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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All Posts filed under »Inside Labour Column«
Patriotism is no answer to a flawed system
Patriotism in whatever form is no answer to the current global crisis. Yet it continues to be clung to by both sides of the labour market coin — employers and employees, although both have different definitions of precisely what they mean.
Back to the future: workers & ‘optimisation’
September 17, 2011
From an employer and business perspective there is one major problem with workers: they are human. This is not a moral judgement, and to use a term generally ascribed to the pampered aristocracy of yesteryear, workers are “a necessary evil”.
Old lessons yet to be learned
September 10, 2011
Little more than a year ago, it was discovered, to clucks of disapproval and widespread expressions of horror, that even those most South African of all sporting noise makers, the vuvuzelas, had been imported from China. Now the same discovery regarding World Cup rugby memorabilia, has been made. But instead of tackling the real issues, trade unions and others continue banging the drum of patriotism.
A strike that could be a tactical blunder
September 2, 2011
If South Africa's major trade union federation, Cosatu, goes ahead with its planned one-day national strike on October 5 it could prove to be a major tactical blunder that will weaken, rather than strengthen, the labour movement.
International focus stirs media on farm workers’ plight
August 27, 2011
It took a report from an international human rights body before the plight of a probable majority of farm workers in South Africa made front page news. But the abuse and mistreatment listed has been complained about for more than a decade by trade unions and welfare organisations working in the agricultural sector.
A strike that should never have happened
August 19, 2011
The responsibility for causing the current strike by municipal workers rests with the refusal of the employers, the SA Local Government Association, Salga, to negotiate with the unions. But much of the sympathy for the strike was lost when marches by strikers were accompanied by "trashing" and by the looting of the stalls of hawkers.
Nationalisation, socialisation & worker control
August 12, 2011
To nationalise or not to nationalise? That is the question — and increasingly so in South Africa today. But what does this mean? And what about socialisation? Or real, democratic, worker control?
Hope on the domestic slavery horizon
August 5, 2011
The International Labour Organisation has finally placed domestic workers — the nannies, maids, chars and house helps — on the same footing as other workers in terms of a decent work agenda. At least in theory. But, as the South African experience shows, there is a very long was to go in practice — and not only for domestic workers.
Terry Bell Writes 
October 8, 2011
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