The role of trade unions in politics [Part 1]

| Friday June 21, 2013 00:00

In the aftermath of the 2011 historic strike by public sector unions one of the critically important questions that poses itself again and again is the role of trade unions in politics. This question is clearly captured in BOFEPUSU's theme for Workers Day in 2013;'protecting workers rights and unleashing a progressive labour agenda in national politics'. It is further reflected in the  December 2012 BLLAHWU (a member of BOFEPUSU) Ramotswa conference theme; 'infusing socialism into working-class agenda'. BOFEPUSU is a federation of public sector unions currently in the process of defining their role in politics and inevitably locked in a bitter conflict with the BDP regime. Public sector and blue collar workers' unions such as manual workers are the most militant.  Gone are the days when the ruling class successfully fooled unions into 'leaving politics to the politicians' while pledging to support any government of the day.

The significance of the historic public sector strike cannot be measured solely by whether their demands were met or not. Its impact goes beyond the demand for a 16 percent wage hike which was rejected with bluster and arrogance by the Khama regime.  In the famous words of  Frederick Engels, strikes are 'the military school of the workingmen in which they prepare themselves for the great struggles which cannot be avoided... and as schools of war, the unions are unexcelled'. Perhaps the single most important outcome of the public sector strike is that it taught workers, not through theories delivered by some revolutionary politicians, but through their own battles with the arrogant but shortsighted Khama regime that salvation can only come about  if unions took a clear principled stand on politics.

'To meet the capitalists on the economic field under more favourable conditions, the workers very wisely organised a special machine, the labour unions. To deal with the capitalist class on the political field, it is also necessary to organise a special machine, a working-class political party'. The class struggle is a political struggle. It cannot be fought successfully by the workers unless they have a political weapon. which means, their own political party. The capitalist class has its own political organisations. It sees to it that they remain committed to its basic interests: the maintenance of the capitalist system. It sees to it that they remain under its control. It provides them with a press. It provides them with funds. running into millions of dollars each year. In some places the capitalists are in direct control of these parties, in others, its agents and sworn friends are in direct control'. (Max Shachtman). 

Instead of focusing on the narrow issue of the demand for a 16 percent wage hike unions decided to take the war to the capitalist regime itself. In their 2013 May Day message BOFEPUSU points out that, 'maximum protection of workers' rights is only attainable if the workers' agenda is part of the national politics'. Today the government is embroiled in a losing battle with the trade unions - trying to intimidate them to stop indulging in politics.  During the protracted strike unions made it clear that they would vote for a united opposition and indeed they played an influential role in the formation of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) which is a united front of the BNF, BMD and BPP.  They were drawn into the vortex of politics by the intransigence of the Khama regime. This article tackles the question of the role of unions in politics. Before Khama ascended to the role of President of Botswana I remember expressing my fears to a friend that this would herald the era of dictatorship in Botswana. My friend cynically replied that Khama's presidency would be good for the country because it will hasten political change. In many ways, my friend was right. Khama is the only polarising president the country has ever had. You are either for him or against him, with very little or no room for fence sitters. All other presidents were more or less successful in disguising the class interests of the ruling classes as if they were the common expression of all the classes - a tactic which delayed the development of political consciousness of the workers and the downtrodden masses.

The 2004 Position of Paper of the Botswana Federation of Trade Unions (BFTU) appeared to have been taken in by the nationalist rhetoric of the ruling class before Khama became president. The document made this fundamentally mistaken class position; 'BFTU believes that it can best represent the interests of the working people by leaving politics to individuals. BFTU will not explicitly support any particular party... it will therefore work closely with the government of the day'. All bourgeois regimes would love to work with unions which espouse this ideologically mistaken view that government is a neutral referee or is 'our parent' who serves the interests of all classes in society equally.

Were it not for Khama's stubbornness and refusal not only to grant the demands of the workers but even to arrogantly refuse to talk to them, BOFEPUSU would be unlikely to be talking politics today and perhaps the UDC would not have come into existence.  As if snubbing workers during the strike was not enough, after the strike Khama's vindictive government further worsened its strained relations with unions by resorting to a number of retaliatory measures designed to intimidate, silence and weaken trade unions;A staggering 2,933 workers were sacked during the first legal strike in the history of this 'shining' democracy which preaches empty slogans of 'a moral and tolerant nation'. Government unilaterally declared some sectors, including education 'essential services' where strike is prohibited. The arrangement where some union officials were released from their jobs and allowed to work for their unions full time and paid by government  was  unilaterally and severely curtailed.

The facilitatory role played by government in collecting monthly subscriptions from union members on behalf of trade unions was abruptly terminated, again unilaterally.It has since become very clear that under the Khama regime the 'independence' of the judiciary is a thing of the past. Judgment on the workers' case on essential services which they lost was clearly politically motivated.Because of Khama's dictatorial tendencies the Bargaining Council is virtually a still born child as he keeps making unilateral decisions that belong to that council. Government has resorted to divide and rule tactics to try and emasculate the unions. Khama has been holding meetings with ordinary workers bypassing their unions.A materialist view of the role and nature of trade unions is understandable against the backdrop of the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production. The capitalist system creates the working class by divorcing them from the ownership of the means of subsistence as a precondition for its existence. Consequently, workers can only survive by selling their labour power to the capitalist owners of the means of production - land, factories, banks etc. 

