'Renewing our locals' gets off the ground
Since the last Numsa National Congress held in August 2000 in Mafikeng, the organisation has been busy deciding on how it should change the way it organises and functions as a trade union because of the many challenges facing it, reports Vanessa Le Roux
Numsa's organisational renewal process identified 7 projects to do this:
Restructuring/renewing our locals Re-organizing our organising and collective bargaining strategy Strengthening leadership management structures Renew our financial and membership system. Renewing our members' benefits. Renewing staff development Information to our members on renewing NUMSA.
For Project No 1 – restructuring/renewing our locals, the June 2002 Central Committee decided that Numsa should try out pilot projects in three different regions. The June 2003 Central Committee will then assess how they are going, what works and what doesn't. The table below shows you what progress is being made in each of these regions running the pilots.
Western Cape
Started their pilot on the 3 February 2003 on the basis of all organisers working from the regional office, except the SWD local organiser.
Organisers have been allocated to different departments::
Legal
Regional legal officer plus two organisers – they do all arbitration, conciliations and have also been allocated daily organising tasks.
Education
Regional education officer (REO) plus two organisers – who mainly look at shopstewards training, employment equity agreements, procedural agreements and skills plans. These organisers are also allocated with daily organising tasks.
Organising and collective bargaining
Regional organiser plus 6 organisers who deal with day to day organising activities and factory problems.
Regional planning meetings are held every Monday to receive reports and plan for the following week.
The local administrators are co-ordinating all local activities and report to the regional secretary on issues resolved and outstanding and issues they cannot resolve.
KwaZulu Natal
The organisational renewal workshop of Febraury 2002 agreed on a similar model to the Wits Central West region.
In Ethekweni, Isipingo, Pinetown, Pietermartburg locals, one organiser and administrator will remain. In the other areas joint activities will be planned e.g. Newcastle and Ladysmith local, Isithebe and Empangeni locals
The south coast will remain as is. A final workshop was held on March 29-30, 2003 to finalise the process on how they will work.
Wits Central West
Started their pilot on March 3, 2003 . One Local organiser and one administrator remain in the local, others are deployed to the regional office.
The organising staff are allocated to the different departments/units:
Legal
Regional legal officer plus two organisers will mainly deal with arbitrations and conciliations.
Education
REO + two organisers will deal with capacity building.
Organising and Collective Bargaining
Four organisers will deal with restructuring, retrenchments, grading and campaigns.
Regional planning meetings are held every Monday as per Western Cape .
The Regional office bearers are also allocated to the various units and will meet with the local office bearers (Lobs) once per month to build capacity amongst the LOB. The regional team will also get pulled into the other units where the need arises.
The administrator and organiser in each local will mainly deal with organisational issues eg. factory campaigns, recruitment and so on.
The Western Cape will assess their project on April 14, 2003. The other two regions will evaluate their projects in time to make recommendations to the July Central Committee.
Source
Numsa News