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Sensible striking

STRIKE season – one is tempted to say silly season – is continuing in South Africa.

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa), representing the workers and employers in the metal industry, seem unable to reach a compromise.

It seems as if both sides will exhaust themselves before a solution is in sight, much like the recent devastating strike by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) in the platinum mines.

One understands that organisations like Numsa and Seifsa will not immediately see eye to eye. After all, they represent different interests, and it is to be expected that they will, from time to time, differ fundamentally about things such as remuneration or working conditions. This is the way of democracy.

Nevertheless, there is a vague line they should at least try not to cross. That line, not well defined, is when they start hurting themselves, each other and the economy as a whole, more than the advantages they can reasonably expect to get from the confrontation.

It is, perhaps, worth the effort to look at two European countries of which I have intimate knowledge, namely Germany and the Netherlands, to see how they do things.

How the Dutch and Germans do it

Both the Germans and the Dutch tend to be pessimistic people who always predict disaster. But they also are supremely practical.

The Germans call their system of handling the relations between trade unions and employers’ organisations Mitbestimmung, which may perhaps best be translated as letting different sides decide together about whatever it is that has to be decided.

The Dutch speak of the poldermodel – a polder being the typical Dutch flat piece of land won from the sea.

Both models boil down to this: do not let a conflict of interests get out of hand. Using common sense, reach a compromise agreement with which everyone can live. Create a situation where everybody is a winner and nobody a loser.

In both countries, the polarisation between capitalists and workers flared up in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But, both countries having universal male suffrage (women came in later), the workers – represented by Social Democrats – gained considerable political clout in the German Reichstag and the Dutch Second Chamber of the Estates-General.

In order to neutralise the Social Democrats, whom he abhorred, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck started social reforms as far back as the 1880s. After 1918, Mitbestimmung was even written into the Weimar Republic’s constitution, and in 1979 West Germany’s Constitutional Court concluded that it was in accordance with the 1949 constitution.

In practice this means that employers and employees come together in a Betriebsrat (company council) where both have a say in how the company is run. A similar situation exists in the Netherlands.

However, it is one thing to have structures like these on paper. It is quite another to have them actually work.

Now we cross into the realm of political-economic culture. In the Netherlands, relations between the unions and employers’ organisations deteriorated drastically during the rowdy 1970s, when the socialist ideas of the so-called New Left took root.

The polarisation potentially got out of hand. But leaders in government, employers’ organisations and trade unions used common sense and saw that in the end, everyone would lose out.

So, on November 24 1982 the so-called Wassenaar Accord was concluded. The unions acceded to a limitation of their demands for salaries’ hikes, while the employers agreed to limit work hours. More importantly, this gave rise to a mutual understanding that differences should not be pushed to extremes.

Since then, the accord has been severely tested at times, but always held.

Highly successful economies

Germany never had need of something similar, as the polarisation was never allowed to cross a certain line.
This does, of course, not mean that the unions are in the employers’ pockets. Far from it. Frequently, negotiations are accompanied by hard bargaining, even threats, but the parties know when to stop.

This has resulted in two highly succesful economies. Both Germany and the Netherlands were battered by the economic crisis years, but both came through relatively well, certainly when compared to the likes of Greece, Italy and Spain.

It is this model which may well serve as an example to South Africa.

The recent Amcu strike and the present Numsa one are symptomatic of what is wrong in our labour relations. No one in their right mind would suggest that unions are not entitled to strike. But it seems as if striking is more or less the first option, instead of the very last one.

The bottom line is this: people have to step down from their high ideological high horse and start using their common sense. Look further, as they say, than the length of your nose. See the wood for the trees.

South Africa as a whole – and this includes the workers and the employers – is hurt by crippling strikes like these. What we need, is our own Wassenaar Accord.

 - Fin24

* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.
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