Workers' wages depend on the level of development of a country and the extent to which unions are organised. Driven by cutthroat competition the crisis-ridden capitalist system not only tries to pay workers the barest minimum wage but keeps driving wages down.The capitalist system which is characterised by anarchy of production or lack of national planning of the economy is incapable of involving all the workers in production on a continuous basis - in fact it creates unemployment or 'a reserve army of labour' as it periodically expands and contracts. This surplus labour power, in line with the laws of supply and demand of governiong any commodity, is used to further drive down the wages of the workers in employment because they can be easily replaced by the reserve army of labour.Owing to the necessity to resist the tendency of capital to impoverish and atomise the working class, trade unions were born. However, trade unions are also the first vital step for the working class to becoming a not just a class-in-itself', but a 'class-for-itself', conscious of its broader historic role of championing the emancipation of all oppressed classes in capitalist society. They are essentially the embryo of the future society within the womb of the old capitalist society. The working class constitute themselves into trade unions to start fighting back encroachments of capital  or the capitalist tendency to drive down  wages e.g. by lowering them or intensifying exploitation by lengthening the working day..

In the course of time working class solidarity is deepened as unions unite in federations within countries and eventually in bigger federations of different countries by affiliating to larger international federations. Workers form cooperatives to try and escape high prices in shops owned by capitalists. They further set up insurance funds but because all these workers' institutions are hampered by the capitalist society in which they exist eventually workers must constitute themselves into a socialist party - the advanced detachment of the most politically conscious part of the working class in collaboration with revolutionary intellectuals committed to the revolutionary overthrow the system of private property and wage slavery.

In 1921 the third Congress of the Communist International addressed itself to the question of trade unions and politics and made the following observations;The bourgeoisie keeps the working class enslaved not only by means of naked force, but also by subtle deception. In the hands of the bourgeoisie, the school, the church, parliament, art, literature, the daily press - all become powerful means of duping the working masses and spreading the ideas of the bourgeoisie into the proletarian milieu. One of the ideas which the ruling classes have succeeded in inculcating into the working masses is trade-union neutrality - the idea that trade unions are non-political organisations and should have no party affiliations.The Communist International argued that the bourgeoisie cannot openly call on the workers' trade unions to support the bourgeois parties, so it urges the unions not to support any party. The sole aim of the bourgeoisie, however, is to prevent the trade unions from supporting progressive parties.

Trade union neutrality amounts to tacit support for the capitalist status quo and denies workers the opportunity to forge strategic partnerships with revolutionary political parties.The typical position of bourgeois regimes to try and keep workers away from politics was  articulated by the first President of Botswana, Seretse Khama when addressing trade unions in July 1971;'We in Botswana have given trade unions freedom to represent their members' interest... in return we expect the trade unions and their officials to recognise that their contribution must be made through these channels and not by direct involvement in the political parties or external powers. Equally, workers must recognise that if we are to attract industry to Botswana in order to assist our development, create jobs for our people, we must make sure that their investment offers a reasonable return...Your first responsibility is to assist in the development of the country'.

Khama was addressing workers after the first historic 1975 strike action in Selibe Phikwe.  The bourgeois  state tries to play the national card in a bid to confine  trade union activities to economistic issues and the welfare of their members. 'The first responsibility' of the workers is ' to assist in the development of the country' but to defend the wages of their members against the tendency of capital to drive them down. But the role of the trade unions is much wider than that.The ruling class applies double standards. The BDP is the political representative of the employers and capitalist classes and by trying to silence the unions it is unfairly denying them the right to identify with their own political representatives.While trade unions are barred from promoting any political party representatives of capital have been funding the BDP political campaigns.

The former Botswana Employers' Federation, now called BOCCIM is free to contribute to any party of their choice. De Beers has funded the BDP election campaigns in nearly every election since independence. The blankets donated to the electorate in order to buy votes are from the Chinese government and the private sector where they are produced by workers.Representatives of capital such as Choppies chain store recently donated food to the BDP to help it buy votes in Lelthakeng West. Those blankets are ironically produced by workers.While Sir Seretse Khama warned trade unions against promoting the interests of 'external powers' BOCCIM has been a recipient of generous aid from external sources such as USAID.And while non-citizens were not allowed to be members of a union under the Trade Union Act and Trades Dispute Act of 1969 no such restrictions were imposed on BOCCIM, which in fact between 1971 and 1980 was headed by an expatriate by the name of John Price.

While 'workers cannot belong to the same union across all sectors of the economy' any company can become a member of BOCCIM upon paying membership fees. The 1982 Trade Unions and Employers Organisation Act  effectively institutionalised divide and rule tactics as well as the incorporation of the supervisory staff of unions 'into management as non-commissioned officers enforcing labour discipline through the so-called Workers' Councils'. The requirement of a minimum of 30 workers for a union to be registered with a least 25 percent of them being active, effectively de-unionised the vast majority of workers in manufacturing industries that have on average between 30 and 50 employees per industry.It must be noted that the present state is not only a product of irreconcilable class contradictions but an instrument of the economically dominant classes. That is why they have presided over the most unequal distribution of wealth in the world, where a tiny minority wallows in ill-acquired wealth and opulence while the vast majority of the workers who produced this wealth are trapped in needless, scandalous and appalling poverty in the midst of plenty. Of course, in order to sustain and prolong their stay  in power the ruling petty bourgeoisie has crafted the techniques of class deception by presenting their class interests as if they are the common 'national'  expression of  the interests of all the people of Botswana.

For many years the BDP government has been adept at applying double standards by deceiving and manipulating the trade union movement, with the active connivance of imperialist organisations to stay away from politics while during every election year they have a well oiled election machine, thanks to the generous donations of millions of pulas by the same capitalist employers who exploit and oppress workers. These donations to the BDP are the sum total of the workers' unpaid surplus value which accumulates in the hands of the capitalist employers like De Beers by virtue of the fact that they privately own and control the means of subsistence - land, cattle, diamonds, automobile industries etc. The fruits of the workers' sweat are effectively used against them by the employers financing a political party which is ideologically hostile to the interests of the workers.