The June public sector strike badly rattled the government. Not only because some 700 000 workers, from cleaners and clerks to teachers and nurses, held out for 28 days, but also because of the unity shown among the workers and the 17 unions organising in the sector.

It resulted in various pronouncements about a ‘move to the Left’ and about the creation of a ‘developmental state’ being made at the policy conference of the governing ANC which took place in the wake of the strike. This rhetoric was endorsed in positive terms by both the SACP and Cosatu.

Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi and the SACP’s Blade Nzimande hailed these vague pronouncements as an indication that the ANC and the government were moving toward a more ‘workerfriendly’ policy stance. So they pledged continuing loyalty to the alliance. However, there was nothing new in these statements of intent. Nor was there any sign of a move away from the neoliberal stress on an investor-friendly growth path and ‘trickle down’ economics.

This seems likely to cause further tension within Cosatu. There is already some indication that unions outside of Cosatu are attracting disillusioned Cosatu members. The unity displayed during the public sector dispute may aid this process or cause more Cosatu affiliates to question the wisdom of remaining in a governing alliance that pursues economic policies directly contrary to those of the union federation.

None of the three longer established federations, Cosatu, Fedusa and Nactu, have repudiated the economic policies put forward in 1996 through the labour caucus at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). This document, titled Social Equity and Job Creation (SEJC), fundamentally contradicts the orientation of the government’s Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) outline.

The federations propose – and are still committed to proposing – that economic growth should come through the redistribution of wealth; Gear proposed that redistribution would follow economic growth. Cosatu, by far the largest of the federations, must bear prime responsibility for allowing the much more thoroughly researched and better presented SEJC document to fall into the background amid claims that jobs could be created and wealth redistributed through what one economist referred to as the ‘cascade of improbabilities’ that is Gear. The fact that Gear has now been officially replaced by Asgisa (Accelerated, Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa) has really changed nothing but the acronym. The same rhetoric that surrounded the first Reconstruction and Development Programme was carried over into Gear and now adorns Asgisa. Once again, here is an economic outline that is long on rhetoric and very short on detail. However, because the redistributive rhetoric does seem to be more strident this time round, Asgisa has been hailed in some quarters as indicating a ‘shift to the Left’.

But not everyone in the labour movement has been taken in by the promises of Asgisa. In the wake of the public sector strike, the SEJC labour caucus document has been dusted off and is being more widely discussed. It also forms the basis for the economic policy position to be adopted by the proposed confederation of Fedusa and Nactu. Unions affiliated to both these federations, as well as several independent trade unions, were involved in the public sector dispute.

Yet most local media, from which much of the foreign media apparently took a lead, erroneously described the public sector action as ‘a Cosatu strike’. But, as one of the Cosatu negotiators noted: ‘It’s the unions outside Cosatu that seem the most militant.’

The majority of the unionised public sector workers are in unions affiliated to Cosatu, but one of the ‘Big Three’, the Public Service Association (PSA) is an independent. The other two, the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) and the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) are Cosatu affiliates. But the fact that unions such as the PSA, which tends to organise skilled staff and has a reputation for conservatism, came out and held out, was one of the finest indicators of the strength of grassroots feeling.

And this is the most important lesson from the strike: that when there is sufficient anger and unity among the rank and file, union leaderships have little choice but to ride the wave of militancy. And this was certainly a militant strike in the face of often grossly intimidatory tactics by the government.

What often tends to be forgotten is that unions here have little or nothing in the way of strike funds and without a social welfare net to fall back on striking means real hardship within days, let alone weeks. Employers are therefore always quick to trumpet the ‘no work, no pay rule’.

Yet even among the estimated 30 000 workers on the lowest wage scale, earning just R35 000 a year, there was a determination to keep fighting. For some of them, with more than 20 years’ service, there was something of a decent victory: they had their pay scale moved up a notch while also qualifying for the eventual 7.5 per cent pay rise deal. This means a near 24 per cent raise for the minority who are the most exploited.

When the strike was still solid after three weeks, despite government threats, the issuing of hundreds of dismissal notices to nurses and the use of the army medical corps as strike breakers, government agreed to some concessions, a major one being that dismissal notices would be withdrawn and strikers would be paid their new wages with deductions over the coming months – at no more than four days a month – for the days on strike.

What the strike has left behind is a greater legacy of bitterness about the government as an employer. It has also revealed the degree of unity possible among unions from different traditions. And, with only a one-year agreement in place, the scene seems set for further conflict.

It also seems certain that the labour movement, as a whole, has emerged stronger from the experience. As former ‘strugglista’ and now university sociology professor Eddie Webster told the City Press: ‘It was a vital strike because, for the first time in the history of the labour movement in this country, it brought both black and white workers together on such a large scale.

‘This was not a Cosatu strike, not [of any other federation], but a strike for all South African workers.’

What this means is that the class war is again emerging strongly from beneath the blanket of ethnicity, race and colour that nationalism cast over it. This could spell trouble for the Cosatu and SACP leaderships if they persist in loyally tailing the ANC in government.