Browsing All Posts filed under »Inside Labour Column«

Reasons behind the Canada firefighters’ strike

June 20, 2016

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The sole priority for fire fighters and EMS is the preservation and safety of life and property. Profit, with its cost cutting requirements should never come into it. That, in essence, is what the recent Canadian strike was all about.

Glimmers of light in the gathering gloom

June 12, 2016

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Educate, organise — agitate (for true transformation). South Africa's Bill of Rights provides a banner to rally those who are starting to demand the right to control their own lives.

The prospects for a ‘confusion of unions’

May 7, 2016

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The best way to describe the situation in the South African labour movement at present is that it is in a state of flux: of ongoing change in conditions of instability. As such, an appropriate collective noun may be a confusion of unions; confusion that may, hopefully, be resolved.

Watch out when China coughs

April 22, 2016

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It has been said that if Wall Street sneezes, the world catches cold. Today it would probably be more accurate to say that if China coughs, an already economically weakened world faces the threat of double pneumonia.

Patronage: rotting social fabric from within

March 29, 2016

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Skeletons seem to be rattling around in several ministerial closets in South Africa at the moment in what appears to be a case of political patronage gone severely toxic. But there is nothing new in patronage, in business, both legitimate and illegitimate buying — or trying to buy — the favours of politicians, judges, police […]

SA unions bid to ‘save the country’

March 18, 2016

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Two names now epitomise the specific economic problems and political turmoil South Africa finds itself in: Zuma and Gupta. This was also underlined a week ago during the investment roadshow to Britain and the United States headed by finance minister Pravin Gordhan.

The new spectre stalking the world

March 12, 2016

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Only a truly democratic organisation with a clear programme of action and co-operative policies to match may be able to provide hope of an alternative way forward in a world being driven along what is an increasingly rocky path to potential devastation.

The real message of International Women’s Day

March 6, 2016

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Tuesday, March 8, is International Women’s Day (IWD). It comes at a time of ongoing global economic crisis and when we, in South Africa, face further massive job losses, turmoil on the university campuses and in the labour movement. Perhaps, as never before, has the real message of the founders of IWD been more pertinent.