{"id":514,"date":"2016-04-02T17:36:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-02T17:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2016\/04\/02\/why-nions-must-resist-capture-and-fight-for-freedom-terry-bell-2016\/"},"modified":"2016-04-02T17:36:51","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T17:36:51","slug":"why-nions-must-resist-capture-and-fight-for-freedom-terry-bell-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2016\/04\/02\/why-nions-must-resist-capture-and-fight-for-freedom-terry-bell-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Why nions Must Resist Capture and Fight for Freedom – Terry Bell (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nWHY UNIONS MUST RESIST CAPTURE & FIGHT FOR REFORM
\nby Terry Bell
\n<\/strong>
\nAs I noted last week, patronage, the usually more subtle form of bribery and
\ncorruption, is very much part and parcel of our social and economic system. And two
\nreaders have pointed out to me this week that the South Africa experience extends to
\nthe Dutch East India Company and Jan van Riebeeck through to Cecil John Rhodes
\nand company.
\nBut it is not only business and financial gain that lies at the heart of such
\nmanipulation, of attempts to \u201ccapture\u201d politicians, union leaders, organisations or
\neven a state. Nor is such manipulation always attempted through financial patronage,
\nwith external economic interests pulling the political strings.
\nIdeology \u2014politics \u2014 can also be a driving force. And it is the same on the national
\nas well as the international plane.
\nPolitical parties around the world, realising the potential power of organised labour,
\nhave often wooed and won individual unions and federations. This resulted in
\nWestern Europe, for example, having unions affiliated to Christian Democratic,
\nSocial Democratic and Communist parties, the antithesis of working class unity.
\nThe prime division over the past 70 years reflected the Cold War where the only
\nalternative to what existed in the United States-led West was claimed to be trade
\nunion structures in the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites. And so there
\nwere two major international federations: the World Federation of Trade Unions
\n(WFTU), headquartered in Prague and the International Confederation of Free Trade
\nUnions (ICFTU), headquartered in Brussels.
\nBoth now feature in an apparent attempt by the WFTU to capture the allegiance of
\nCosatu from what is now known as the International Trade Union Confederation
\n(ITUC), successor to the ICFTU. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the rump
\nof the WFTU, with headquarters in Athens, has again begun growing, positioning
\nitself, as before, as the only alternative to the ITUC.
\nHowever, the WFTU continues to promote the concept of trade union-supported
\nworkers\u2019 parties that should control both state and economy. This make unions \u2014 as
\nin the former Soviet Union, and now in countries such as China \u2014 mere conveyor
\nbelts for party and state.
\nBut ITUC is also not beyond criticism. Although it is in principle independent and its
\naffiliates support freedom of association and independent unionism, many of the
\naffiliates and the ITUC itself have become top heavy and bureaucratic. The fact that
\nITUC officials provide credibility to the annual World Economic Forum by attending
\nthe annual meetings of this rich man\u2019s club attracts legitimate criticism.
\nThe WFTU, on the other hand, had \u2014 and still has \u2014 the support of communist
\nparties and is headed by George Mavrikos, a former Greek MP and member of the
\nGreek Communist Party (KKE). Although it has won individual unions such as
\nBritain\u2019s 82 000-strong transport union, RMT, its support on a national level comes
\nfrom countries such as North Korea and Syria.
\nUnlike ITUC, which accepts only national federations as members \u2014 all three of
\nSouth Africa\u2019s major federations, Cosatu, Fedusa and Nactu, are ITUC affiliates \u2014
\nthe WFTU recruits individual unions. This is seen by some critics as an attempt to
\n\u201cwhite ant\u201d federations and four of Cosatu\u2019s affiliated unions are now WFTU
\nmembers.
\nThe four unions have also agreed to host the world congress of the WFTU in Durban
\nin October. But here a major problem has arisen: one of the main driving forces,
\napart from the SA Communist Party, to get Cosatu to affiliate to the WFTU, was
\nmetalworkers\u2018 union, Numsa. An early WFTU affiliate and now the biggest union in
\nthe land, Numsa was expelled from Cosatu and is in the process of establishing a new
\nnational federation.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think we will attend that congress,\u201d said Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim.
\n\u201cThe unions who are hosting it were among those who expelled us and the WFTU
\nsaid nothing about that.\u201d Numsa is now \u201crethinking\u201d its position regarding the two
\ninternational bodies.
\nHowever, Numsa still insists that it is a \u201cred union\u201d following \u201cMarxist-Leninist
\nprinciples\u201d. This seems to indicate ongoing support for the very conveyor belt
\nunionism that exists in countries such as North Korea. As such, it perpetuates the
\n\u201cTweedledum\/Tweedledee\u201d \u2014 ITUC vs WFTU \u2014 divisions of the past.
\nYet reform is clearly needed within the labour movement, both nationally and
\ninternationally. There is a need to return to truly democratically controlled trade
\nunions that unite workers as workers without political or financial manipulation from
\non high. ITUC, with its commitment to freedom of association and organisational
\nindependence, at least seems capable of being persuaded, from below, in that
\ndirection.
\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
\nSkype: belnews \u2022 Twitter: @telbelsa
\nBlog: terrybellwrites.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\/514"}],"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=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}