NUMSA's response to SAIRR on Labour market liberalisation

31 January 2011

The NATIONAL UNION OF METALWORKERS (Numsa) deplores the extreme right-wing and conservative comments attributed to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), John Kane-Berman, on the burning question in South Africa of how to tackle mass unemployment.

John Kane-Berman is calling for labour market liberalisation in order to achieve the 5 million jobs as envisaged in the New Growth Path (NGP) recently unveiled by government. It is his stated means of how to achieve this, we find extremely objectionable. 

John Kane-Berman proclaims: "We need to repeal all the labour laws and replace them with a basic employment act that guarantees certain fundamental rights like maternity leave and safety. We need to get rid of minimum wages and abolish bargaining councils".

Now, apparently in the world of John Kane-Berman, only pregnant workers and safety are fundamental rights worthy preserving!  We know that these views are common among some of our capitalists. They long for slavery - pure and simple - in which only pregnant labourers and a labourer's risk to life would be protected. 

The next best system to abolishing of minimum wages is no wages at all - which is the system of slavery John Kane-Berman and others in this country are actually lusting for: in such a system of course there would be no unions, no bargaining councils and labourers would be entirely at the mercy of their employers! How low can any human being sink in this day and age, even in racist South Africa?

Not even the Apartheid system treated its white workers in the manner proposed by John Kane-Berman! It reserved such treatment to African labourers!

Further, he says: "We need to change the constitution to say that everybody has the right to seek and obtain work without the artificial interference of the state, labour unions and bargaining councils."

John Kane-Berman wishes, in his unbridled appetite for slavery, to get rid of the state, unions and bargaining councils in the relationship between the slave and the slave owner! This is anarchy of the highest order: any capitalist fool knows that without the state and trade unions capitalism would not survive! 

In John Kane-Berman head, there exist a pure illusory capitalist world in which capital can have unhindered access to labour, and still thrive.

John Kane-Berman betrays his racial insensitivity (racism) when he says: "The vast majority of South Africa's unemployed are people with very low levels of formal education, workplace experience and skills. We need a labour policy that prices those people into the market".

We all know who the majority of these unemployed people are in South Africa, and why they in fact are so unemployed - they are Africans who historically have artificially and cruelly been placed at the bottom of the racial hierarchy in South Africa! And all John Kane-Berman wants is to determine their lowest price in post Apartheid South Africa!

If truth be told, these views of Kane-Berman and his type are a direct attack on the workers' rights achieved through the shedding of blood and various labour laws intervention by the ANC-led Alliance government.

We find Kane-Berman views fit perfectly the nauseous labour policies of the Democratic Alliance (DA). We are not surprised at the racial harmony between the views of Kane-Berman and the DA in their drive to push down the share of income blacks and African workers' get in this country.

We repeat what we have said before: At the core of South Africa's social crisis is the fact, historically, of the condemnation of millions of Blacks and African workers in particular to inferior jobs, inferior wages and of course the unemployment and casualisation of labour. This is what informs our call for decent work and for decent pay. This is what the SAIRR and its masters in the DA want to conceal in its reactionary calls for labour market liberalisation in order reap huge profits from extremely cheap Black and African labour.

The SAIRR fabled intellectual prestige and ideological orientation may have been relevant during the era of the National Party's apartheid regime. Today, it should re-think its role in the democratic epoch in sync with the aspirations of the poverty stricken people, the highly casualised and exploited workers of our country and the 70% unemployed youth in areas such as Diepsloot and Modimolle.

We are totally opposed to the demand for labour market liberalisation which advances a reactionary path to full employment through the revival and entrenchment of slavery in South Africa. We will fight this with everything at our disposal, including our lives if need be.

Statement issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary, January 31 2011

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