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UNIONS ARE NOT EVIL

01/05/2016 05:10:00 By Jan Sithole

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When I saw posters written ‘Unionists are lamlambo’ and this being attributed to the national commissioner, I did not believe it.

I hastily looked for the newspaper and found that this story was captured by the times daily of Wednesday April 27, 2016 on pages 6 and 7.
I thought the national commissioner was misquoted, as such waited to see one of two expectations, that the following day I would see an apology by the Ombudsman of the Times Newspapers or the national commissioner disputing it and challenging the media for having misquoted him.
Neither of this happened.

I thought I knew the word ‘lamlambo’ to be associated with evil, I decided to verify by checking the SiSwati-English dictionary called Silulu and authored by Macmillan. This dictionary gave the following explanation:
“Water snake which is associated with witchcraft at times.”

After this, I then googled the meaning of ‘troll’ and the Oxford dictionary reads: “An imaginary, either very large or very small creature in Scandinavian stories that has magical powers and lives in mountains and caves.’
Whichever way, the definition of ‘lamlambo’ is associated with evil.

As a democrat and believer in social justice, as a born again Christian, endowed with the knowledge and belief that all man are created in God’s image, I am sure people from the corporate world will see unions as social partners.
However, the damndest capitalist will also see labour as an important component of production forces.

Politicians will see workers as creators of wealth, productive electorate, citizens and human beings who have a right to freely and, independent from the employer or government, exercise all fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.

This, is in particular, with reference to freedom of association and the right to organise, as well as the right to bargain collectively by their own freely chosen representatives. In all the opinions and views by different stakeholders mentioned above, lamlambo definition does not fit the normal definition of unions.

Unions or unionism is definitely not evil. I must declare without hesitation that I come from the union background and I am proud of this background. It has never been evil.
I am happy to say the leadership of the country, after independence, joined the community of nations internationally and freely associated and agreed to be a member of the global village.

They voluntarily associated with the Charter on Human Rights adopted in 1948. They freely and voluntarily joined the ILO in 1976 and ratified sixteen International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions on the 24th of April, 1978 exactly 38 years from today. I now want to define organisations in accordance with the Industrial Relations Act of 2000 as amended.

“Organisation means a trade union, staff association or employers’ association in good standing as the context may require.”
The definition of staff association reads: “Staff association means any combination of staff, the principal purpose of which is the regulation of relations between staff and an employer or employers.”
For more clarity on the point I wish to address, it is important to also state the definition of ‘employee’ as defined by the Industrial Relations Act of 2000 as amended.

‘Employee’ means a person, whether or not the person is an employee at common law, who works for pay or other remuneration under a contract of service or under any other arrangement involving control by, or sustained dependence for the provision of work upon, another person.
Section 98 of the Industrial Relations Act of 2000 as amended on freedom of Association reads thus:
Basic Employee rights
Take part in the formation of any trade union or staff association or federation as the case may be.
Be a member of any trade union or staff association and take part in the lawful activities outside working hours or, with the consent of the employer, within working hours;
Hold office in any trade union, staff association or federation;
Take part in the election of work place trade union representative or staff association representative, or be a candidate for such election;
In the capacity of the workplace trade union representative or staff association representative;
Exercise any rights conferred or recognised by this Act and assist any employee, staff association or trade union to exercise such rights.
The supreme law of the country, which makes any law that contradicts it null and void in as far as the contradictions are concerned, in its Section 32 on workers’ rights has this to say:
A person has the right to practise a profession and to carry on any lawful occupation, trade or business
A worker has a right to, freely form, join or not to join a trade union for the promotion and protection of the economic interests of that worker and,
Collective bargaining and representation. All of the politicians and senior civil servants in the country were sworn in using the Constitution, Section 2 of the Constitution states that all citizens, including the leadership of the country, have a duty and a responsibility to protect, defend and promote the constitution. This means we have no luxury to violate the Constitution for whatever reason since Section 2(3) makes it treasonous to deliberately violate or defy the Constitution.
The Bills that are currently before us, they are like a returned job.
Those who have in motor engineering service provision, know very well that when you service a customer’s car and give a guarantee for the job performed on the car, if within the period before the expiry of the guarantee, the components that were serviced break down, when the customer returns the car, the garage/mechanic is duty-bound to attend exactly to the components that were prescribed by the unsatisfied customer/client.
I am bringing the breakdown slant, to demonstrate that the Bills that are before us are not a normal law-making process that gives the country and the Legislature to do as the relevant line ministry officials want or wish.
These laws are a returned job. Having non-compliant laws to the conventions and our Constitution has caused the country to be placed under special paragraph at the International Labour organisation (ILO) and have resulted in the country losing its AGOA status.
Both the ILO and AGOA (returned job syndrome) have specifically stated what needs to be done, what corrections to make and how to craft them.
Fundamentally, they have said we should access freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining to the police and Correctional Services personnel for the sake of promoting their welfare and economic interests, they should freely choose their own representatives, they should craft their own constitution, they have a right to bring issues for negotiations to the police or Correctional Service management which include the national commissioner but they cannot prepare those issues at planning stage with him as he is the CEO and employer. If these rights remain suppressed in the resultant law, there is no chance of getting AGOA back and no chance of being removed from the special paragraph of the ILO.
It is expected that they should be classified under essential services which means they may go on strike.
However, they should enjoy the freedom of association.
The Public Order Bill is another worst case as it completely violates the Constitution and undermines all fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution for all citizens in the country and, therefore, null and void everywhere where it contradicts the Constitution.
The country becomes a police state and the citizens become right-less slaves in their own country.
I still insist that after all submissions have been collected from the stakeholders, before tabling the report to Parliament, both AGOA experts and ILO should be requested to vet or validate it before they could be passed into law. This is a return job and must be done to the satisfaction of the client/customer and our client and customers in this case are the ILO and AGOA.