Which way Botswana's labour movement?

| Friday August 27, 2010 00:00

The raging debate in the trade union movement takes place, not by accident, at a time when Botswana society has reached that turnaround point where the celebration of independence and the excitement resulting from the discovery of diamonds and the subsequent construction booms of the 1980s have subsided, calling upon the nation to do some introspection and to find new and creative ways of providing alternative methods of providing for the country's livelihood.

The debate reflects itself as a struggle among:

The large or numerically superior unions in contrast to the 'smaller' ones;

The new unions, most of them sprouting out of the civil service, and the old, many of them based in private sector industry, also having a historical association with the Botswana Federation of Trade Unions;

The knowledge based unions (intellectual labour) and those that are driven by  'unskilled' labour or otherwise physical labour;

The trade unions that seek acquiescence in the political programme of the ruling party and those that lean towards the opposition political parties; and

The rich employees of the unions in alliance with the political leaders of the unions where they serve, and the mass membership of the trade union movement in general.

An exhaustive discussion of each of these points will not be possible in this space, this being only a peek.

The 'public sector' unions command large numbers because of the size of the government which employs anywhere between 15 and 20 thousand people.  Add to that the membership of the Manual Workers Union, whose main distinguishing characteristic is that they are - regardless of where they work - not 'permanent and pensionable'. They join the newly established 'public sector' unions in a federation that was made possible by years of lobbying and agitation by the much older mine workers unions and the BFTU, finally persuading President Ketumile Masire, on his retirement in 1998, to take the first step to acceding to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) human rights conventions, among them the right to freedom of association.  That permitted the so-called civil servants, previously denied the right to form and join trade unions, to do so.

Curiously, it now appears that rather than use their numbers to face the employer, they find it more convenient to employ that argument and dubious legal tricks to scupper their historical ties to the BFTU for a privileged position among the self-styled 'Big Five'. Therein lies the seed for early self-destruction, for this marriage of temporary convenience will have to deal with questions of the relative influence of the trade unions of 'intellectual labour' and those of 'unskilled employees'. Clearly, the teachers unions and the local government employees will be more adept at appreciating the ideas that are implied in the arguments for this or that, and they will want recognition of that reality.

The 'public sector unions,' still wet behind the ears, will have to competently interpret the political questions that are brought about by the broadening of opposition politics that now include a dissident contingent of the formerly omnipotent Botswana Democratic Party in the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD). The unions will be compelled to deal with growing anxiety among the general citizenry, and in the membership of the trade unions, for change of governance - with or without the BDP - and to point out the direction from a working class point of view. The bottom rung of the unskilled employees, less burdened by the protocols of discipline required by the Public Service Act, the National Security Act, the law on economic corruption and the Media Practitioners Act, will be more inclined to political activism, wondering why their leaders, at every twist and turn, appear to be conspiring with the employer - in government or the private sector - against them.

Needless to say, the 'public sector' unions, now acting in cahoots with the Manual Workers Union, and more recently the Botswana Teachers Union, bring with them the baggage of the argument of  'proportional representation' as the criteria for determination of delegates at the national congress and power sharing in the leadership. Needless to say, this question cannot be separated from the question of how much money each of these unions contributes to the kitty of their newfound federation. Others have explained the detail permitting this contribution to state that the wealth of a trade union does not only depend on how many members the union commands, but also on the manner in which they collect dues.  It also depends on the manner in which the employees and political leaders of the organisations use the money; for financial viability of the union, or for personal enrichment of the administration and the leadership!

The point that is conspicuously absent from the ongoing debate among the unionists is that which relates to the objective position of the employee as against that of the employer. That then leads to perceptions and methods of analysis that appear to work against the very objectives of the trade union movement in particular, and the working class in general. The trade unions seem to be oblivious of the fact that the qualitative distinction between them and the employer is their position in relation to ownership and control of the means by which society makes a livelihood. Government and De Beers own Debswana and all of the country's diamonds. That objective reality makes it common cause that the public sector unions and the membership of the mine workers union stand together on the opposite end, regardless of the size of their unions or monthly subscriptions.

That fact of life makes it imperative that the mineworker and the civil servant stand together in the determination of a political position that will be of benefit to the employees.  Put another way, it is pure idealism to go by the clich that the citizen is entitled simply on the basis that the electoral law or the constitution of the country says so to act in isolation from his colleagues and brothers in the union when, in reality, they face the same workplace obstacles to their social, political and economic wellbeing.

Hence they call, among the most enlightened sections of the trade union movement, for what they term 'a working class ideology', even though a theoretical error emerges in the confusion between the 'working class ideology' and the 'programme of the trade union movement'.

Briefly, the historical precedent of 'a working class ideology' has existed for centuries - from the epoch of slavery to modern-day imperialism cloaked in the garb of 'globalisation' - finding the apex of its expression in the work of Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, particularly in the mid19th Century.

There have been several elaborations on that body of work inspired by the Russian Revolution and the decolonisation of Asia, Latin America and the African continent, the analysis of which is better left to political scientists. It would be a great waste of effort for the trade union movement in Botswana to seek to rediscover its own 'working class ideology'.  That energy might be better expended in the crafting of a 'working class programme', articulated by the trade union, which would then inspire the programme of a working class party, guided by the broader historical experience of the international working class movement.

It is perhaps in the 'working class programme' that the various trade unions will see the benefit of their unification as segments of the much larger working class, rather than segmentation on the basis of whether one works for the government or the private sector, a private school or a government-owned school, the state press or a private newspaper.  The overriding consideration, it would seem, is that neither of these categories of workers owns the institutions where they work, they have no influence on policy or the manner in which resources and profits are used. They have no social life and no financial independence agreed by all the parties at the workplace. They are little more than appendages to the programme of production of the proprietors.

The programme of the trade union will help to do away with sectarian arrogance that places five trade unions above others simply on the basis of their numbers.  It will help to reconcile the artificial distinctions between those sections of labour that are trained to operate as intellectuals whilst the rest are abandoned as unskilled workers.

The trade union programme will help to put a stop to the high-jacking of the trade union movement by a handful of employees who have made institutions of themselves, shaping alliances this and that way, in accordance with the manner in which that suits their personal bank accounts.

The programme will define a common approach to the different offers that will be presented by the political parties. It will also mobilise workers, in their numbers, in the direction they ought to be facing; the employer.