Statement on COSATU Central Executive Committee meeting

26 April 2007

The Congress of South African Trade Unions held a special, extended meeting of its Central Executive Committee from 23-25 April. The meeting was attended by the senior leaders of its affiliates as well as by members of the Education and Gender sub committees of the CEC. Its primary purpose was to debate COSATU’s responses to the draft policy documents for the forthcoming policy conference of the African National Congress.

COSATU was pleased to welcome to the meeting the Secretary General of the African National Congress, Kgalema Motlanthe, the Deputy General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, Jeremy Cronin, Deputy Minister of Finance, Jabu Moleketi, and his Excellency the Ambassador of Palestine, Ali Halimeh.

We are taking very seriously the task of engaging robustly with the ANC draft policy documents. The special CEC was a third major forum where COSATU has debated these documents. COSATU intends to use the chance provided by the ANC's policy and national conferences to campaign for policies that will advance the interests of the workers and the poor. We will judge the ANC's 13 draft policy documents by the degree to which they promise real improvements in the lives of the majority, and how well they advance the demands of the Freedom Charter and South Africa’s national democratic revolution.

It is public knowledge that COSATU is not happy with the course of economic transformation. We have been on the streets protesting against job losses and for job creation and against poverty since 1999 when we held the first general strike. We have concluded that most of the benefits from economic transformation went to business and not labour in the first decade of freedom. Unemployment is stubbornly at about 40%, poverty continues to dehumanise about half of our population, inequalities have increased, workers’ wages have stagnated, leading to the apartheid wage gap increasing even more. Casualisation of labour is on the rise, with the more secure, better paying jobs being replaced by insecure and poor paying jobs.

To COSATU this situation facing the primary motive force our revolution demands a change in economic and social policies. The country cannot continue to be made to believe that all is well in the economy when only white monopoly capital is the primary benefactor. The situation where the doctor continues to pronounce that the operation has been successful when the patient is perpetually living on an oxygen machine in the ICU must change. 

We are issuing to you today an article published in today’s Mail & Guardian in response to the ANC’s draft discussion document on Strategy and Tactics. COSATU’s responses to the other draft discussion documents, which were discussed at the CEC, are being finalised and will be issued to the public over the next two weeks.

We are also issuing COSATU’s paper on the leadership challenge (attached), which has been produced in response to a resolution from the 9^th National Congress, which declared that COSATU has a class interest in who leads the ANC and what policy direction the ANC and the state develops and pursues. The first Central Committee after the congress has been given a responsibility to “identify leadership which can best pursue a programme in the interests of the working class”.

The paper puts forward a framework to interpret the resolution, clarify why workers should take an interest in this matter and lay down principles and criteria for an ANC leadership collective.

The CEC declared its solidarity with two groups of workers who are presently on the front line of the class struggle in pursuance of our Living Wage Campaign:

1.      COSATU supports the call by its affiliates in the public service for workers to prepare for a protracted strike should the second round of the CCMA-facilitated mediation fail to yield results. The demands of the public sector workers are totally justified. Government has promised to improve wages of police, health workers and educators. But now that it must walk the talk it is dragging its feet and reneging by offering a paltry 6%.

2.      The CEC also reaffirmed its backing for the 2000 workers employed by Blue Ribbon Bakeries, a subsidiary of Premier Foods, who have been on strike since 5 March in support of a legitimate demand for a centralised bargaining arrangement. The employers are being extremely intransigent, reneging on an agreement which could have resolved the dispute. We are mobilising our members behind the call for a boycott of all Premier products, which include Iwisa and Impala maize meal, Invicta samp, Snowflake flour range and particularly Blue Ribbon bread. The COSATU CEC called for a total consumer boycott of all the products of the company. In the next few days we shall be approaching our Alliance partners and the rest of the civil society formations to join us as we pledge more active solidarity in support of the just demands of the workers.

The CEC also discussed the following forthcoming historical events.

May Day celebrations

COSATU has organised 22 rallies across the country, with the main national event in Secunda, Mpumalanga. We regret to advise that President Thabo Mbeki will no longer join the COSATU President and SACP General Secretary in the main rally due to other government pressures. Membathisi Mdladlana, Minister of Labour and a member of the ANC’s NEC, will replace the President. All other ANC and government leaders are however deployed. This will include the ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who will join the COSATU General Secretary in the Koster, North West, provincial rally.  (See attached statement for details). The theme this year will be: “Create quality jobs; stop poverty and inequalities now!” plus the following sub themes:

• Defend workers’ rights; defend human rights
• Unite against the abuse of farm workers
• A living wage for all
• Intensify struggle against HIV/Aids
• Stop casualisation and subcontracting - Say NO to labour broking

7 May marks the 20^th anniversary of 1987 bombing of COSATU House. COSATU will be hosting a workshop to commemorate this historic date. Many young workers and the general public will never appreciate the sacrifices made by the working class and why they are recognised as the primary force of the struggle until they are exposed to countless attacks launched by the illegal apartheid regime on trade unions and other working class formations. We have invited Jay Naidoo, COSATU’s founding General Secretary, and Peter Harris, a prominent COSATU lawyer at the time, to come and share with the public the extent of the brutality of the apartheid government which workers played a leading role in defeating.

COSATU members will hold a mass picket at the Constitutional Court on 8 May which will be day when the court hears the case of Rustenberg Platinum v CCMA. This case has huge implications for workers, their trade unions and the relationship between workers and the employers. COSATU lawyers will argue that the Supreme Court of Appeal erred in ruling that the CCMA should no longer decide on the merits of whether workers have been dismissed fairly or unfairly.

4 June 2007 is the 40^th anniversary of Israeli occupation of Palestine. COSATU will be joining the Alliance and civil society organisations in marking this dark day. COSATU joins all other internationalists in calling for demonstrations throughout the month of June to mark this occupation. We shall be stepping up the campaign for a boycott of all Israeli goods and services. We call on the ANC conference to support growing international calls for the total isolation of the Israeli regime, including imposition of sanctions.