Dear Comrades
Thank you for your reply to our appeal. The workers have taken great courage and spirit from realising that we have support across the world and that our struggle is an part of an international struggle.
It seems the road ahead is long. Portnet and the other port users refuse to negotiate any of our demands (wage increase, pension, 3 day guarantee) while one labour pool exists in Durban. Instead they insist that negotiations will only continue if workers agree to four labour brokers in the harbour. This attempt to allow competing labour brokers into the harbour and to divide up the workers threatens to throw the real conditions, the unity and bargaining power of the dock casual workers back 20 years. It is an attempt to break apart the unity of the ‘general workers’ the least skilled port workers and to turn them against each other ‘under market conditions’. It is also an attempt to destroy the current progressive unity of the higher skilled categories of workers with the general workers. The Service Employees Industrial Union continues to fight for improved conditions for the exploited workers in the South African docks. We do not accept the cynical negation of our liberation struggle by those want ‘business as usual’ Apartheid style. Joint Industrial action is planned in both Durban and Richards Bay to defend our demands. We again appeal to you to continue publicising our struggle.
Below is our memorandum to Portnet and the Port Users demanding recognition of our demands. A high spirited and well organised march to deliver this memorandum led to the latest round of negotiations - which have just broken down as described above.
Sorry for the long delay in responding, we are not quite on top of the computor revolution!
Yours
Service Employees Industrial Union
South Africa
Naimi Guy
114 Mansfield Road
Durban 4001
South Africa
Tel: +27 31 202 3244
SEIU
Service Employees Industrial Union
P. O. Box 181131, Dalbridge, Durban 4014 Suite 3, 496 Sydney Road, Congella 4013
19 October 2000
The dock workers of South Africa are struggling to build a life for themselves and their families on the basis of casual labour and uncertain conditions. On a daily basis thousands of workers are competing for a few hundred jobs in the large ports. Earnings are pitifully low, there are all kinds of labour arrangements to the disadvantage of the workers. There is little training and upgrading of skills. Working conditions are dangerous with a high level of serious injuries and death at work.
Internationally dock workers are among the most highly paid manual workers. In South Africa, however, workers who have the skills to move containers, bagged and bulk cargo, and operate equipment are earning less than many domestic workers. Hourly rates are low, and work is uncertain. In addition in many ports labour brokers are taking a high proportion of the wage bill as their operating charge. Tax is often being deducted unfairly from the pittance earned by the workers who can find they are robbed when they claim their tax back. Many workers find that the UIF deductions have not been paid over to the Fund when they make claims at the Department of Labour. All this is leading to a miserable life for the workers and their families.
The SEIU has worked hard to make the existing National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS) work and to bring cheap labour conditions nationally to an end. We find, however, that we appear deadlocked in the critical matter of wage negotiations and the guarantee of jobs in Durban and in other ports. The government has recently set a national minimum wage in government employment at R2000, but we find that dockers are lucky to earn much more than R500 a month. Even if work was regular wages would still be less than R1000. According to Statistics SA the average wage even in the struggling construction industry averages R2 897. The dock casual workers trail far behind the transport sectors’ average wage of R4802.
We also find that it is very hard to negotiate to set wages nationally as Portnet and other employers are insisting on using labour brokers and denying that they are the employers. This is a trick to deny us collective bargaining rights and to deny us a living wage. This cannot continue.
In many ways conditions are as bad as they were under apartheid. In the past black dock workers were prohibited from living in the docklands. Now dock workers simply cannot afford houses anywhere near their work. In most ports there are no facilities for workers. Permanent workers continue to be retrenched with minimum compensation and then struggle to survive by joining the army of casual workers. Daily there is fight for the available jobs among workers—all this is human degradation.
Our union which represents the dock casual workers finds every possible obstacle to changing conditions. The dockers have had enough! There have been strike after strike organised by workers themselves to improve conditions. We are engaged in a liberation struggle for the working poor to change conditions from the bottom up.
We are also calling on the President, on the Ministers of Labour, Transport, and Welfare to take urgent action to call a national conference to improve conditions. The Departments of Labour and Transport have stated they support a National Dock Labour Scheme to provide job guarantees and pensions for workers. It is a scandal that the Ministers and their officials are now avoiding this responsibility. Officials from these departments are not to be found at meetings between the unions and the employers. It appears the government lacks the commitment to build a modern, efficient and humane maritime industry. Instead government is concentrating on the privatisation of Portnet which will increase the pressure for retrenchments and siphon off the billion rand profit made from the port of Durban into private hands.
We call on the government to legislate a National Dock Labour Act to bring the National Dock Labour Scheme into existence in every port. This is proposed in the White Paper on Transport but nothing is being done by the Departments of Transport and Labour to support this strategy. The National Dock Labour Act should provide the following:
As part of the working poor of South Africa we demand immediate relief. We demand that the government install immediately (as has been promised on many occasions) an income support grant. This should build up the minimum earnings of dock workers immediately to a minimum of R1000 a month. For those who have not been employed for long periods we call on the Department of Labour to provide unemployment benefits from the UIF designed to meet the needs of dock workers.
South Africa is undergoing structural adjustment with retrenchment, with rising charges for services and rent; all without a social ‘safety net’. We speak for the unemployed and working poor by demanding a national unemployed benefit of R500 a month to help end crime and misery for the mass of unemployed.
We will not rest until the dock workers of South Africa are organised in every port, until the inhuman conditions of casual labour are eliminated, and a living wage is won.
We call on Portnet, on the Stevedores Association, the Department of Transport, of Labour, and of Welfare, and on the CCMA to recognise our legitimate demands and to participate in a national conference to build a new post-apartheid labour regime in South Africa’s ports.
We demand that wage and job guarantee negotiations start immediately and that the employer negotiators come with a mandate to deliver on both these issues.
We demand a national minimum wage of R16 an hour and a three day guarantee a week.
In particular we call on Portnet to enforce a levy on the movement of containers to help provide pensions for the older casual workers.
We demand urgent discussions with the Minister of Transport to carry out the objectives of the White Paper.
