This has been supported by different recommendations and conventions of the ILO aimed at controlling labour broking and the shift to precarious work forms. Unions can begin the process of involvement by looking at the questions on precarious work in this edition of UMOJA and responding to the IMF call for submissions on the issue. This process should also help focus thinking on the issue and the preparation of national demands. Lobbying other unions and national centres to  pursue the issue is a further necessary step.

Organising People in Precarious Work
A third level of engagement is for unions to return to what they should do best and that is organizing workers around points of collective interest. If workers in precarious jobs are organized there will be less motivation for employers to attempt to create these kinds of jobs. 

When it comes to organizing casualised workers however we have often failed to achieve this objective. One of the reasons this has proved so difficult in the past is that the union can offer fairly little to such workers in the conventional bargaining sense and secondly that it is hard to collect dues and keep track of such mobile workers. This has often been because we have used standard organizing approaches and unions have failed to change their structures and methods to meet the needs of this growing number of workers. In the past more centralised or industry level bargaining mechanisms have been used to do this but establishing such mechanisms normally requires a fairly powerful position at the table to begin with and this is not the case for most unions in Africa.

What we need to consider is a broad approach to draw such workers into an organised framework that will improve their collective strength. Informal workers generally must stand alone and have very little power. They also suffer a great deal as they have no job security, no way to plan and no access to social security. Where HIV/AIDS programmes exist at a workplace those engaged in precarious work are often excluded. Many women are confined to precarious work forms. These are the types of common interests these workers have and should be our starting point in developing organising tactics for such workers.

A common problem which is very easy to remedy is that many unions across Africa exclude casuals as workers that can belong to the union. Unless this is changed as an organisation the union cannot even get to the starting point of addressing this issue. Secondly sub/dues collection systems and membership records systems are based on a very static model of employment. The union is often reliant on the factory to subtract dues and where services have been subcontracted cannot access such a system. When a worker leaves employment they cease to be union members. Again this is common constitutional constraint can be easily remedied. A worker could remain a member between jobs but not pay subs in this time. The use of IT for such systems perhaps linked to debit systems if members have bank accounts may be a way to deal with these logistical issues.

Union officials have sometimes become office bound or are drawn into fighting legal cases as opposed to spending time with workers at the factory. In such a case waiting for casual workers to come to the union is a hopeless tactic. Organising casual workers, means being mobile and spending the vast majority of organizing time in the field. This should not be confined to main factories but take place in recruitment offices, on the streets of industrial areas where workers wait for a factory call, communities and engaging labour brokers if necessary with groups of organizers from more than one union. Union negotiations need to pay attention to casual workers and in particular their needs. Building social security systems that focus on these kinds of workers are another key area that can be used to appeal to these workers. Perhaps engaging the ILO’s social protection agenda can be useful here. Unions also need to take the issue of skills development more seriously and where the union itself can become involved in the delivery of skills to workers their will better opportunities for organizing these workers.

Gender and HIV/AIDS as workplace issues have enormous importance to casualised workers and therefore may provide very powerful rallying points for workers to recognise their common interests and the potential of collective action. But this would require genuine engagement on such issues on the part of the union.

Unions concentrating in narrow industrial sectors is probably the fundamental hurdle to organizing atypical workers who may work in a number of different industrial sub sectors in a year. Forming broader manufacturing based unions through merger has become a strategic priority and yet unions remain isolated often to protect positions for a handful of leaders. Despite these problems the positive message is that deciding how to organise ourselves is one of the few things we as labour have complete control over.

What is important to realise is that not only one tactic that will change our failures to organize these workers who if they are not already will soon be the majority of the workforce. It will require a long term strategy that first sees unions overcoming self protection and sectionalized interests, reforming of union systems and benefits, changes in how organising happens and the kinds of needs that unions service, different organizing techniques that penetrate beyond the traditional workplace and the building of alliances amongst unions, communities and agencies such as the ILO. 

This all suggests that a three prong strategy has become necessary. At one level we need to continue to resist at the workplace and develop our tactics in doing this. At a second level we need to be more coordinated so as to begin to address the issue at a national, regional and global level through our engagement in policy issues. This must be directed by the understanding that precarious work undermines development. The final prong which has proved particularly difficult is to organise flexible or casualised workers. The biggest single step forward in all these areas will however occur where unions at a national level cooperate and form together into sustainable general or manufacturing unions. Until this happens many unions in Africa will be kept in survivalist activities running from project to project in an attempt to raise more donor funds making themselves more accountable to funders than workers. In such a scenario precarious work will triumph and history will hold our current leadership accountable. The question that must be asked is why are we not changing what we can as soon as possible.
 

 

GLOBAL: This October the International Metalworkers’ Federation is taking the fight to governments, calling on them to ensure equal rights for precarious workers and to strengthen legislation to prevent employers from using precarious employment in place of permanent and direct employment.

"The economic crisis has made this demand all the more urgent, not only because precarious jobs have been the first to be lost, but because there is a real risk that employers will use the crisis as a justification to replace permanent jobs with precarious jobs," said IMF General Secretary Jyrki Raina.

"We have seen governments rush to protect capital by providing bailout funds. But governments must also protect workers and ensure that employers can’t treat them as a disposable commodity," he argued.

This October, IMF and its affiliates around the world are calling on governments to:

• Restrict temporary and contract work to cases of genuine need
• Guarantee equal pay for precarious workers and their right to join a union
• Require long-term temporary jobs to be converted to permanent jobs

The massive growth of precarious employment has brought negative social and economic consequences for people everywhere. That’s why workers throughout the world are uniting against precarious work.

Go to: www.imfmetal.org/precariouswork

GLOBAL : The OECD Council Working Party on Shipbuilding (WP6) met in Paris  on July 9-10 to discuss the deepening impact of the global financial crisis on the world’s shipbuilding industry. Ambassador Harald Neple (Norway), Chairmen of the OECD Council Working Party on Shipbuilding in his statement drew attention to the fact that in virtually all economies, the unprecedented financial crisis has led to a sharp contraction in investment, economic activity, employment and international trade. While initially shipbuilding was to some degree insulated from these effects because of strong order books, in the last six months new orders have fallen by over 90 per cent and cancellations are increasing.

In a joint submission to the WP6 both the International Metalworkers’ Federation and European Metalworkers’ Federation highlighted the passion among the trade unions to ensure that the industry has a bright future despite the current problems. "During previous crises the industry was written off many times but unions acted as guardians for the industry and fought for its survival. In the current situation it is vital to secure jobs in the industry, thereby securing the industry itself, and to ensure that the industry continues product innovation and investments in skills and training," said Rob Johnston, IMF Director for Shipbuilding.

"A central feature of stabilizing the industry is the need for the OECD to  conclude an agreement on pricing and subsidies that leads to a level playing field creating the right framework for a recovery of the global shipbuilding sector," he argued.

For more information please visit:

http://www.oecd.org/department/0,3355,en_2649_34211_1_1_1_1_1,00.html