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The one-and-a-half-year-old SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) has already run into many of the organisational problems hobbling its larger rival Cosatu.
It has fallen dramatically short of its recruitment targets and faces a crisis of non-payment of fees by affiliated unions, according to a report on the state of the federation prepared for a special central committee meeting held this week in Boksburg.
Some affiliates are already on their way to being expelled and the majority of affiliates are so small that they have little prospect of survival.
The main reason for this week’s meeting was to address problems with Saftu’s constitution, which was adopted last year with a number of impractical and contradictory clauses about how the organisation should be run.
The report said “these clauses cause organisational paralysis”.
Saftu is led by former Cosatu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and dominated by former Cosatu unions that left or were expelled.
While the federation has 30 affiliates, the vast majority have fewer than 10 000 members, some with as few as 260 members.
The federation consists mostly of the 328 827-strong National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which makes up 45% of all its members, and the 128 466-strong Food and Allied Workers’ Union, which makes up another 18%.
The smallest 20 of the 30 members of Saftu collectively make up less than 6% of its membership, creating what Numsa members had been concerned about at the outset – that it would effectively subsidise a legion of tiny unions.
WHERE ARE THE MASSES?
The report says Saftu has failed dismally to achieve its ambitious recruitment targets when it launched in April last year.
It had 691 540 members at that point and wanted to increase that number to 1 million by the end of the year. Instead, by August this year, it had grown marginally to 725 078.
Despite this, the report holds out the hope that the 1 million-member mark could still be reached before the end of this year.
The report proposes the deployment of “volunteer recruitment activists” across the country, who would “walk with loud hailers on the ground, addressing workers in open spaces in towns and industrial areas”.
“We remain convinced that if this were to happen, the 300 000 members we sought to recruit by December last year can be surpassed in this year.”
But Saftu might soon lose a large affiliate.
It’s fourth-largest affiliate, the National Transport Movement (NTM) faces suspension for not paying fees for more than six months.
The suspension would cost the union 52 250 members, according to the membership number that NTM has provided.
NTM was a breakaway union from Cosatu’s transport affiliate, SA Transport and Allied Workers Union, which has been torn apart by internal battles.
The report says the union’s general secretary has driven a campaign to extract the NTM from Saftu, leading to him getting suspended and facing criminal charges.
“There are serious allegations of corruption, abuse of power and stagnation,” says the report.
MONEY TROUBLES
Given its membership, Saftu should hypothetically have a R17 million budget this year. It has set its affiliation fee at R2 a member. This is the money that affiliate unions have to pay to Saftu per month.
By comparison, Cosatu charges an affiliation fee of R3.95 a member, which amounted to R74 million last year.
Apart from NTM, three other relatively tiny Saftu unions face suspension for non-payment, while many others are in arrears.
In the report, Saftu claims there are five more unions that may join the federation.
At least one of them, the 7 000-strong Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa)-affiliated Insurance and Banking Staff Association (Ibsa), strenuously denies this.
Ibsa’s acting general secretary, Luke Bradley, told City Press that there have been “absolutely no talks with Saftu regarding affiliation”.
“We are very happy with Fedusa,” he said.
Another union that Saftu claims is set to join it is the 14 500-strong Building, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union, which was until recently an affiliate of the Confederation of SA Workers’ Unions (Consawu).
When Saftu launched it declared its strategy to be the recruitment of vulnerable workers who were not part of existing unions.
In reality, much of its growth has been owing to independent unions as well as unions from Cosatu and Consawu joining it.
Its public sector affiliate, the National Union Of Public Service and Allied Workers, used to belong to Consawu, as did the Transport Action Retail and General Workers Union.
Consawu was launched in 2003 as a new labour federation and, like Saftu, was blocked from joining the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) on the basis of arbitrary new rules designed specifically to exclude it.
Saftu is currently excluded on the basis of a rule adopted by the existing Nedlac federations stating that a federation must exist for two years to be in Nedlac. This rule was adopted shortly before Saftu was launched.
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