{"id":353,"date":"2012-10-07T21:55:57","date_gmt":"2012-10-07T21:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2012\/10\/07\/cosatu-congress-3-terry-bell-2012\/"},"modified":"2012-10-07T21:55:57","modified_gmt":"2012-10-07T21:55:57","slug":"cosatu-congress-3-terry-bell-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2012\/10\/07\/cosatu-congress-3-terry-bell-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"COSATU Congress (3) – Terry Bell (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nCOLD WAR ECHOES AND TRADE UNION REFORM<\/strong><\/em>
\nBoth the Cold War and the bitter battles between communists and social democrats in
\nGermany of the Thirties found an echo at the 11th Cosatu national congress in
\nMidrand last week; an echo that is now being assessed by labour organisations and
\nactivists around the world. It came in speeches and in often angry comments from
\ndelegates in debates about international affiliation.
\nAlthough the Cosatu secretariat report stated that the debate was \u201cprobably one of the
\nmost important discussions that we have had in many years\u201d, the issue was largely
\nignored by the media. But it was \u2014 and is \u2014 certainly being taken seriously, not
\nonly by labour, but also by governments and international institutions.
\nAs a result, the discussions and the decision eventually taken by Cosatu may have
\nwide-ranging implications, especially for the trade union movement in South Africa.
\nThere is even the probably remote prospect of Cosatu, the country\u2019s major union
\nfederation, being expelled by the world\u2019s largest labour organisation, the International
\nTrade Union Confederation (ITUC).
\nThe issue of expulsion was raised from the congress floor last week in a bellicose
\nstatement from the National Education Health and Allied Workers\u2019 Union (Nehawu)
\nthat, along with three other Cosatu unions, has unilaterally affiliated to the World
\nFederation of Trade Unions (WFTU). According to Nehawu, ITUC had threatened
\nto expel unions affiliating to the WFTU and this, again according to Nehawu, was
\nsufficient grounds for leaving ITUC.
\nThis intervention from the floor was part of a drive spearheaded by Nehawu and
\npolice and prisons union, Popcru, backed by metalworkers\u2019 union, Numsa and pulp
\nand paper union, Ceppwawu to tie Cosatu solely to the WFTU. It failed. Instead,
\namid professions of the need for international unity, a compromise was agreed:
\nCosatu would maintain affiliation to ITUC while also joining the WFTU.
\nThe drive to change international affiliation is solely on the basis of ideology, the
\nWFTU proclaiming itself to be a revolutionary, anti-imperialist and socialist
\norganisation. However, as the Cosatu secretariat report acknowledged, its claimed 80
\nmillion members in 35 countries cannot be verified, whereas ITUC has a verifiable
\n175 million members in 153 countries.
\nAlthough it was not raised publicly, a number of delegates and unions at the Cosatu
\ncongress are concerned about some of the known WFTU affiliates, such as the
\ngovernment-sponsored labour federation of North Korea. Given this concern it was
\nobvious that a compromise would be sought.
\nBut the compromise came in the face of the announcement that the National Union of
\nMineworkers (NUM) had also decided to join the WFTU. Based on membership
\nfigures listed on the Cosatu website, 858 016 of the federation\u2019s claimed membership
\nof 2 million have now tied themselves to the WFTU.
\nThe NUM decision was taken at that union\u2019s congress in May, although it was not
\nbroadcast locally. It came after an address to the NUM congress by Swadesh Dev
\nRoye, of the WFTU-affiliated Centre of Indian Trade Unions that is politically
\nattached to the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
\nThe public notification of the NUM affiliation came from WFTU general secretary
\nGeorge Mavrikos when he addressed the Cosatu congress. Mavrikos, who is also a
\ncommunist party member in the Greek parliament spoke from the podium the day
\nafter his ITUC counterpart, Sharan Burrow.
\nBurrow\u2019s speech was generally conciliatory, but subtly critical of the WFTU. She
\nnoted that there were \u201cfundamental differences\u201d between the two international bodies
\nalthough \u201cmy door remains open [to the WFTU]\u201d.
\nBurrow insisted that the differences were not \u201ccommunism or socialism\u201d, but the
\napproach to defending \u201cworkers who want the right to elect a democratic government
\nand form free trade unions\u201d. This was a barely veiled reference to the fact that progovernment
\ntrade union federations in countries such as Syria and Egypt are WFTU
\naffiliates.
\nMavrikos was more scathing and there were disturbing echoes of the divisive tragedy
\nof 1930s Germany when communists attacked social democrats as \u201csocial fascists\u201d.
\nHe castigated \u201cthe class of the capitalists with its agents in social-democracy and in
\nthe trade unions\u201d who had \u201cdisarmed\u201d the workers.
\nAs this column pointed out in February, these ideological divisions are hangovers of
\nthe Cold War and a far cry from labour\u2019s shared call for workers of all countries to
\nunite. During that earlier era, the argument was generally portrayed as Capitalism
\nversus Communism.
\nIt was a case, the Cosatu secretariat report noted, of being in \u201ca Cold War bunker\u201d.
\nThat bunker is now in the process of being reconstructed, with the remnants of the
\nformerly pro-Soviet WFTU gaining apparent strength in the face of the ongoing
\nglobal economic crisis.
\nIn the Cold War years, the WFTU was aligned with the Soviet bloc, while the ICFTU,
\npredecessor of ITUC, with what was broadly known as the \u201cWest\u201d. The
\norganisational model for WFTU unions was what existed in the Soviet Union where
\nunions were mere adjuncts of the party and state.
\nAfter the fall of the Berlin Wall, the WFTU all but collapsed amid free market
\ntriumphalism. As the Cosatu secretariat notes: \u201cIs it any wonder that the WFTU
\nimploded when the rule of the Party did?\u201d
\nBut many social democratic and labour parties or other political parties supported by
\nITUC-affiliated trade unions \u2014 including the ANC \u2014 later adopted liberal economic
\npolicies that are now widely discredited. And so an either\/or situation has emerged
\nwithin several Cosatu unions: either support the \u201cpro capitalist\u201d ITUC or the \u201cpro
\ncommunist\u201d WFTU.
\nThe Cosatu secretariat maintains that both international bodies are in need of reform.
\nAnd an indication of what form that reform should take has been presented quite
\ndramatically in recent weeks, especially at Marikana. There, many workers turned
\ntheir backs on established unions, came together as a collective and elected
\nspokesmen answerable to the collective.
\nIt was messy, but gave a hint of the egalitarian and democratic manner in which trade
\nunions first came into being. This, rather than Cold War examples, may be where
\npositive lessons could, perhaps, be learned.
\nTerry Bell
\nwriting, editing, broadcasting
\nspecialising in:
\npolitical\/economic analysis and labour
\nP.O Box 373, Muizenberg 7950
\nSouth Africa
\nTel: +27 +(0)21 788 9699 \u2022 Fax: +27 +(0)21 788 9711
\nSkype: belnews
\nBlog: terrybellwrites.wordpress.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[61],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}