WHY UNIONS MUST RESIST CAPTURE & FIGHT FOR REFORM
by Terry Bell

As I noted last week, patronage, the usually more subtle form of bribery and
corruption, is very much part and parcel of our social and economic system. And two
readers have pointed out to me this week that the South Africa experience extends to
the Dutch East India Company and Jan van Riebeeck through to Cecil John Rhodes
and company.
But it is not only business and financial gain that lies at the heart of such
manipulation, of attempts to “capture” politicians, union leaders, organisations or
even a state. Nor is such manipulation always attempted through financial patronage,
with external economic interests pulling the political strings.
Ideology —politics — can also be a driving force. And it is the same on the national
as well as the international plane.
Political parties around the world, realising the potential power of organised labour,
have often wooed and won individual unions and federations. This resulted in
Western Europe, for example, having unions affiliated to Christian Democratic,
Social Democratic and Communist parties, the antithesis of working class unity.
The prime division over the past 70 years reflected the Cold War where the only
alternative to what existed in the United States-led West was claimed to be trade
union structures in the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites. And so there
were two major international federations: the World Federation of Trade Unions
(WFTU), headquartered in Prague and the International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU), headquartered in Brussels.
Both now feature in an apparent attempt by the WFTU to capture the allegiance of
Cosatu from what is now known as the International Trade Union Confederation
(ITUC), successor to the ICFTU. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the rump
of the WFTU, with headquarters in Athens, has again begun growing, positioning
itself, as before, as the only alternative to the ITUC.
However, the WFTU continues to promote the concept of trade union-supported
workers’ parties that should control both state and economy. This make unions — as
in the former Soviet Union, and now in countries such as China — mere conveyor
belts for party and state.
But ITUC is also not beyond criticism. Although it is in principle independent and its
affiliates support freedom of association and independent unionism, many of the
affiliates and the ITUC itself have become top heavy and bureaucratic. The fact that
ITUC officials provide credibility to the annual World Economic Forum by attending
the annual meetings of this rich man’s club attracts legitimate criticism.
The WFTU, on the other hand, had — and still has — the support of communist
parties and is headed by George Mavrikos, a former Greek MP and member of the
Greek Communist Party (KKE). Although it has won individual unions such as
Britain’s 82 000-strong transport union, RMT, its support on a national level comes
from countries such as North Korea and Syria.
Unlike ITUC, which accepts only national federations as members — all three of
South Africa’s major federations, Cosatu, Fedusa and Nactu, are ITUC affiliates —
the WFTU recruits individual unions. This is seen by some critics as an attempt to
“white ant” federations and four of Cosatu’s affiliated unions are now WFTU
members.
The four unions have also agreed to host the world congress of the WFTU in Durban
in October. But here a major problem has arisen: one of the main driving forces,
apart from the SA Communist Party, to get Cosatu to affiliate to the WFTU, was
metalworkers‘ union, Numsa. An early WFTU affiliate and now the biggest union in
the land, Numsa was expelled from Cosatu and is in the process of establishing a new
national federation.
“I don’t think we will attend that congress,” said Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim.
“The unions who are hosting it were among those who expelled us and the WFTU
said nothing about that.” Numsa is now “rethinking” its position regarding the two
international bodies.
However, Numsa still insists that it is a “red union” following “Marxist-Leninist
principles”. This seems to indicate ongoing support for the very conveyor belt
unionism that exists in countries such as North Korea. As such, it perpetuates the
“Tweedledum/Tweedledee” — ITUC vs WFTU — divisions of the past.
Yet reform is clearly needed within the labour movement, both nationally and
internationally. There is a need to return to truly democratically controlled trade
unions that unite workers as workers without political or financial manipulation from
on high. ITUC, with its commitment to freedom of association and organisational
independence, at least seems capable of being persuaded, from below, in that
direction.
Terry Bell
writing, editing, broadcasting
specialising in:
political/economic analysis and labour
P.O Box 373, Muizenberg 7950
South Africa
Tel: +27 +(0)21 788 9699
Skype: belnews • Twitter: @telbelsa
Blog: terrybellwrites.com