INTRODUCTION

Cosatu's public sector unions have grown stronger and stronger since the federation was founded. At its launch in November 1985, the membership of public sector unions totalled only 24 486, constituting only 5 per cent of all the founding unions’ membership (Baskin 1991: 55). By 1991, public sector union membership still comprised only 7 per cent of total Cosatu membership, but by 2012 it had risen to a hefty 39 per cent. By then, some of the federation's largest unions were public sector unions, such as Nehawu with 260 738 members, Sadtu with 251 276, and Popcru with 149 339 (Cosatu 2012: 7).

Over the years, the Cosatu public sector unions had flexed their muscles for all citizens in South Africa to see and feel. For instance, in 2007 and 2010 they played leading roles in public sector strikes that were the largest strikes ever experienced in South Africa up to that time (in terms of working hours lost). This has given rise to the question of whether the Cosatu public sector unions have become too powerful insofar as they, along with other public sector unions, have used their bargaining power to acquire excessive earnings and too large a share of the state's expenditure for their members – these acquisitions then prevent the state from providing adequate services to the public. In addition, it can be asked whether the public sector unions have also been too powerful to concede that their members have to improve service delivery to the public as their earnings rise.

This chapter commences with an overview of public sector employment relations, focusing mainly on developments since the advent of democracy in 1994. The question whether public sector unions in general, and Cosatu's public sector unions in particular, have become too powerful, is finally addressed. The focus is on whether the substantial resources allocated by the state to remunerate public servants are commensurate with the improvement in service delivery. As a case study, it examines school education and the role of Sadtu, a Cosatu-affiliated union. It also looks at some of the internal political disputes within Sadtu and briefly explores Sadtu shop stewards’ support for the ANC and the SACP in comparison to that of shop stewards in other Cosatu unions.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Many of the unions that came together in 1985 to form Cosatu built their power by means of democratic worker organisation (Maree 1986). The form the democracy took was by means of elected leaders who were accountable to their members. This was particularly the case at the level of the workplace, where workers elected shop stewards regularly and the shop stewards held frequent meetings with their members. The shop stewards were given mandates by their members on issues they had to take up with management, and they had to report back on the outcomes of their negotiations with management.

But this did not happen only at the level of the workplace. It was also happening at higher levels of organisation in the unions. When the Western Province General Workers’ Unions (later the General Workers’ Union) was established in 1978, it was structured in such a way that there was workers’ control of the union. The constitution laid down that a controlling committee, consisting of two elected representatives from each of the organised workplaces, took all the major policy decisions in the union. Officials in the union, including the general secretary, then had to implement policies decided by the controlling committee (Maree 1989: 134–135).

It also happened at the federal level of unions. The Trade Union Advisory and Coordinating Council (TUACC) was the forerunner of the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu) in KwaZulu-Natal. Elected representatives from the unions on the executive council of TUACC were expected to represent the interests of their union members and to report back to their unions. The reasoning behind this was very well explained by Alec Erwin, who was the first general secretary of Fosatu. In an interview in 1979 about the challenge of building democracy in the unions, he said:

INTRODUCTION

Public sector unions have grown in size, power and significance in Cosatu over the past twenty-four years and have instigated two of the largest strike actions, in 2007 and 2010, ever witnessed in South Africa. Cosatu's public sector unions have increased their membership from a mere 7 per cent of total union membership in 1991 to 39 per cent in 2012 (Cosatu 2012: 7). This constitutes a tenfold increase in membership, from 85 000 in 1991 to 854 000 in 2012. According to Cosatu (2015: 4), ‘… union density in the private sector was constant from 1995 to 2005 at 32.4 per cent whilst in the public sector, it increased from 50 per cent to 68.4 per cent.’ In 2013 the contribution of public sector unions to Cosatu's income was 38 per cent. According to Cosatu's financial statements, this proportion rose to 60 per cent in 2014 (Marrian 2015). This is in part due to the expulsion of Numsa from Cosatu and the decline of the NUM as members defected to Amcu, but also to an increase in the membership of public sector unions affiliated to Cosatu.

The perceived dominance of public sector unions in Cosatu has already led to anxieties and tensions, illustrated by the response by Nehawu to the ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe's statements made at the national congress of the NUM in June 2015. Mantashe had reportedly said that ‘the federation's dominance by public sector unions would turn Cosatu into a yellow federation’ and, quoted directly, that ‘[o]nce you have a federation that is dominated by the public sector, then you are in trouble’ (Nehawu 2015). (The term ‘yellow union’ typically refers to unions set up by authoritarian states to do their bidding and to pre-empt real independent unions from emerging. The term was specifically used during the Cold War, when many such unions were funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US government, often in anti-communist East Asian countries.) Gwede Mantashe urged Cosatu ‘to focus on recruiting more industrial workers’. Nehawu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla, who later became Cosatu's spokesperson, wrote in a press release: ‘The problem with this statement is that it reduces public sector unions to unreliable and ahistorical organisations and sets the workers against each other … In fact, it's the role of Cosatu to dominate all sectors of the economy including the public sector.