Build the Trade Union United Front! - Marxist Workers Party

Originally appeared in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No. 4 (October 1981)

by Jake Wilson and Rocco Malgas

Despite sharp crackdowns by the police there has been a magnificent increase in the activity and struggles of the independent trade union movement. Through strikes, and the consolidation of union membership, workers are winning a whole spate of recognition ballots and agreements, shop steward elections and wage increases.

The latest Labour Relations Amendment Bill and the whip of the police, far from taming the movement, have already led to new steps to unite the workers’ ranks against the bosses and the state.

The growth of worker militancy comes at a time when South African capitalism is entering a period of crisis following on the general decline of world capitalism. In the coming year it is anticipated there will be no growth in world trade on which South Africa is so dependent.

The worldwide recession has meant increasing unemployment, higher prices, shut-down factories, and cuts in social spending. It has in turn thrown millions of young people into the ranks of the jobless.

But throughout the world, recession has been made even worse by the monetarist policies of many capitalist governments. In Britain Thatcherism (cutting social spending and raising interest rates) has brought about an economic slump even deeper than the depression of the 1930s. Hence the widespread rioting of the unemployed youth. The United States is now on the same road.

Internationally the workers have met the deepening social crisis with an unprecedented increase in trade union and political struggles to defend their living standards against the constant attacks of the decaying capitalist system.

These attacks have been marked by many capitalist parliaments frantically enacting legislation to curb the powers of trade unions and outlaw strikes. In America, India, Britain, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zambia, for example, trade union controls or arrests are the order of the day.

The trade unions are the first line of defence of the working class against attacks by the bosses and the state. They bear the brunt of the ruling class attack, but are also a powerful weapon in the hands of the working class to fight back.

In every country of the capitalist world, the class struggle will be driven to new levels of intensity in the period ahead.

It is no different in South Africa. Since the mass strikes of 1973, the bosses and the regime have used every possible measure to frustrate or repress the independent organisation of the black workers.

But there is an added thrust to trade union struggles in South Africa. Unlike in Europe where the trade union movement came of age during the rise of world capitalism, the independent trade unions in South Africa have been born in struggle against a capitalist class which has always been too narrow-based and economically weak to concede the reforms which the workers in Europe have won.

Today the independent trade union movement has entered a period of explosive growth precisely as capitalism in South Africa and on a world scale is moving into decline.

Dependent on cheap black labour and a violent police state, capitalism in South Africa can provide no reforms on any lasting basis. It is this which removes any foundations for stable reformist policies within the unions of the black workers and pushes the mass trade union movement in South Africa in a revolutionary direction.

The ruling class understands this only too well, yet is powerless to halt the forces which are being unleashed by the decline of the capitalist system.

Drastic Powers

In its attempts to bring the independent trade unions under control through the whip in one hand and carrots in the other, the Botha regime has got itself deeper and deeper into trouble.

The latest Bill in Parliament is just another attempt to bring the quarrelling between the government, the bosses, and the bureaucracy of the registered unions to an end. But this Bill drops nearly all the carrots intended to encourage registration and vigorously cracks the whip against the independent unions.

Inspectors are provided with drastic powers to search the offices of trade unions, registered and unregistered, and seize documents. All trade unions must have their constitutions available for inspection, as well as their finances and membership lists.

Other controls maintain the ban on strikes and now all trade unions are prohibited from using their funds to support ‘illegal’ strikes! A further sting is the reintroduction of the liaison committees, called ‘works councils’, as a weapon against the unions.

Another Bill requires all worker education to be brought under the control of the Registrar of Man-power Training.

This whole parcel of anti-union measures in Parliament, which have been supported by the PFP and NRP, are reinforced by unprecedented police attacks in the factories and townships. Trade unionists in Port Elizabeth, East London, and elsewhere hardly have time to get home before being arrested again.

In East London the Security Police have even drawn up a secret document on how to break trade union power.

The document provides detailed advice to the bosses on how to smash the unregistered unions generally, and particularly “to act as a millstone around the neck of Saawu and to prevent the acceleration of the success of Saawu”.

In the secret document the fear of the regime of the unions’ power to call a general strike shows through!

“Management cannot dismiss the workers because it will not be only one or two firms involved, but the whole of East London. The result is very clear – one would have to give in to the demands of the workers however extravagant or ludicrous these may be”!

The whole document eloquently testifies to the power of the working class when it is organised on an industry- and city-wide basis. It proves once again how the initiative is moving into the hands of the black working class.

This power should be multiplied by organisation on a national level!

This decisive shift in class forces confirms the perspective of Marxism that the black working class, organised on a mass basis, will be the main force in the South African revolution.

While in South Africa the political and industrial organisation of the black working class has to be secured on underground foundations, the open trade union movement has a huge potential as a vehicle for mass struggle against the exploiters and oppressors.

