The temperature of the class struggle is rising. 2022 has already seen a whole number of strikes. Some have been brief skirmishes as workers test their strength against the bosses. The strike wave is posing afresh many of the tactical and strategic issues facing the workers movement. None more so than the strike in Sibanye-Stillwater’s gold mines which ended in an important victory.
The following is the text of a pamphlet distributed at Saftu’s Workers Day event held in Pretoria. FOR A UNIFYING & DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST MASS WORKERS […]
Over the last few weeks momentum towards convening a second Working Class Summit has been regained. The first Summit, convened by the Saftu trade union […]
members of the Numsa-sponsored Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP), threatens to throw Saftu and the entire workers movement into an even deeper crisis than it is in already. It is not just an attack on comrade Vavi, but on Saftu as a whole.
The MWP salutes the combativity, courage and determination of the Clover workers as their strike, enters its third month, against plant closures, retrenchments, salary cuts and degraded working conditions.
The Marxist Workers Party stands in solidarity with the steel and engineering workers who began national strike action on 5 October. This action on pay is being led by Numsa, the dominant union in the nearly half-million strong workforce. Marches have taken place in Johannesburg and Durban with one journalist, reporting live from the Johannesburg, remarking that this is the largest worker-action seen since the pandemic began.
We welcome the re-convening of the Working Class Summit on 23-24 October. The creation of a mass workers party will again be discussed. The Saftu federation is also debating this crucial issue. It remains a controversial topic for the leadership. The SRWP leadership is denouncing the idea of a “mass party” as counter-revolutionary, bourgeois and electoralist. They claim it has no basis in Marxism. Are any of these claims true? What is the way forward for the working class on the political front?
Trade union leaders with a majority in the PSCBC have agreed to sign a wage agreement on behalf of public sector workers. This is a serious setback rather than an outright defeat. It is entirely possible to recover from it.
Unite all Struggles Around A Launch Date for Workers Party
On 10 and 11 May (provisionally), nearly three since it first met, the Working Class Summit (WCS) will reconvene. This has the potential to be an enormous step-forward for the working class, one for which the MWP has campaigned for more than two years.
Saftu convened the original WCS in July 2018. 1,000 delegates attended representing 147 working class organisations drawn from trade unions, other worker campaigns, community groups and youth structures. At the time we described this gathering as “an historic step forward”.
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) will embark on a Section 77 ‘general’ strike on Wednesday 24 February, the day that the budget is tabled in parliament. Because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic the strike will overwhelmingly take the form of a ‘stay away’, with workers asked to remain at home. The Marxist Workers Party fully supports the strike.
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