Peter van Heusden wrote:
>I don't know what the situation in the situation in the US is, but in
>SA I - though a union member - am hard pressed when asked which union
>to join. Though the union here at UWC is pretty good, the general
>experience that I and lots of people I know have with many SA unions
>is that they are a nightmare to actually get any service out of. I
>know a number of cases where people were paid up union members for
>years without the union doing anything to assist them - even when
>assistance was sorely needed.
Even worse, in many of the high profile cases of real resistance, the leaderhsip worked overtime to smash rank and file action. The recent Volkswagen strike over victimisation was a case in point with leadership collaborating in the firing of hundreds of strikers. This built on a depressing tradition dating back to the famous Mercedes Benz strike in East London. Most of the sacked militants from that strike have never worked again. For me VW spelt the final demise of what was once the most militant and "progressive" union in the country. And how we characterise the Cosatu federation given its ongoing role as policeman of the labour movement on behalf of capital remains an open question. Far too many people here seem to be living in the past and refuse to recognise that the unions have become little more than empty shells and Cosatu something even worse. Most senior bureaucrats spend their time in permanent bipartite bargaining structures and seldom get to meet their members - unless of course there's a fire to put out. Unfortunately without some sort of real political alternative developing there's probably little that can be done to turn the old unions into fora for workplace struggle. Unless of course we see the resurgence of syndicalist outfits which replicate some of what we saw in the 70s and 80s (SAAWU etc). I think it would however be a mistake to look for old forms repeating themselves.
Ironical that this kind of stuff is so seldom discussed in SA.
>
>Add to that the fact that jobs are being lost all over the place, and
>you get a union movement which certainly doesn't look healthy - even
>leaving aside the bizarreness which results from COSATU/ANC/SACP
>link-up.
>
>All in all, the situation cries out for an approach to the problem of
>'class composition' which looks beyond union membership and 'building
>the unions'. In this regard Chuck0's 'build counter-institutions and
>resist' seems like a good idea, particularly given the historic
>experience of SA working class struggle (I'm thinking about the
>experience of the 1980s in particular - or rather, what I know of that
>experience).
>
>Peter