Strike Action

Andrew Layman:  PCB CEO

Like many South Africans, I am outraged by the behaviour of striking union members.    I understand that demonstrations and the like that are associated with strikes have the potential to degenerate into violence and vandalism, but in this instance the incitement for workers to intimidate has been overtly expressed by union leaders.    On Friday afternoon, the government announced that it would not allow anarchy.   However, in my view this state had been reached already.   What is it other than anarchy when people who wish to work are forcibly prevented from doing so, or driven from workplaces with sjamboks?    What is it other than anarchy when a union leader can incite a crowd of members by inviting them to “kick them around” and, worse, to turn fire extinguishers on school principles so that they will be “blinded for life”?     That this is a teacher union goes a long way to explaining why our education system is in such a parlous state.  

When the Zuma administration took office it identified the national interest by listing the priorities of government.   Among them were education, health and poverty, but as it has transpired, this is not the case.  Instead the national interest is a matter of 1.6% and R300 in the pockets of public servants who are already being offered an increase in excess of the inflation rate.    Someone sent an SMS to SAfm’s afternoon programme asking why the President was not intervening on the side of the poor.    But this is not the poor; the poor are those who cannot find employment, and are increasingly less likely to do so if those who are already employed continue to demand increases that are unaffordable.

I sense that in all the labour agitation that has been well-orchestrated this year, there is more to the underlying motivation than an acceptable annual increase.   South Africa’s disgraceful position as the country with the most unequal society in the world, as measured by the genie co-efficient, is behind the high demands.   The point is being made, quite violently at times, that something has to be done, and since there doesn’t seem to be much movement in decreasing the salaries of the highest earners, the gap must be reduced by raising those of the lowest.    The country has dug a deep pit for itself by the proliferation of ostentatious wealth.   Reports of huge bonuses, often undeserved, and salaries plus benefits that amount to figures that are beyond an ordinary person’s imagination have filled our media.    Workers have every reason to be sceptical when their demands are labelled as unaffordable.    Government finds money for many other things, such as the World Cup, for example, which gave the nation a wonderful party but didn’t alleviate poverty, nor make any impression on the wage gap.    What is worse for the public servants is that others who threatened strike action at more sensitive times were given higher increases, even though in the long run these were, or will be, funded by taxpayers.    

Strike action is a complex matter.    This is partly due to the fact that it is much more than simply the withdrawal of labour.   Striking workers take for granted that there must be public demonstration of their militancy, even though, as I understand it, the right to gather in protest and demonstrate is governed by other laws which are administered by municipalities to which applications for such actions have to be made.     It is a condition of the authority for a demonstration to be held that marshalls should maintain order, and the implicit intention of this is that the organising union should be held responsible for the behaviour of the protesters.   But, in reality, they are never held to account.  While society must recognise the rights of workers to strike and publicly display their anger with the employer, they have little or no respect for the rights of non-striking workers or property owners.    And nothing follows these illegal actions which, so sanctioned by tacit approval, increase in intensity until unions can boast brazenly that their members will defy the constitution.

The public is also fed simplistic information about demands and offers.   For reasons I’ve never quite understood, unions prefer across-the-board increases, yet these have the effect of advantaging the highest earners.   What is the actual position, I wonder?   Are the 8.6% demand and the 7% offer averages?    It would make sense to me that lower paid workers should get a higher percentage increase, while those who sit comfortably in the top echelons should get less.   We are not told the details so as to better understand where right lies.   Instead we have become rather ignorant victims of both sides’ campaigns for public sympathy.   Their energies would be better utilised in trying to find a solution.   Shared values and patriotic loyalty have been shown to be transitory; I, for one, cannot share the values that are driving our unions.       

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