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IT'S just around the corner – in 11 days' time we’ll hear the thud of a soccer boot kicking the first soccer ball at the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Is anyone wondering whether Fifa has seen to it that there are enough glow-in-the-dark balls to provide for possible power blackouts when trade federation Cosatu goes on strike across the country? Or if the National Union of Mineworkers (Num) downs tools at Eskom?
According to general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu is waiting for a response from government, Eskom and other parties to the union’s intended notice of countrywide protest before it decides whether to strike during the World Cup. The decision will be given at Nedlac on June 14, government has apparently promised.
To date government has been dragging its feet in response to Cosatu’s demands that the 25% hike in electricity tariffs for three consecutive years be abolished and another way be found to finance Eskom.
But it says it would be better to consider a supplementary tax, which will have a lesser impact on the poor than the power price hikes.
It's difficult to say whether decisions at Nedlac will lead to a countrywide general work stoppage called by Cosatu during the soccer tournament.
Theoretically, Nedlac has to issue a certificate after the June 14 meeting to say that Cosatu’s grievances have been carefully considered and cannot be resolved. This will give the trade union federation the right to call out such a strike with legal protection against dismissal or other disciplinary measures by employers.
Convenient threat
There are, however, a few legal/technical objections or strategic ways in which the opposing parties can drag up the process even longer. They will certainly try to do so and will probably succeed.
It will be extremely difficult to finalise Nedlac and mobilise Cosatu’s two million members for a strike before the World Cup has passed.
But with the prevailing soccer fever, a general strike is a convenient threat for Cosatu at the negotiating table.
The wage negotiations and threat of a strike at Eskom should be taken much more seriously.
Officially, no dispute has been declared by Eskom yet and the strike would therefore be entirely unprotected. Eskom has been declared an essential service in terms of the Labour Relations Act and the strike there is therefore in any event unprotected – workers who participate can be fired.
But the right to strike is protected, even at such essential services. In such cases an employer is obliged by law to enter into a minimum-services agreement with his employees to maintain such essential services during the strike.
There once was such an agreement, but in 2003 the workers asked Eskom to suspend it because “minimum services” in their view was too broadly defined. They wanted to negotiate a new agreement.
At that time Eskom management said they would suspend the agreement, but no progress has since been made with negotiations and drawing up a new agreement.
For the past two years unions have felt increasingly aggrieved about this. A Num source last week said that if Eskom could ignore the law with regard to these essential services, so could Num – and the World Cup is probably the best time to demonstrate this.
Num represents about 12 000 workers at Eskom, Solidarity 7 000 and the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) 5 000. Numsa which, together with Num is affiliated with Cosatu, recruited members at Eskom before Cosatu was established in 1986. Cosatu decided that Num was the union that ought to represent Eskom’s workers, but over the years Numsa has bluntly refused to pass its Eskom members over to Num.
Battlefield
For more than two decades since the founding of Cosatu, the two unions have been at loggerheads over which has the biggest influence on Cosatu. Num is the biggest and most influential union in the federation. Numsa has long been the runner-up, but recently has taken third place after Num and the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union.
Eskom is becoming the battlefield of a power struggle between Num and Numsa in the run-up to Vavi’s 2012 retirement as Cosatu general secretary.
Num wants its general secretary, Frans Baleni, to become Cosatu's general secretary when Vavi leaves in 2012 and Numsa wants its general secretary, Irvin Jim, to be voted into this position.
This union often has a stabilising effect on its members, but a fortnight ago Paris Mashego, chairperson of Num’s supervisory board at Eskom, was unanimously voted out when he tried to persuade the rest of the supervisors to abandon the plan for a strike at Eskom.
The unhappiness arises from last year's wage negotiations. Housing was a focal point that could not be resolved at that time. Eventually it was agreed that a task group would take things further after a wage increase had been agreed upon. The task group was to have completed a housing policy, with a housing subsidy, before the end of 2009.
But in the drama surrounding the ending of Jacob Maroga’s service and the resignation of Mpho Letlape, Eskom’s executive director for human resources, the task group’s activities were disrupted and a housing policy was never agreed upon.
Against this background, the threat of labour instability at Eskom during the World Cup soccer tournament is much greater than the possibility of a general workers’ strike by Cosatu.
- Sake24.com
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