Every step forward by the trade unions proves again their capacity to serve as centres of organisation of the oppressed masses.

The independent trade unions are becoming the focus for all the organisations of the oppressed: community organisations, legal defence committees, student groups, rural organisations and even some church organisations.

But this power can only be realised to the full through the massive consolidation of the trade union movement itself – through building trade union unity and developing a clear-sighted working class leadership.

The need for trade union unity is being hammered home by practical experience. In periods of lull, the unions could be picked-off and strangled one-by-one. The confused reaction by some trade union leaders to the issue of registration, with a drift to place themselves under state control, opened the unions to this danger.

But the relentless pressure of the state through the police and laws to extinguish all trade union independence has made it impossible for even these trade union leaders to avoid the question of unity in the struggle to defend their survival.

Common Programme

It is this growing confrontation which brought leaders of the independent unions, including Saawu, Fosatu, GWU, FCWU and Cusa, to a meeting held in Cape Town early in August. The trade union leaders pledged themselves to a common programme of action in opposition to the trade union laws of the regime and the bosses.

The registration of trade unions was rejected “insofar as it is designed to control and interfere in the internal affairs of unions”. The unions demanded the right to strike and decided collectively to defy restrictions on strike pay to members. Also the industrial council system was rejected.

And most importantly, the unions decided to establish inter-union solidarity committees in the regions to assist organisation, develop financial support, and organise consumer boycotts.

Despite the limited programme (unfortunately, for example, not every aspect of the new Bill was rejected), the meeting marks one of the most important steps forward in the history of the workers’ movement in South Africa.

Tests of Strength

The panicky reaction of the Ciskeian puppets to the spectre of trade union unity, by arresting 205 activists from East London, has propelled the independent trade unions further along the road of political opposition to the state.

Despite the previous ‘non-political’ stance of some of the unions, a joint statement by all those involved in the unity talks condemned the arrests and the whole Bantustan policy of the regime.

But as these arrests show, if we study the situation carefully, the working class is clearly heading towards an inevitable sharper confrontation with the state.

The trade union movement therefore has to take adequate steps to prepare the workers for the tests of strength, which lie ahead.

Despite the tremendous step taken at the Cape Town meeting, the defensive pact still falls short of what will be required.

What is needed is a programme of concrete action capable of mobilising the largest possible forces for the struggle ahead. The unionisation of 7% of African industrial workers has been a big stride forward, but the task remains to organise the mass of unorganised workers into a mighty nation-wide force.

The programme would need to be made up of demands on which all the independent unions could agree as a basis for a mass campaign to expand and advance the gains made by the workers.

This can only successfully be decided by full freedom to discuss policy and strategy within the common front around the workers’ fighting demands.

With the broadest mobilisation of the rank-and-file, any differences can be put to the test of experience. This should lead to growing clarity on the direction of the struggle and greater unity.

At this preparatory stage some demands on which the trade union movement could draw in unorganised workers by the tens and hundreds-of-thousands would be:

A basic minimum wage demand of R2 an hour (R90 a week) to be taken into every factory, mine, docks and farm. (The exact demand should be decided with a view to getting the widest possible unity of workers.)
Defiance of laws which control the trade unions, prohibit strikes, and divide worker from worker. Now is the time for the initiative to pass into the hands of the workers against the latest Bills. Concrete plans need to be made for mutual defence against arrests, mass dismissals, and deportation of migrant workers.

Particular attention should be given to mobilising migrant workers. No full-scale mass campaign is possible without mine workers and the youth.

Steps towards the amalgamation of different trade unions, or towards the creation of a single trade union federation must be supported; this organisational unity will be the stronger, the fuller the agreement on the fundamental questions of programme, strategy and tactics on which it is based.

The growing unity of the workers around the fighting demands of the trade union united front would strengthen the trade unions’ ability together to defend workers against victimisation and police harassment.

The solidarity committees agreed upon at the Cape Town meeting, armed with the demands of the united front, could attract thousands of unorganised workers, especially the youth, into the trade union movement.

A target of one million members by the end of 1982 would be entirely possible.

The independent union movement would then be on granite foundations. It would then become possible to go further, to take up campaigns against the pass laws, defiance of the migrant labour system, support for ‘squatters’ against the police, etc.

Trade unionism could then be poised to take on the proportions of Solidarity in Poland – speeding the shift in class forces against the ruling class with the mushrooming of centres of workers’ power.

While the trade union united front has the primary task of bringing the organised black workers into action together, it can also draw the youth, the rural poor, and the radicals of the middle class under its banner.

The unity of the black oppressed can only be built around the struggle of the one consistently revolutionary class in society, the working class, which in South Africa also forms the majority of the population.

