EDITORIAL: Worker unity good for all
The entire landscape needs an overhaul. Too many unions are riddled with corruption and patronage
While over the years many in business and the investor community have bemoaned SA’s "strong" trade unions, it is now more appropriate that business worry about their fragmentation and weakness. In the past six or seven years, two big movements took place: the rise of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) in 2012, which caused the National Union of Mineworkers to bleed tens of thousands of members, and the expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) from Cosatu in 2014. In addition to these, there have been numerous small splits in individual unions and the formation of dozens of new unions and worker organisations. The membership figures of the big trade unions and federations are strongly disputed but roughly what we have now is Cosatu with about 1.9-million members, followed by the South African Federation of Trade Unions with about 700,000 (with Numsa, the country’s biggest union, at the core), followed by the Federation of Unions of SA wi...
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