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Cape Town - In the process of nine years of battling to save the Post Office from the effects of bungling, incompetent and perhaps corrupt management, workers and their unions have apparently learned an important lesson: that nationalisation - state control - in and of itself, is no answer to our economic woes. But, says Terry Bell in his latest video Labour Wrap, Free Marketeers should not get too excited.
He points out that while the workers and their unions do not see state control as a panacea, they support the idea of accountable, efficient worker control. And they have considerable evidence to back this idea.
This, says Bell, opens up an area of debate that concerns much more than the Post Office; it has implications for the economy as a whole. And he notes that the unions are continuing to battle, with the Communication Workers’ Union, for example, this week lodging a complaint about the Post Office with the CCMA.
The CCMA complaint is merely one in a string of actions over the years that includes reference to the public protector about allegations of gross mismanagement, fraud and corruption amounting to perhaps as much as R2.1bn. This latest move by the CWU comes at the same time that the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union volunteers have announced that they will not be on duty for the State of the Nation address.
But Nehawu stresses that it is not in any way protesting about Sona. Both these public sector unions have similar complaints: the state employer reneging on agreements relating to pay and conditions.
This, Bell says, should provide more substance to fuel the steadily improving debates on the Fin24 platform.
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