AUT: Article on S.A. Public Sector Strike

["FRANCO BARCHIESI" <029FRB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

The following article, published today on Johannesburg's "Business
Day", originated from a request from NEHAWU comrades, and from their
wonderful struggle, which I both acknowledge.

Franco

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:
Business Day (Johannesburg), 1 September 1999

"Press coverage of strike was union bashing"

The issues go beyond just the amount of wage increases, writes Franco
Barchiesi

RECENT strike action by teachers and public sector workers received
the kind of press coverage that under more conservative governments
would be described as "union bashing".

Unions involved in the dispute have generally been represented as
bearers of narrow sectional interests of a relatively "privileged"
minority, invariably opposed to "the public" of service users. For
example, echoing views from right-wing economist Tony Twine, one
columnist argued that if the government wants to honour its
commitment to service provision, it can do so only by containing and
cutting the wages of public servants.

On the other hand, unnamed "labour experts" are mobilised by
newspapers to advocate the "government's strong ground to dismiss
striking workers". Meanwhile, the most common word used to define the
strikers is "disruptive", with the associated images of students
deprived of their exams and patien= ts denied urgent care. The first
casualty of this treatment has been the general and structural
significance of the strikes.

The industrial action is made to look like conflicts on wage
increases that have nothing to do with the concerns of masses of
unemployed, marginalised or casualised workers who are the majority
of the working class, or of those losing their jobs by the thousands
each day. There is more to the public sector workers' struggle than
the stereotypes explain. In particular, three issues concerning the
strikes have been ignored. First, the strikes are challenging the
government's unilateral implementation of wage increases based
uniquely on "budget constraints". These constraints are the product
of the growth employment and redistribution (Gear) programme, imposed
on the unions without consultation. Unilateral wage increases
represent the continuation of Gear's logic. Therefore the public
sector becomes a decisive testing ground for the government's
unfettered capacity to implement wage flexibility and unilaterally
impose sacrifices for the sake of the new secular religion, "fiscal
discipline".

Second, this conflict highlights the rising impoverishment of
workers. In fact, having a formal job is becoming an increasingly
inadequate condition for workers who have to satisfy basic needs at
market rates where, also due to the very "budget constraints" used
to oppose the strikers, services such as water and electricity are
charged at exorbitant rates by municipalities. This when services
are not simply privatised - which brings further increases and
retrenchments - as the only way through which the government repays
its debts. The lack of social security and free access to basic
social services make this probably the most commodified country in
the world. This strike is a signal that workers can no longer cope
with such a systematic undermining of their living standards.

Finally, grassroots support for the strikes draws attention to a
deeply-felt desire by members to continue to be part of strong,
independent trade unions as a decisive component of a democratic
society, even when it entails conflict over government's
macroeconomic strategies.

>From this point of view, Jeremy Baskin argued in Business Day that
unions' demands are not compatible with the fact that budget
limitations are voted by parliament at the beginning of the year.
This misses the point entirely. The current conflict is not over a
technical issue of how to account for wage increases in the budget.
It rather challenges the priorities and principles that Gear and the
budget process have so far advanced. These priorities (cuts in public
spending, privatisation, employment flexibility) have caused a far
greater disruption to health care, education and social welfare than
a hundred strikes like the recent ones could possibly do.

If striking public workers win, a debate on socioeconomic policy
alternatives will become more thinkable than currently. Conversely,
while negotiating institutions prove their limitations in defending
workers' living standards, the present events show struggle can still
play a meaningful role.

Barchiesi is a sociology lecturer at Wits University.

http://www.bday.co.za/99/0901/comment/e2.htm
_____________________________________________



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| Franco Barchiesi                                            |
| Sociology of Work Unit - Dept of Sociology                  |
| University of the Witwatersrand                             |
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