We have noted that at our workplaces our managers are pushing for us to become more competitive. They have introduced some new concepts such as "World Class Manufacturing" and "Lean production". At the same time they have also started changing their management styles. They say that they have learnt form other countries like Japan abour quality circles and green areas. However, we also see that lots of retrenchments have taken place. In one of our factories, National Panasonic, we use to have a workforce of over 600 workers, now we are only abour 120.

In our communities, basic services like electricity, water and telephones have become more expensive. Our housing crisis has become more acute. We have also had important political changes with local councillors now being elected democratically for the first time.

In our society we have also had important political changes since 1994. There is a sense of freedom amongst the people. However, economically things have just become worse for ordinary people. Whilst the big companies and a new black elite is profiting tremendously from the new South Africa, for over seventy per cent of our population life has just become worse. The new government is also practising "fiscal discipline" by cutting on social expenditure most needed by the poor whilst allowing tax breaks for the rich. Already thousands of teachers have been and are to be retrenched. This is despite the legacy of Apartheid which caused that the majority of people not to have access to decent education. Over the past 2 -3 years nearly 200000 jobs have been lost despite economic growth and government's promises of creating thousands of jobs.

We think that the causes of these changes are related to our country being part of the world economy and its re-admission to being part of the economic trends of "globalisation". Our government has also adopted a Structural Adjustment Programme to please foreign capitalist interests, called GEAR.

On TNC Investment:

We had concensus that TNC investment overally was not good. Their entry into our economy, especially now, was not productive investment which expanded industry and created lots of new jobs. Their main interests is simply to make profits and nowadays they invest mainly in the form of franchisers and merging with local companies. They do serve to introduce new technology and expertise to the country. Where they do tend to create jobs they target the poorest sections of our community for cheap labour.

They also make use of local sub-contractors to do their dirty work of supplying cheap labour and not adhering to labour standards

Compiled by Carmen and Martin

Is there a Structural Adjustment Programme in our country?

Yes there is. It is called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) which is the name of the new government's economic policy. It's main features are:

• Reducing the budget deficit, ie. the amount money borrowed by the government in order to meet its budgetary commitments.
• Fiscal discipline - which is to cut down on government expenditure. In our situation it has been mainly social expenditure like education, health-care and other social services.
• Lifting exchange controls - allowing foreign investors to repatriate their profits more easily.
• Job creation - up to half a million per annum by the year 2000. A total of 833000 jobs by then. This has been a complete failure. As mentioned before we have lost over 200000 jobs since this policy has been introduced.
• Land reform and redistribution. This has been done to a limited extent. Its economic success is still to be shown.
• Tax incentives for employers in order to stimulate more investment in order to create jobs.
• Privatisation of state enterprises and reducing government's role in the economy. Also allowing certain services such as water provision and payout of pensions to be given to the private sector.

TNC's benefitting from the process?

We have seen this mainly in the form of privatisation where TNC's have gone into partnerships for telecommunications, radio , TV stations and airlines companies which the government has sold off. There is still a struggle going on in the municipal sector with government wanting to privatise certain services like water provision. TNCs like Lyonnaise are bidding for these contracts.

Effects on workers and local communities:

• Retrenchments of workers
• Privatisation and consequent increases in cost of services like telecommunications.
• Currency devaluation
• Crises in education and healthcare due to teache retrenchments and hospital closures.
• Housing crisis worsened.
• Increase in casual and contract labour
• Increasing gap between rich and poor

Negotiating with the IMF and World Bank:
Key Demands and our strategy:

We would focus a lot on educating our members about these institutions and the dangers that they hold to us. Also central to our strategy would be international solidarity where we jointly campaign against the IMF and World Bank.

We would campaign around demands such as:

• Promoting and recognising workers rights
• Real negotiations and joint decisionmaking on policies
• Reversing the effects of destructive policies already implemented
• Cancelling all debt of developing countries.

To this end certain NGO's locally have already initiated a campaign. We are particiapting as a study-circle in the postcards phase of this campaign. Workers and others people in our communities are asked to fill in a postcard which calls on government to revoke its debt commitments. The basis for this is that this debt is "odious" and was and is being misused by the state beneficiaries of the Apartheid era, the securocats - eg. huge pension payouts for the army and police generals.