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WHAT has happened in Greece and is now happening to the Chinese economy vindicates what he and a few unorthodox economists have been saying for years, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap, namely that the global economic crisis is ongoing and there is no end yet in sight.
He also points out that, as a Fin24 user noted this week, the spectre of more massive unemployment is upon us. The reader sent an email from the airport in Philadelphia where he sat in a restaurant and where the menu was digitised. He merely pressed his choice on the screen and his meal was ordered.
It was still delivered by a human worker but, as he remarked in his email, it will only be a matter of time before delivery too will be automated, with even more jobs lost. Faced with this reality, Bell notes that Cosatu, the largest trade union federation in the country, will stage a Special National Congress on Monday and Tuesday next week.
But he maintains this conference will not deal adequately with the parlous economic situation and will, from all accounts, call for the unity of Cosatu, but without its elected general secretary or its largest affiliate. This, says Bell, seems a spurious sort of unity.
WATCH: Terry Bell's Labour Wrap
Indications are also that the issues of expulsions will not be discussed and this would merely exacerbate tensions in the labour movement. Bell argues that it is essential that matters of general concern should be openly and honestly debated and that such discussion should be followed by a free vote. Only in this way, he maintains, can the democratic will be known.
He points out that commentators, pundits and even supposedly scientific opinion polls often wrongly assess what the real will of the people is and he gives examples of the predictions in the cases of both the recent National Union of Mineworkers election and the referendum in Greece.
* Add your voice to this and /or the big labour debate or simply ask Terry a labour question.
* Terry Bell is a political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa.
