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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All Posts filed under »Archive – 2008«
WHY PROBLEMS LIE WITH THE POLICIES (08.08.2008)
To obtain answers that may be correct and useful, it is first necessary to ask the right questions. Yet every time there is a a strike, particularly at the national level, the same questions are asked of the same business people, economists and politicians and the same trite answers are trotted out. The main query […]
THE TROUBLE WITH WEARING TWO HATS (01.08.2008)
October 2, 2010
A sad chapter in labour movement history ended this week with the formal dismissal of Willie Madisha as president of the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu). And while there has been much concentration of the machinations, claims and counter claims surrounding his case these are merely symptoms of a fundamental contradiction at the heart of […]
WHY A R17M WIN COULD BE A PYRRHIC VICTORY (25.07.2008)
October 2, 2010
This week’s R17 million award against a KwaZulu-Natal textile company for not paying wage rates agreed by the bargaining council highlights yet again a fundamental, obvious and yet frequently unrecognised reality: the conflict between societal demands, government policies and business principle. It has been said often enough, in this column and elsewhere, that the only […]
IS ANOTHER ANTI-POOR INFLATION MASSAGE LOOMING? (18.07.2008)
October 2, 2010
Forget all the arguments that have raged this week about weightings and rebasing, about dangerously high pay rises and the technical details of recalculating inflation. So far as the labour movement is concerned, there is only one simple fact to bear in mind: the cost of surviving, let alone living, especially for the working poor, […]
WHY PROTEST TACTICS NEED STRATEGIC GOALS (11.07.2008)
October 2, 2010
According to an old English rhyme, the famous Duke of York marched ten thousand men to the top of a hill — and marched them down again. This has come the represent an exercise in futility, the amassing of collective strength to attain a goal to no ultimate purpose. What it has all too often […]
UNION ROLE — AND SURVIVAL — IN ZIMBABWE (04.07.2008)
October 2, 2010
“They seem to have won. They claim to have won, but still the beatings continue.” That was the bitter reaction yesterday of a Zimbabwean trade unionist in Harare. He and several of his fellows also bewailed the fact that the contribution and suffering of the labour movement tends to be ignored. They argued, with justification, […]
BITTER IRONY OF SADC’s ZIM DEMOCRACY TALKS (27.06.2008)
October 2, 2010
Zimbabwe’s embattled trade unionists were aghast this week when they heard that a Southern African Development Conference (SADC) meeting, dealing with Zimbabwe, was convened in the royal palace in Swaziland. Without a hint of irony it was announced that the SADC “troika organ” comprising Angola, Tanzania and Swaziland would be hosted by King Mswati III […]
NATIONALISATION MOVES UP THE UNION AGENDA (20.06.2008)
October 2, 2010
Using statistical sleight of hand and a smokescreen of misleading rhetoric, Eskom and the government have created the impression that they are not responsible for the energy crisis; that a combination of wasteful consumers and forces beyond their control created the mess we are in. And that mess, in turn, justifies the massive increase in […]
Terry Bell Writes 
October 2, 2010
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