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8
Comradely greetings from South Africa.
We are not sure whether to start with details of our food, or details of our discussion. Since we eat at the beginning of our meeting - maybe the food first. Our
food is Halaal - which means that it can also be enjoyed by Muslim comrades. It is often highly spiced with sausages, pies, chicken, samoosas and pieces
of pineapple. It tastes wonderful and it sounds a lot - but we are watching costs - so we all have enough but not much too much.
We decided last time to send some questions to de Beers - to get more information and to see how willing they are to answer our questions. So we will be asking them:
We discussed our own experiences of international connections between trade unionists. We saw that there is often a problem - because international connections become international trips, and not international solidarity. Sometimes there is little information about these international visits and visitors which reaches down to the union members. The bosses have long since learned how to cross borders, but we are still far behind them. Bosses are travelling all the time to see what is happening in other places and make their plans, but many workers are not aware of what is going on in other countries. This makes it much easier for the bosses to divide and rule us.
We already raised the idea of international shopsteward councils. We think that just as we struggle for centralised bargaining in one country, we must also struggle for centralised bargaining internationally. Only if we make sure that conditions are good enough and shared by workers in different countries can we stop this divide and rule.
We heard about the example of the International Trade Secretariat covering the public sector - the PSI. It has a data base of TNC's operating in the public sector - so workers and unions in different countries can get information quickly. There is the idea of an international shopstewards council - but so far it remains only a good idea. There is no action and implementation. The PSI covers one sector - the public service. We also need an international federation which is covering all the trade secretariats as an umbrella body.
We looked at the example of NIKE. In our discussion we concentrated on two things:
In South Africa there is a long tradition of consumer boycotts. But we also saw that boycotts can only be used to support workers. They are in the hands of consumers, not necessarily workers in struggle.
For our comrades in Peru: we agreed that next week we will each come with a couple of ideas; we will discuss these and put them together - so that we can send you the "twenty lines from South Africa".
Then we had a break. (As the end of the course gets closer, we are getting tired. It is also getting hot, as we come to the main part of summer).
After the break we looked at various codes and discussed the question: can we control TNC's?
Our answer is that we have to, so we must struggle. But this must be monitored, we need a watchdog. It must be union based. We must struggle to make sure that what is going on is made public and visible to workers. Any charter to control TNC's must be legislated. There must be penalities. And the same minimum standards must be applied everywhere. Communities must also be central in whistle-blowing (warning about what is happening). We came again to the need for quick efficient international communication and co-ordination between countries - otherwise it will be the same story of them avoiding control in one place by exploiting workers in another. So we came back again to the need for international shop-steward councils.
We discussed also reviving the UN body to monitor TNC's; the problem is that the UN in controlled by the USA government - and they dot hings to support and protect TNC's.
But we know the problems also. Even government power is limited in dealing with TNC's. And there is bribery and corruption. We have to take the lead at home through COSATU - the biggest trade union federation. Then COSATU must take a charter and put pressure on the government for legilsation. There is already a code agreed by COSATU on paper. But nothing has happened, it is just lying there. TNC's are not accountable. We have to struggle to make sure that government which are accountable to the people take action and interfere with what TNC's are doing.
The most important weapons that workers have got are strikes and blacking action. These are weapons that were used again and again in our struggle, even when the apartheid regime and business did not want to listen. They are the same weapons we have to use against TNC's. The things that we are struggling for are not special - they are things that all human beings need. We must treat them like rights. Through history, TNC's have ignored the rights of workers and communities. They are privately owned and interested in profits - not peoples rights and needs. So we must have a vision also of nationalising them - so that they can finally and really be controlled. One of the first steps is to stop them from taking over what is already publicly woned - and struggling to make governments take back what has been outsourced and privatised.
We discussed the next step of planning a campaign to control a TNC. We decided to use two struggles that are actually already happening.
* One is against the big pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical companies want to keep their control of the market and their massive profits. The government wants to reduce the costs of medicine. So the pharmaceutical companies are campaigning against the government;
* the second is about the privatisation of water. Water is scarce in South Africa. Many people, especially women, spend hours every day going to fetch water. So its very important to massively improve the availability and delivery of water, especially for the poorest people. Now TNC's are trying to come in and use various schemes to make a profit out of this situation. At the moment there is a struggle in Nelspruit to make sure that local government keeps control and improves delivery, rather than TNC's coming in to make money.
So our first example is to stop the damage that TNC's are already doing; the second is to make sure that they do not get the chance to come and do more damage making profits out of the fact that people need water.
Comradely greetings
Viva international solidarity.
Jonathan Grossman
Department of Sociology
UCT
Private Bag Rondebosch
Cape 7701
South Africa
Email: GROSSMAN@SOCSCI.UCT.AC.ZA
NOTE: FAX CHANGED TO Fax: +27 21 6897576
Phone: +27 21 6503507
Links Conserning this summary
Study Circles other summaries
[Session 1]/ [Session 2]/ [Session 3]/ [Session 4]
[Session 5]/ [Session 6]/ [Session 7]/ [Session 8]
[Evaluation]
Summaries of session 6
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