trade unions | Terry Bell Writes

Browsing All posts tagged under »trade unions«

SA protests: governance is the real issue

October 16, 2016

Several trade unions and many protesting Fees Must Fall students in South Africa directed their anger at the wrong targets over the past week since the fundamental problem is democratic governance. Unless this is dealt with, the rot in the body politic will remain.

The living legacy of ‘Mama Ray’

September 2, 2016

The decision of South Africa's Food & Allied Workers' Union to leave the Cosatu federation and the ANC-led alliance seems to indicate that the legacy of principled unity preached by "Mama Ray" Alexander Simons and her cohort continues to survive.

A Turkish lesson for democrats everywhere

July 23, 2016

The latest snub to the rule of law in South Africa came this week with the sacking of SABC journalists by management in flagrant disregard of the ruling made by the Independent Communications Authority. It follows a litany of questionable official actions, comments and downright disregard for the judicial system, the labour laws and, in […]

The prospects for a ‘confusion of unions’

May 7, 2016

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.

A Valentine message for labour

February 16, 2016

Perhaps it was appropriate that Sunday was Valentine’s Day. It provided some respite from political shenanigans of the past week and the parlous state of the real economy. But the history of the day provides a glimpse of the reality of technological progress and its effect on jobs.

A new year — and a new world ahead

January 10, 2016

We are on the cusp of a time when all work could be done by machine. Yet there is little sign of any move to design or promote a system that can cope; that could ensure that the technological advances made can be utilised for the benefit of humanity as a whole. Instead, there is a grasping at myths of the past.

Where political expediency trumps education

December 13, 2015

How better for a government facing severe criticism for it performance on the education front than to burnish its image by providing an illusion of improved school performance?

Time to learn lessons — & face reality

November 29, 2015

True shopfloor democracy and the tolerance of difference may be the only hope left to halt a slide toward irrelevance for South Africa's major trade union federation. And there are lessons to be learned from recent events in Britain.