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PATRICK Craven did a good job in his debut Inside Labour column last week when he demolished the spurious argument that links unemployment to poverty, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap.
READ: Inside Labour: The scandal of the working poor
He adds that it was also good timing to highlight the plight of the working poor in the week of the annual World Economic Forum “circus in Davos”, where politicians are “bribed and browbeaten into following policies that make the rich richer to the detriment of the poor”.
However, in his Inside Labour column this week Bell says he intends to concentrate on the fightback of the former Midrand municipal workers. They are engaged in the longest labour dispute in our history: for 22 years they have been fighting for their pensions and to get their jobs back.
But their fight, says Bell, has actually highlighted some serious problems within the labour movement. Above all, it has thrown into sharp focus the debilitating factionalism in the Cosatu-affiliated SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu). One result, he says, has been the emergence of groups of workers demanding a return to grassroots democracy, something promised during the euphoria that accompanied the 1994 electoral transition.
The Midrand workers, he points out, were among those who at the time were challenging the old order in a way they had not done before. One of the challenges concerned the corrupt practice of workers having to pay a bribe to get a job. The workers also deserted a union favoured by their bosses and joined Cosatu-affiliated Samwu.
Bell thinks that a combination of their protests and new union membership probably contributed to their mass dismissal. However, they were also apparently let down badly by officials - the bureaucracy - in their union and let down several more times along the way.
As time went on, political schisms opened up with Cosatu and there is now a new labour federation, sponsored by the National Union of Metalworkers, waiting to be launched. And two breakaway unions from Samwu are also looking to come together, all on the basis of truly getting back to democratic basics.
As all these matters play out, Bell feels that the Midrand workers - the 53 who remain in the forefront of the fightback - can only hope that their claim for jobs and their pensions will not again be sidelined.
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