The trade union united front demands a bold approach to the 272,000 black and 97,000 white workers in the Tucsa unions. Many black members in the textile, garment, distributive, leather, furniture, engineering, and print unions are increasingly unhappy with the close links between Tucsa and the regime, and the “tame” and “sweetheart” union strategy of the union leadership.

These workers should be called to join in the trade union united front, to pass resolutions in their unions, at Tucsa regional meetings, and at Tucsa conferences, in support of the demands and actions of the trade union united front.

In the rise of a mass independent trade union movement lies a basis for eventually breaking white trade unionists from the white trade union bureaucracy, drawing them into the genuine trade union organisation of the masses.

For the revolutionary youth, the task is to integrate its struggle fully with the movement of the working class, to strengthen the workers’ organisations, and to fight for a workers’ revolutionary programme.

Building the trade union united front in every city, mine, farm, small town, and in the Bantustans themselves, must become the task of every sincere struggler, and every supporter of the ANC.

In this way the trade unions will become a key force in the struggle for power by the working class. On these foundations also, the ANC can be built as a mass organisation with a socialist programme.

It is only with this perspective, the self-organisation of the working class, that the foundations will he laid for workers’ power and workers’ democracy – a workers’ state under the command of the miners, dockers, labourers, farmworkers, cooks, etc., themselves.

Let all who support organising the unorganised gather their forces!

Defeat the new Bills by a campaign in the factories, mines, docks, and railways!

Build the trade union united front!

Forward to 1 million!

For a United Mass Trade Union Movement

Originally published as the editorial of Inqaba ya Basebenzi No. 4 (October 1981).

The last ten years have seen an historic development – organised black workers taking matters into their own hands. Now there are mighty struggles daily against low wages, rising prices, high rents, fare increases and the whole system of oppression.

In the last two years the numbers in independent trade unions have almost trebled. This is a magnificent achievement in the face of persistent and intensifying police raids, victimisations, arrests, detentions and bannings of trade unionists.

Yet membership of the independent unions is still only a tiny proportion of the workforce. That shows the huge potential of the workers’ movement still to be mobilised in organised struggle.

The armchair critics of the working class who argued that workers can never become a match for the power of the bosses’ state are having to swallow their words.

The increase in working class activity has polarised the classes in South Africa. Among the blacks everybody wants to define themselves as workers.

The powerful pull of the trade union movement affects the oppressed middle classes. Some are attracted to it by ambition to enhance their own prestige. But the healthiest elements are drawn to the workers away from middle class strivings for respectability and a privileged place in the sun.

Ever-increasing membership and success in struggle also draw the most conscious youth towards the essential productive and revolutionary force: the working class.

In this period, victories and defeats alike have been a training and a spur for greater organisation and further struggle. The initiative is still moving to the working class.

This weakens and divides the ruling class all the more. They are hopelessly split on the trade union question as on every vital question of the day. In desperation they fall back on their old, futile policies of vicious and naked repression.

This sharpening of class struggle firmly underlines the revolutionary potential of the black workers’ movement when organised in mass trade unions behind a fighting programme of working class demands. But even more important, it stresses the absolute need for unity of trade unions.

Trade union unity is the basis of strength of the working class, for defence and struggle both against the bosses and their oppressive state.

The recent mass arrests, detentions of trade unionists and deportations to the barren ghettoes of the Transkei bring out more clearly than ever that the state is inseparably linked to the bosses and is the ruthless enemy of the trade union movement.

With the migrant workers (the most oppressed mass of the workers and main source of cheap labour for the South African capitalist system) still largely unorganised, workers’ unity between migrants and non-migrants is the key to the future strength of the trade union movement.

Already positive attempts towards united trade union action are under way. This is a milestone in the progress of the movement. But much more remains to be done.

What would be the effect, for example, of a national campaign around the demand for a minimum wage as a basis for uniting the trade unions and workers all over the country?

Given a clear lead by the unions on these and other problems, unorganised workers would flock to join the struggle. By launching an all-out drive to recruit the unorganised masses, the independent unions could realistically set themselves the target of a million members by the end of 1982.

United and strengthened, the trade union movement could go far beyond the bosses’ fear of a “spate of sympathy strikes”. Effective campaigns to force the release of political prisoners, an end to the pass laws and police repression, through all means including the general strike, could then be on the order of the day.

This is the strategic course which comrades of the ANC and Sactu need to explain and promote within the workers’ movement.

Such a clear programme of action would unite all the oppressed around the workers’ movement, preparing the struggle to smash the capitalist state.

Essential in this struggle will be the development in the workers’ movement of a political leadership with a clear programme and perspective which can guide the movement against the bosses and their state to a revolutionary conclusion. This is the task which faces the advanced workers in building the ANC as a fighting mass organisation, above all of the working class.

On this basis every effort towards building the trade union united front would cut short by many miles the road to a successful socialist revolution in South Africa.