Despite some gains, the metal unions wielded limited power. Levels of unionisation were low, recognition agreements minimal, and bargaining for improved wages and working conditions underway in only a few factories. An impressive degree of internal cohesion existed in these unions, but the huge task of integrating their different ideological, bureaucratic and organisational traditions had hardly been broached, nor was there yet the ability to engage political parties or the captains of industry.
Perhaps least of all was their ability to wield institutional power. A massive organisational drive needed to happen before they would have the power ‘to shape the decision-making agenda’97 and be able to influence the rules and regulations that affected their members. It remained to be seen whether they could use the new industrial relations regime to their advantage and whether their strategies would enhance their influence in the bargaining, legislative and political arenas.
The significance of trends established by these unions in the 1970s were important in laying the foundations for building power in the 1980s. Future power lay in the choice of national industrial unionism and organisation resting on strong, accountable shop steward structures which had been entrenched by the close of the 1970s.98 A new type of organiser, too, was emerging in the late 1970s. Shop stewards who were dismissed for union activities became powerful organisers owing to their shared background with those they sought to recruit. The surfacing of such organisers combined with the focus on worker control, allowed for the emergence of strong factory leadership and organic worker intellectuals. Finally, the seeds of a national metal union had been sown with the spread of organisation into all the main industrial centres – Johannesburg, Pretoria, the East Rand, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London.
The survival of unions such as UAW/Numarwosa and Mawu was linked to their innovative approaches, the range of tactics they employed and the flexibility of their organising strategies. This mode of operation was to serve them well in the rapidly changing environment of the 1980s.
By the end of the 1970s, the metal unions were poised to grow and exert power in more significant ways. There was a keen appreciation of the need to consolidate and expand. In that decade the key to survival had rested on the maintenance of an unobtrusive, independent organisational and political profile but in the 1980s this strategy would be contested. To have a decisive impact, the unions needed to increase their membership while maintaining high levels of factory organisation so that metal employers nationwide experienced a sustained assault.
Chapter Two
Power through numbers: 1980–1985
Any trade union wishing to alter the conditions of its members will have to address the question of growth and numbers. For unions, whose primary membership comprises highly replaceable semi-skilled and unskilled workers, the question of growth is pivotal because they cannot rely on the scarcity of their members’ skills as a bargaining weapon.
In order to advance workers’ interests it is necessary for unions to challenge both management control and the power of the state. The only weapon they have in this uneven contest is the wielding of power in order to secure a hearing and, at times, to force the hand of powerful forces in opposition to their interests. If unions represent a sizeable proportion of their constituency who are vociferous in their own interests it becomes difficult for organs of power to ignore them.
The acquisition of power is not simply a question of numbers – strategic selection of companies; the strength of workplace structures; the strength of internal organisational cohesion; the unity of membership’s goals; the strategic use of conflict; and the overall strategies and policies the union adopts will all affect its access to power. Yet without numbers to champion these strategic visions there can be no implementation of demands. Union growth in itself is multifaceted, governed by economic, social, political and organisational factors which embrace questions of leadership, union structure, unity, mergers, alliances, legal reforms and so on.
Growth posed a dilemma for the emerging metal unions, and especially for Mawu. As a survival strategy it had opted to build power in selected factories and thereby concentrate its resources, but the challenge now was how to grow rapidly and build industrial power without losing organisational coherence.
As the 1980s dawned, unions faced a new constraint on growth: the economy was entering one of its longest and deepest downswings. The immediate trigger was a world recession precipitated by the 1979 revolution in Iran and a huge jump in the oil price. By 1981 the gold price was also falling, and by 1982 the economy was registering negative growth.1 Owing to structural weaknesses, including stagnant consumer markets, a reliance on primary goods in a shrinking world market and an internationally uncompetitive manufacturing sector, the economy failed to bounce back when global conditions improved. A debt crisis was aggravated by massive government spending on apartheid and, as township unrest mounted, its security apparatus. From the mid-1980s, political risk prompted disinvestment by foreign capital and a credit freeze by foreign banks. Also, between 1982 and 1986, agriculture was smitten by a terrible drought.2
In a bid to improve the balance of payments, the government hiked interest rates, which hit small firms already under pressure from soaring fuel and electricity costs. From the early to mid-1980s, up to sixteen companies a day were folding, and survivors found their profit margins slashed. An estimated 1,5 million new workers entered the market at a time when only 150 000 new jobs were created (while 185 000 jobs were created in the public sector, around 30 000 jobs were lost in the private sector).3
The response of business to declining profits was to cut costs by mechanising and reorganising production – which destroyed thousands of low-skilled jobs in the metal industry. Retrenchments sapped the unions’ factory base and exposed members and shop stewards to victimisation. Commented a Mawu organiser: ‘Many factories are trying to get rid of union members … they say there is no work. Also they will say this guy has skills – he has a special job and we can’t retrench him. And the workers know it is only because he is not a member of the union.’4 Some employers slashed labour costs by retrenching their entire workforce and moving to government-subsidised ‘deconcentration zones’ in the homelands.
The state provided almost no protection from the ravages of unemployment except for a short-term, minuscule payout from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to workers with urban residence rights. Employers saw the massive haemorrhage of jobs as a straightforward economic and market issue. One employer spoke for many: ‘No negotiation at all over retrenchments. That’s a purely financial matter and purely up to management.’ Indeed, a 1983 management conference welcomed the job losses: ‘Retrenchments had a positive effect on company-worker relations; workers are now a little more worried about their jobs, and productivity has improved a lot because they know what can happen to them as well.’5 Many employers were so detached from the lives of their employees that they failed to inform retrenchment victims of unemployment benefits or sign off their UIF cards.
A 1984 survey on the East Rand showed that even employers who agreed to retrenchment procedures generally did not follow them. They gave little or no notice. The TMF foundry, for example, informed workers on the morning they were laid off, and then locked them out when they protested. One worker relates:
I arrived on Monday afternoon for the night shift. I looked at the clock station for my clock card, it was not there. We stood outside because we didn’t have the tickets and waited for boss Willen … there were eight from my department … he came to his office, went in, and came out to say there is no more job for us. I asked him how can he dismiss me like that, I have worked since 1970. He said he can’t do nothing, there is no job