Another Major Strike of South African Steel workers

There are reports of a major strike, which starting on 5 October, in South Africa which, according to some sources, involved more than 150,000 workers in the steel industry and their demands for increased wages.

The strike was called for an indefinite period until demands were acchieved, and was called by the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA), which was the largest trade federation of COSATU, the regime trade union confederation, from which it was expelled in 2014.

Thousands of workers have filled the streets of Johannesburg and other cities in powerful demonstrations.

The owners did not stand by and watch. In Boksburg North, 50 kilometers east of Johannesburg, they unleashed their private security guards who shot and injured a striking worker. Other clashes against the strikers took place in Booysens, south of Johannesburg, where police opened fire with rubber bullets on a group of workers demonstrating in front of a factory.

These strikes have spanned five of South Africa’s nine provinces, and are expected to involve up to 300,000 workers, organized by Numsa and other allied unions.

The demands of workers are for an 8% wage increase in the first year and another 2% in the next two years, plus the rate of inflation (taking into account that the official rate of inflation of consumer prices last August was 4.9%): a 22% increase would be reached in three years.

The masters of the South African Federation of Steel and Engineering Industries (SEIFSA) responded with an offer of a 4.4% increase for 2021, plus 0.5% above the inflation rate in 2022 and plus 1 % in 2023.

For this reason, the strike continues and seems to be 100% in steel mills and metallurgical plants across the country, so much so that the executive director of the National Association of Manufacturers of Automotive Components and Allies, Renai Moothilal, has made it known that the automotive industry it will soon be affected.

The auto industry directly employs 110,000 workers in South Africa and accounts for nearly 7% of the country’s GDP, while the steel industry along with metallurgy accounts for nearly 15% of GDP, about $ 44 billion. The largest steel producer is Arcelor-Mittal.

Striking steelmakers will have the concrete help of millions of workers who will participate in a strike day called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), to put pressure on the government of the African National Congress.

With this strike, COSATU will probably try to give vent to what promises to be a growing movement of the South African
working class. As we know there were widespread riots in July, triggered by the detention of former President Jacob Zuma, but fueled by the growing anger of the working class at rising prices, the crisis over the coronavirus pandemic and decades of unfulfilled promises from the bourgeois regime of the ANC.

Bheki Ntshalintshali, COSATU secretary general, said the strike’s goal is to call for “urgent action by government policy makers and private sector officials to end targeted attacks against workers”. Bheki also complains that companies that had received financial incentives from the government for the Covid pandemic were “hoarding or exporting money out of the country” rather than investing it in South Africa.

The usual illusory demands of the regime trade unions which lead one to believe that the conduct of the capitalists can be regulated in favor of the working class. COSATU together with the African National Congress and the Stalinist South African Communist Party are part of the government.

The memory of the 34 miners massacred by the bosses ’henchmen in Marikana in 2012 is still alive in us, in a strike in which the COSATU miners’ federation, NUM, openly acted in favor of scab-shooting.