Inside Labour: Steeling ourselves for further calamity

MILLIONS of South Africans go to bed hungry almost every night and many more millions globally suffer a similar fate while being inadequately housed and clothed.  And this situation is becoming worse as the wage and welfare gap around the world continues to grow, along with rising unemployment.

Yet the problem is not that there is not enough food, building materials, and, textiles, garments and footwear. Nor that there is not enough work that needs to be done to feed, house, clothe and otherwise create a decent life for everyone.  Nor are there not sufficient workers to carry out these tasks.

For years now there has existed both the overcapacity and the overproduction of probably every socially necessary item, often using fewer and fewer workers. However, the competition that the system requires also means that more and more non-renewable resources are being squandered amid widespread pollution and the despoliation of the environment.

This is the bleak, overall picture that this column - reflecting reality within the labour movement - has warned about for 20 years. But, every so often there comes an item of local news that highlights the lunacy of a system that results in mass poverty amid obscene wealth for the few. One such item was the news last week that the South African steel industry might be on its last legs.

It appears that the Vanderbijlpark steel works, once the core of state-owned Iscor, faces possible closure, with the loss of nearly 5 000 jobs. Although the plant is the biggest in Africa, it is only a very small cog in the global and Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal (AM) machine that is today the world’s largest producer of steel.

The news comes two months after Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium (EHSV) shut down, leaving more than 2 000 wage earners without jobs. They also had to leave without pay and have now lodged a R292.8m claim to cover the wages, bonuses and retrenchment packages owing to them.

An EHSV “rescue package” is still being working out. It could include the sale of parts or the whole of the plant with the proceeds going to service more than R500m of debt, including the claims of workers. Whatever happens, the devastation wreaked on families and communities will be great.

Yet South Africa is a country in the process of expanding and improving its rail network and rolling stock and, therefore, requires inputs of steel. It is a country which, at Sishen in the Northern Cape, has some of the highest grade iron ore available. Beyond this exists the plant and machinery to produce high quality steel and the expertise to convert this into products the country needs.

On the face of it, South Africa should - as the saying goes - be laughing, producing good quality ore to make good quality steel to manufacture good quality products the country needs. The same can be said for a variety of products, especially perhaps in the agricultural area.

It all brings to mind once state-owned Sasol. This oil-from-coal process was subsidised for decades by every citizen of South Africa when oil sold at some $10 a barrel and Sasol produced at the rate of perhaps $30/l. But then the oil price soared, Sasol became profitable - and was sold off.  

Import parity pricing - selling Sasol products at the same price as imported oil - applies, as it does, to a similar degree, for steel. So it is not consumers or downstream manufacturers who bear the blame for job cuts and further calamity. It is policies within an anarchic system that make matters worse.

Surely then, it is clearly time, for all of us to take stock, to realise that even under the present system that is sowing havoc, damaging lives, livelihoods and the planet itself, we can apply better and comprehensive policies. This is where trade unions, that once were proactive, could again come to the fore to propose - and campaign for - real alternatives to at least mitigate the consequences of the system.