Business Day
*Zuma's silence on strike is bizarre * *Editorial, Business Day, Johannesburg, 6 March 2012 *THE year 2010 was an extreme year for working days lost to strikes in SA. According to the Department of Labour's Industrial Action Report, 20674737 days were lost to strikes. This was a huge increase over 2009, but was quickly dismissed as an aberration because of the huge public servants' strike that took place.
The report makes this comment: "Public servants always participate in large numbers in public sector strikes; furthermore, these strikes last longer than most of the strikes." The obvious unwritten conclusion this comment invites is: "Don't worry, this year is an aberration."
So it must have come as a surprise to the department that the number of days lost to strikes increased by 50% last year --- the highest in SA's history. Far from being an aberration, 2010 was actually a comparatively slow year. Now, early in 2012, SA has already experienced a crippling strike at Impala Platinum, which cost the company about R2,4bn. The strike was illegal and undisciplined, and several people died.
That strike is barely over and already we are off again, this time with a national strike over issues so abstruse that the political utility of the strike seems absurd. The national strike is ostensibly to protest about labour brokers and the tolling on some Gauteng highways. To have a national strike over these issues is patently pointless and suggests a political motive that is devoid of any real relationship to the supposed reasons for the strike.
The issue of labour brokers has been a topic of constant debate for more than two years now. T he problem is not that the government does not support the position of the trade unions, but that the issue is more or less impossible to legislate against because doing so could restrict people from helping other people get jobs, and nobody wants that.
The point of striking, supposedly to bring the labour-broking issue to the attention of the government and others, is therefore pointless; the government is there already.
As for tolls on Johannesburg's highways, the government has now bent over backwards to try to extricate itself from this mess. This includes halving the toll, pumping taxpayers' money into the project, and including several other measures to try to cool the ardour of the protesters. The fact is that the highways have to be paid for, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which organised tomorrow's strike, argues that taxpayers rather than road users should foot the bill.
It is unpleasant paying road tolls, but the residents of faraway Springbok, for example, have a right to insist that those who use the road pay for it, rather than those who seldom, if ever, use it.
Cosatu is, in effect, asking workers outside Gauteng to strike against their own best interests.
Hence, this is a strike for the sake of striking.Despite Cosatu's righteous claims to the contrary, the strike is obviously intended as a show of strength before the African National Congress's elective national conference in December.
Presumably, this is the reason President Jacob Zuma has said absolutely nothing about the strike. He doesn't want to get drawn into some quasi political dispute. But still, it is just bizarre that something of this magnitude could happen without the slightest apparent interest being expressed by the head of state. Thousands of children will not get taught tomorrow, thousands of patients will not get attended to, thousands of citizens will be inconvenienced, all for the sake of specious goals.
And yet this situation deserves no comment of any kind. What kind of leadership is that?
The fact is that SA is becoming the kind of place in which workers strike at the drop of a hat because the law supports pointless strikes and politicians are too scared to criticise, never mind actually do something about it. If SA is to allow workers to strike on political issues, there should at least be a requirement for a transparent ballot among workers. But, given the spinelessness of our politicians, the millions who will be inconvenienced tomorrow can only dream about that.
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