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ANOTHER Human Rights - Sharpeville - Day has come and gone. And this year the governing party announced that the day would introduce the Year of OR Tambo while at the same time honouring murdered Black Consciousness leader, Steve Bantu Biko. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) was also given its overdue credit for the 1960 anti-pass protests at Sharpeville and Langa.
This amounted to a political call to other
former liberation movement for unity with the ANC. But President Jacob Zuma
also used the occasion to trot out a lop-sided version of the social grants
debacle, stating that the whole question was whether or not grants would be
paid.
However, the real issue was not about grants being paid, it was about how and why an illegal tender to a private company to pay them was persisted with for three years. Taxpayers' money - the money of all South Africans courtesy of VAT - is paid out in a redistributive manner in grants to the most vulnerable sections of society. But, in this case, profits are skimmed off by a private company through an invalid contract.
Cesspool of venality
Billions of rand is involved in what
sometimes looks like a veritable cesspool of venality. All of which came to a
head as Human Rights Day dawned. So where was the once militant labour movement
in all of this?
It is a valid question since trade unions
are potentially the main, organised, defenders of the rights of workers — and
workers comprise the majority of the population, whether employed or
unemployed. There were the usual statements from the likes of Cosatu and the
Federation of Unions about how far we still have to go and the need
for government and “other stakeholders” to do more.
Yet
of all the campaigning days on the South African calendar - May Day not
excepted - March 21 should this year have been a prime focus for that major
stakeholder, the labour movement. However, given the recent bitter infighting
and fragmentation in parts of the movement, it is perhaps not surprising that a
degree of inertia exists.
Significantly,
perhaps, there was also little or no mention anywhere of the workers who were
gunned down at Marikana in 2012. They, like the men and women of Sharpeville
and Langa in 1960, were protesting about their rights.
What
is clear is that unions across the board have often fallen far shy of
adequately monitoring existing labour rights, let alone seeking their
enforcement. A consequence of this is that little more than 20% of workers in formal
employment are now unionised.
Twenty
years ago, in the wake of post-apartheid euphoria, union membership peaked at
more than 45% of the working population. The precise figures may be debated,
but not the decline.
And this week I received more evidence to support the contention that the unions themselves are primarily responsible for the decline in membership. As a result of my column two weeks ago about overworked truck and bus drivers and the danger they pose to themselves and all road users, several drivers contacted me.
READ: Labour Wrap: Bus safety concerns us all
Long
hours behind the wheel, often accompanied by hard physical work doing
deliveries, seems to be the norm for many of them. One driver provided his time
sheet for a 752km overnight journey from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth that
involved 22 deliveries.
The requirement was that he should be in Port Elizabeth by 08:00 the following day. He did it, spending 14 hours without sleep, and admits he suffered from “driver fatigue”. He says he completed his rounds 12 hours later before having his first “sleep break”.
Union fatigue as they must speed to
meet deadlines
But
he is also suffering from what might be termed union fatigue. He and his
workmates reported that they had received no assistance from the unions they
approached. They are now cynical about trade unionism.
In
addition to the lack of sleep, the drivers also list the need to often speed to
meet deadlines set by employers. All of this for a minimum pay scale of R3 868
a month. Of course, long distance drivers, often working 70-hour shifts, make
substantially more, but few earn much in excess of R10 000 a month.
Yet
they are the lucky ones in a fundamentally wealthy country where thousands of
children die each year from the diseases of malnutrition; where more than half
the population is mired in poverty. This is an obscenity.
It is also one that should be highlighted, not only on March 21, but going forward. And, if the unions wish to arrest their decline, they must be involved in fighting this and must pay more than lip service to political independence and to organising and aiding the currently unorganised, let alone better servicing members wherever they are.
* Add your voice or just drop Terry a labour question. Follow Terry on twitter @telbelsa.
