Tuacc had already debated the possibility of a broader federation, so when Numarwosa broached the idea of unity it resolved to play a spearheading role. Tuacc proposed a tight federation with common policies underpinned by the principles of workers’ participation and political independence. A feasibility committee was established.85
The Western Province Workers Advice Bureau and the UTP unions decided to keep their distance, the Western Cape grouping expressing a fear of Tuacc dominance and arguing that workers should take the lead otherwise unity could only boost the power of officials.86 For the UTP unions, black leadership and the tightness of the proposed federation were sticking points.87 But when a number of African UTP members discovered that their leaders had not reported to them on the unity moves, they approached the feasibility committee independently and the result was that the Glass and Allied Workers Union, Paper Wood and Allied Workers Union, SFAWU and a section of Eawu joined Fosatu.88
Sauls also approached WPMawu, which entered the new federation and supplied its first president, Joe Foster.89 Micwu, however, was not interested. Explains East: ‘We were still part of Tucsa. We were not in the IMF … and we were not organising the same membership. But we just didn’t like their leadership – Fred Sauls and Joe Foster.’
The groupings at the core of the unity thrust also decided to submit recommendations for the reform of labour laws to the Wiehahn Commission. It was an important moment in cementing their bond.90
Two years later, in April 1979, three registered and nine unregistered unions representing 45 000 workers launched Fosatu. It was the first national labour federation in South Africa committed to building power through structures that ensured policy was controlled by worker leadership. Policy dictated that the president and vice-president should be full-time workers and that worker representatives to Fosatu structures should come from organised factories. It was a centralised federation which bound affiliates to common policies and shared organising, administrative and educational resources. It was committed to nonracial industrial unions based on worker control, shop floor organisation, independence, international worker solidarity and trade union unity.91 Sauls viewed it as ‘the major achievement’92 of the 1970s, and in the 1980s, in the new environment of the Wiehahn reforms, it would give a major boost to the weak black union movement.93
Mawu delegation to Fosatu – Mawu’s first Transvaal organiser, Ellison Mohlabe, is standing in the back row first left (Bernie Fanaroff)
In the same year, another development gave the new unions a shot in the arm. On the strength of the Wiehahn Commission’s recommendation that Africans be allowed to join registered unions, three laws were promulgated between 1978 and 1981.94 They granted Africans union rights, including admission to industrial councils and the right to legally strike. The legislation also created the new category of unfair labour practice, to be defined by an industrial court. A national manpower commission would monitor the new system and advise the government.95
The Wiehahn laws were a major achievement for the independent unions. Their understated organising methods had manoeuvred the state towards reform rather than repression and had thereby opened up new organising spaces. Tarrow has explored why contentious politics only emerge in particular periods of history and why social movements sometimes flourish and at other times vanish; he concludes that an important factor is a shift in political opportunities and constraints, such changes occurring when the authorities are vulnerable, allowing new opportunities to emerge which lower the cost of action for ordinary people.96 The Wiehahn laws were such a catalyst in the emergence of this new social movement unionism. Facing internal and external resistance amid economic decline, the state’s aim was to incorporate and depoliticise the independent unions through limited reform and the effect was to open organising space, which the new unions would energetically exploit in the 1980s.
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
