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Labour Wrap: Weather, workers and getting back to basics

THE icy weather and violent storms of this week, along with a further rise in the rate of unemployment, have caused increased hardship among millions of working people, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap. 

And the inclement weather has brought into sharp focus several issues that concern workers and where organised labour has, for the most part, been absent.

He points out that the storms and icy weather have hit the homeless hardest, but that many of the working poor and the legions of the unemployed who lack adequate shelter are similarly affected. So too are those workers recently - and controversially - evicted from perhaps adequate shelter, among them union members.

Bell maintains there are a number of such cases and he promises to return to them in future Inside Labour columns. This week he has focused on those men and women he regards as “the hardest working and most poorly paid of entrepreneurial workers”: the scrap collectors.  

Performing a vital role

These are the people who, usually with old, purloined supermarket trolleys, scavenge through the bags and bins of middle class suburbia, salvaging plastic, tins, cardboard and anything that can be recycled or sold. Bell sees this as a vital role, saving from cluttered landfills that which can be recycled.

These workers, he points out, are not unionised because no union has bothered with them. And most authorities either harass or ignore them.

Yet, says Bell, here is an area where those common union mantras: “Back to basics” and “Organise the unorganised” surely have a role to play. He points out that there are examples that can be emulated, especially from the Brazilian city of Curitiba; that Johannesburg and Cape Town have adopted one: their rapid bus transit systems.

* Add your voice or just drop Terry a labour question. Follow Terry on twitter @telbelsa.

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