Zwelinzima Vavi this weekend expressed extreme concern over the emergence of strike committees, workers’ delegations and parties like the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) which have emerged during wildcat strikes involving thousands of miners, saying these were “extremely divisive”.
He warned that the thousands engaged in such strikes were facing mass dismissals.
The Cosatu general secretary was speaking a day after he and senior National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leaders were forced to abandon their briefing of workers at Vaal Reef’s Number 1 shaft near Orkney when they were pelted with stones. The windscreen of Vavi’s car was smashed.
“The consequences are dire… if they succeed to lead workers into a dark hole,” he told Weekend Argus yesterday.
Vavi said there was a strategy by militants to continue with the unprocedural strikes until a planned stayaway and a protest march by the DSM on the Union Buildings early next month.
This strategy was “not only dangerous, but suicidal”.
“It will be left to us [Cosatu] to fight for their reinstatement and we do so weakened legally because the strikes are unprotected… DSM does not have such an infrastructure to fight for the reinstatement of workers,” Vavi said.
“They will require an established trade union federation that can rally society behind them… Workers are going to realise they are being led into a ditch.”
He said employers were already using the unprotected strikes to downsize mining operations “for free” without paying the legally-required retrenchment pack-ages,and companies would be re-hiring workers at lower-level jobs.
DSM spokeswoman Liv Shange said: “The route is through the recognition of strike committees as those who matter… We would welcome Cosatu’s support to back up the strikes without trying to impose their own leadership in the negotiations. That will not work.”
Shange said of the march to the Union Buildings on November 3: “It’s a political statement that will focus on the government’s heavy-handed response at Marikana.” - The Weekend Argus