Theme:Trade union resistance/struggle in times of crisis”
Salutations
Secretary of CTB and all national leadership collective
Secretary of International Relations of CGTP-IN (Portugal).
Comrades and friends
Background
COSATU is honoured to be invited to form part of this important gathering of the National Leadership of the CTB in this historic city of Sao Paolo. We are gathered here today at a time of deepening and prolonged crisis of the capitalist system and its multiple manifestations in the working conditions and in the lives of the working class and the poor.
COSATU regards the year, 2024 as amongst the most monumental period in the history of class struggle, including in our own domestic situation where the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is facing major challenges, even stagnation with elements of regression due to heightened class offensive by the bourgeoisie and its social forces.
The history and practical experience of South Africa is tied to the general experiences of other African countries because of our common history of colonialism and imperialist capitalism. What varies are the degrees of degradation and unique processes undertaken in advancing it under different conditions.
COSATU regards the consistent study of the political economy of underdevelopment as the key basis in our efforts to overcome inequalities, poverty and unemployment in our regions.
We are very much alive to the reality of the global economic crises and the centrality of the class struggle in uniting the working class against the stranglehold of neo-liberalism, elitist economic policies and unjust local monopoly capital and global institutions of power.
This gathering of the National Leadership of the CTB takes place in a context where the whole world is literally at war, with the savage war of dispossession and colonial occupation against the Palestinian people in Gaza, West Bank and throughout historic Palestine. This long-standing war is led by the Zionists, the apartheid state of Israel, which is supported by US’s imperialist military industrial complex and its allies, including NATO. This is a matter that requires the most active, well-coordinated and effective international solidarity programme between unions and other social forces committed to ending the Zionist war in the Middle east and beyond.
It should also be recalled that Brazil has just passed on the G20 Presidency baton to South Africa, which require very close and tight coordination between our two countries, especially coordination of working-class solidarity between our nations, to identify lessons and experiences, as well as identify what these lessons mean for our efforts to advance social justice in different terrains of struggle.
The multiplicity of struggles covering cross-cutting issues facing workers require that we ponder deeply on the state of the international trade union movement. The two major centres, globally, namely WFTU and the ITUC are in their current form unable to coordinate or lead an effective working-class response to the global crisis and revitalize the international trade union movement in struggle. As a result of this fracture, the working class is fragmented, weakened and unable to wage coherent programmes.
Global capitalist crises, in expressions in South Africa
The global political economy is undergoing major changes and there are transitions from old to new jobs, particularly IT and digital platforms economies and we should together strengthen our joint programmes.
The expansive growth of accumulation, especially the reorganisation of work process, employment contracts as well as forms of worker representation are changing the workplace, and terrains of struggle, both in the workplace, but also in society. In South Africa, we have seen massive expansion of digitalisation, increase in platform work, also known as gig-economy and digital platforms of work. The quality of work is declining, as work is increasingly more insecure, unsafe, rightless, indecent, with mobile workplaces and conditions that are unpredictable for millions of workers. This changes the way we should organize and fight for workers’ rights.
For instance, in the last ten years, the South African economy has seen drastic reduction of manufacturing, in its contribution to GDP, also reflecting reduction of manufacturing in employment. Instead, we have witnessed quadruple expansion in imports, coupled with warehousing, online resale platforms, even massive growth of product delivery services, e-hailing services, all undoing conventional employment and work processes, and eliminating trade union forms of representation through differentiated forms of employment contracts and labour processes. In South Africa, capital is also abusing our regional migration challenges, by recruiting regional migrants in most delivery and platform work. Many of these workers are contracted without proper permit documents, leaving them vulnerable to highly exploitative employment contract, work intensification, unsafe work patterns and excluded from any form of worker representation. Our trade union in the wholesale and retail SACCAWU has been the most affected by these changing patterns of work, organising among the most vulnerable of workers, who work outside South Africa’s relatively progressive labour relations regulatory framework.
As we look at the Presidency of G20 in South Africa next year, as part of social forums, organised labour in the global South in particular should engage in conversations, with the aim to adopt resolutions and programmes to strengthen our organisational capacity to organise many of these vulnerable workers, but also collectively to confront loopholes in the legislation frameworks in our respective countries, that empower employers to push even further boundaries of precarity and exploitation of platform and gig workers. Through our Chris Hani Institute, we are beginning programs for basic training programs in labour law, targeted at these vulnerable workers, working together with SACCAWU, as well as unions organising farm, food and allied workers, through which training workers can better build leverage against unscrupulous employers, but also increase workers possibilities for associational power through trade union representation.
In this regard, we do hope this engagement, as well as our collective participation at the G20 organised labour forum, as well as at BRICS trade union forum, we can learn from each other struggles, as well as build broader global solidarity.
Key areas for building South to South solidarities
Comrades, we are at a time of huge environmental catastrophes, resulting from persisting greed of capitalist accumulation at its peak and guzzling the world’s natural resources at an unprecedented rate, it is only through a decisive response and global action by workers that will save the environment and save humanity from a total meltdown of the ecology. The most industrialised countries are far more responsible for environmental calamity than the developing world and that should make them take more responsibility for addressing the crisis than developing countries. This is why the call for “common but differentiated responsibilities” remain even more relevant than ever before. That is also why as COSATU, in South Africa we reject the energy transition plan pushed by global institutions, with its Just Energy transition Investment Plan (JET-IP), which ostensibly wants to lock our government into foreign denominated loans, derisking of capital investment and an energy plan for South African driven by the private sector.
Comrades, we are also following the developments happening in this part of the world, including the latest outcomes of the recent elections in the US and other parts of this continent. It is our considered view that, the most reactionary sexist, chauvinist and rich forces of oppression coordinate with each other more closely than we do, and we face these forces as weak individual units than a coherent united force.
COSATU and the rest of the SA trade union movement shall be hosting the L20, as a variant of the G20 next year and we definitely believe that sharing with you comrades is vital for our insightful engagement towards building effective trade union response and programs.
Coordination of a progressive network for trade union action and socio-economic justice for workers
The following are some of the most salient points for our proposed joint action plan:
- Joint Brazil-SA Trade Union Forum for global economic justice, workers’ rights and inclusive development
- Joint Planning for Annual BRICS Trade Union Forum, especially for 2025 which is coming to Brazil and shall be critical in shaping the new format of the BRICS Trade Union forum in the wake of new members of the BRICS community, as well as increasing threats from the US and its allies against BRICS
- Joint Brazil-Africa or Latin America and Africa Forum to share and exchange on developments that impact workers and promote best practices in a way that enhances the unity and cohesion of workers in our two regions
- Joint training of shop stewards and leaders on advanced economic developments, IT and Artificial intelligence, as well as other key skills in our age. Develop an app in which we together share valuable information, experiences to empower each other on new forms of working-class organisation
- Promotion of young people, women workers and workers with disabilities interaction and exchanges to increase their exposure and integration into the unions
With these few words we wish to take this opportunity to wish this important gathering all the best as it grapples with the most pressing questions facing humanity and the working class in particular.
Amandla!