So, membership participation must continue and it must become our programme right through, because this is the only way that we are going to be able to be there in 2015. If we fail this, we will not be there in 2015. In 2015, we will be history. We will only appear as a name in the books of history that ‘a union of this nature did exist… 10 years ago!’
In terms of the constitution, locals are supposed to hold general meetings but the reports that we get are that the local shop stewards council has become the supreme body in the local. What should shop stewards do now to ensure that the local general meetings are held as per the constitution?
Identify a date, secure a venue and pay a deposit for that venue in advance. Start working on the ground now, make members aware that on this particular date the local general meeting is going to take place in this venue, at this time and these are the issues that are going to be discussed, even if these issues are broad. It is interesting to see workers from one factory meeting with workers from other factories. Also exchanging ideas amongst themselves in the general meeting and creating that comradeship, comradeship that starts from shop stewards meeting with shop stewards from other factories and develops further through members meeting with other workers from other factories. And we must ensure that we don’t keep members for the whole day in the general meeting. We must be very, very efficient when we handle general meetings. We must ensure that we don’t make them bored and instead of workers being in the hall you find them standing outside the hall. We must ensure that issues that are going to go on the agenda are issues that workers are going to participate in and debate rather than putting a list of speakers – speakers these days are boring!
What role do you see for those shop stewards who have stood down or who have not been re-elected?
Remember those comrades are still amongst the rank and file of our membership. Remember those comrades have the experience, those comrades understand the issues clearly and under which circumstances we are dealing with these complex issues. Those comrades form part of the core of the second layer leadership on the shop floor. They will help you deal with these issues, help you put these issues in to layman’s language for the rank and file members and so build organisation.
Tips for shop stewards from your President
Comrade Mtutuzeli Tom has been a shop steward since 1983. These are his survival tips!
Take your own personal things and leave them behind. Get yourself occupied by the needs of the workers. It is a sacrifice that shop stewards have got to make. There is no other alternative to this one – issues of workers must preoccupy the shop stewards. Your own personal issues are secondary, it is a pain that you are going to endure, it’s a blow that you’ve got to take. Therefore as a shop steward you must have a strong chin so that you’ll be able to take that punch!
Always put yourself in the same shoes as the workers. Don’t behave as if you are the brightest and the cleverest of them all. Work with them, don’t work for them. Make them feel part and parcel of what you do. Discuss the problems that you are encountering in the process of doing the work with them. Workers are going to assist you and this does not necessarily mean just meeting and raising these issues. Talk to workers, even on a one-to-one basis. Talk to them on the train to work, talk to them in the taxi, during lunch break, talk to them on the line, and raise the problems that you are facing. Workers will always assist you as shop stewards on how to deal with issues. And if you succeed in doing that, workers see that they are directly participating in resolving problems. And that begins to create a huge amount of unity amongst the workers themselves and builds the trust of workers in their organisation, because they can see that their ideas have worked, that their ideas have provided solutions to the problem that they are facing.
Remember that members have got a democratic right to elect you or not to elect you, to replace you or to recall you, using the Numsa constitution. I think one of the reasons people sometimes fail is that they pretend to know everything. They think that if they stand in front of workers and say, ‘Comrade, I don’t understand this, comrade I don’t know this, let me go and check further information so that I can give you a relevant answer’, that it begins to show signs of a weak shop steward rather than a strong shop steward. And as a result of that, people start to lie to workers. And workers remember, are thinkers, they think very well. And they also read between the lines, they can easily separate the truth from the lie and on the basis of that, workers lose trust in that particular shop steward. Definitely in the next election, workers are not going to elect someone who lies to them.
Some of us do not say things as they are to workers. We always like to appease workers. We always like to be seen as people who say things that workers want to hear every time and every day. That in itself limits the understanding of workers, or the broad understanding of workers of the complex issues that we as shop stewards are facing today. Workers must be told everything. Because they are human beings they will be able to provide solutions to the problems we as shop stewards are facing rather than running away from issues precisely because we believe that workers are going to be angry to hear that. If it is correct, tell them so that they can be angry and in the process of being angry, workers will be able to provide solutions to the problems. So those are some of the weaknesses that we as shop stewards always have, that of always coming to workers and bringing the things that we believe workers will be happy to hear and we don’t report issues to workers that we believe will make them angry. So weaknesses of that nature really shorten our leadership capabilities.