Black workers' organizations, despite some significant gains during the earlier part of 1980, are now facing intensified attacks from both employers and the apartheid regime. Bannings of trade union leaflets, sackings of contract workers and deportation to the bantustans, arrest and detention of union organisers and strike leaders, and armed police action against strikers, have all been used to break strikes and industrial action.
The strike by Ford workers in January 1980 was only resolved when management agreed to unconditionally reinstate workers. The dispute had arisen over specific issues, including a demand for equal overtime pay. Under SA law, the workers broke their contracts by withdrawing their labour and were at best only entitled to reemployment. The agreement negotiated by their elected committee of representatives, however, in effect established their right to withdraw their labour without forfeiting their jobs. A further important element in the strike, apart from the leverage gained by those involved in the workplace, was the support which they rallied in the townships. A meeting of PEBCO (Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation) called for a temporary boycott of white businesses, African students planned a week's school boycott, and there were pledges to raise money for the strikers.
The dispute in the Cape Town meat industry contained similar features. The workers in the abattoirs and storage depots, who went on strike at the beginning of May, won overwhelming support from the black townships in Cape Town and other parts of the country.
The dispute began over the refusal of management to recognise an elected workers' committee at Table Bay Cold Storage, 11 out of 14 meat firms in the Cape recognised such committees at that stage. At Table Bay, however, workers were told to collect their pay and sign off. They won the immediate support of workers in other firms and an industry-wide committee decided to approach the three firms still not recognising elected workers' committees.
On the following morning, 20 May, workers found the factories surrounded by riot police. They decided to stay away from work right across the industry in the Cape, calling for unconditional reinstatement and elected committee recognition. A mass meeting on 21 May called for support from the community at large, through a boycott, financial support for the strikers and their families, and the discouragement of blackleg labour. A broadly based support committee was established, together with support committees elsewhere in the country, and information leaflets were issued. (Based on bulletins produced by the Western Province General Workers Union (WPGWU), to which the meat workers belong, as well as press reports).
This action coincided with the start of the school boycott, and police action against the strikers coincided with that against students. In the days that followed new and more intense repression took effect. WPGWU organisers were detained and union leaflets were banned in an attempt to prevent support for the strikers being mobilised within the community. 42 contract workers from the Table Bay Cold Storage hostel were arrested under the pass laws and (because they were legally unemployed) endorsed out to the bantustans.
The ban on meetings also interfered with efforts to organise the strike and to mobilise support through boycotts and financial collections. Nevertheless the strike held.
Other strikes at this time were attacked in similar fashion, with arrests of workers at firms in Natal and Johannesburg.
The strikes at Fords and in the Cape Town meat industry concerned workers' rights. Other major strikes have concerned pay — the largest being in the Eastern Cape motor industry in June, and among Johannesburg municipal workers in July and August. These also involved the most conspicuous intervention by the state, in the form of mass police action.
In Uitenhage near Port Elizabeth, for example, police closed the whole area to journalists during the height of a strike involving at least 12 factories and about 7,000 workers. Strikers were exposed to teargas and shotguns on several occasions.
The Johannesburg municipal workers' strike concerned a demand for a pay increase to raise the minimum monthly wage for an unskilled worker from about R140 to R245. (According to the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce the minimum wage on which an African family can reasonably survive is about R220 a month).
The municipal employers refused to negotiate with the workers' union the unregistered Black Municipal Workers Union, led by Joseph MAVI. By 30 July 10,000 workers - about two thirds of the municipal workforce - were on strike. Following a meeting between the Minister of Manpower Utilisation and the city's management committee the Minister said that the strike had bypassed the conciliation machinery and that it "undermined the basis of law and order". (Although the BMWU had applied for registration it had not yet been granted).
The City Council then took extreme measures to break the strike. The strikers had converged on one of the workers' compounds where a strong contingent of police had cordoned off the area and were manning the gates. The men were allowed into the compound one by one as police scrutinised their pass books. Council officials and police - armed with shotguns, R1 rifles or semi-automatic pistols - separated the men into two groups: those who were prepared to return to work, and the remainder. The latter, amounting to 1,200 contract workers, were put on buses (at gunpoint according to an eyewitness) and despatched back to the bantustans.
Joseph Mavi, the BMWU President, was arrested in a corridor of the Rand Supreme Court, where he had gone to discuss with lawyers the possibility of an injunction halting police action against the strikers. Charges against him under the Riotous Assemblies and Sabotage Acts were reportedly being considered by the police. Both Acts refer to breaches of contract by employees in public utility services, and the threat of disruption of such services.
