strikes | Terry Bell Writes

Browsing All posts tagged under »strikes«

Honest dealing or mutually assured damage?

March 15, 2013

South Africa’s annual wage bargaining — some say, strike — season has begun. And without honest, open communication mutuslly assured damage could result. The ball is mainly in the emplpyers' court.

Unions: a need to get back to first principles

February 4, 2013

Forty years ago the modern union moveent in SA was born. Then the demands, including pay and conditions, amounted to one word: democracy. But a democracy that went well beyond the veneer of electoral politics, of the legalistic notion of rich and poor being equal.

Playing politics while the fires rage

January 18, 2013

Responsibility for creating the conditions that have now, sometimes literally, set the Boland ablaze should be shared to a large degree by the dismissive attitudes of provincial and national government, the mainstream trade unions and the reactionary farming lobby. As a result, the tinder and the makings for what has turned out to be a quite major conflagration have been in place for years.

Failing the children of the poor

January 15, 2013

South Africa continues to fail the children of the poor and is once again reaping the results of that failure. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recurrent violent eruptions in the fruit and wine farm regions of the Western Cape.

Marikana, farms and forestry

November 24, 2012

There are none so blind as those that will not see. It is a saying popularised more than 300 years ago and it has had marked resonance following the bloody events at Marikana and the more recent upheavals among the fruit and wine farms of the Western Cape. At Marikana, 34 striking miners were shot […]

SA unrest: explosions waiting to happen…

November 16, 2012

There should have been no surprise or outrage expressed by mining companies, agribusiness, and government officials about the recent explosion of strikes and protests on mines and farms. And trade unionists across the board should not have been caught flat-footed by the outbursts of anger that erupted in the North West, Limpopo and now in […]

A Cold War shadow looms in South Africa

November 6, 2012

In the face of the ongoing global economic crisis, with massive unemployment and a wage and welfare gap perhaps second to none anywhere, South Africa is now confronting the shadow of the Cold War. And it looms large in the background, despite most of the current media focus on the recent strike wave and the impending elective conference of the governing African National Congress.

A background to Marikana

August 23, 2012

The deaths at Lonmin amount to the bloodiest tragedy of the post-apartheid era. As a result, the blame game is in full swing and is likely to continue in the weeks ahead. But all the finger pointing, accusations and counter accusations only highlight the plethora of questions that desperately need to be thoroughly interrogated.