Johannesburg - COSATU has blamed the country’s ailing economy and fierce rivalry among unions for the continued decline in its membership ahead of its national congress.
Still the largest trade union federation in South Africa with just over 1.5 million members, Cosatu will hold its four-day 14th national congress in Johannesburg later this month. Membership numbers have declined by almost 60 000 since 2018 and Cosatu has shed over 416 000 members between 2015 and this year.
Cosatu insists that membership of the labour movement has been greatly affected by retrenchments due to the economic downturn, greedy employers putting profit before people, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the national lockdown.
Figures provided by Cosatu reveal that the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) were largely responsible for the loss of about 60 000 members since 2018.
In its explanation for the loss of members, the federation said the reasons may vary but ranged from the economic meltdown and union rivalry. Satawu had about 218 000 members in 2015 and the number dropped to around 101 500 three years later.
The once-powerful union now has fewer than 59 500 members, while the membership of the NUM, which has produced leaders such as President Cyril Ramaphosa and Mineral Resources and Energy Minister and ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe, among others, has declined from 250 000 in 2015 to 158 000 in 2022.
The SA Municipal Workers Union now has more than 161 000, an improvement from the 151 000 in 2015, while the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union currently has 148 000 members, which is down from 157 000 in 2015.
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union and the SA Democratic Teachers Union are the largest of Cosatu’s 18 affiliates. Nehawu currently has just over 275 000 members, while Sadtu has about 251 000 and both unions have enjoyed steady growth in the period between 2015 and this year.
Cosatu admitted that its coherence and unity had been undermined by splits over the years. Despite losing the 350 000-member National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) after its expulsion in 2015, Cosatu maintains that it was not left as a wreck but continued being stable although with a range of its challenges.
Numsa led the establishment of the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) and other Cosatu affiliates at the time including the Food and Allied Workers Union later joined Saftu.
"Some of our affiliates are facing internal organisational challenges but Cosatu is consistently working to solve these challenges," the federation admitted.
Cosatu has a plan to increase its members to 2.5 million by 2035 when it marks its 50th anniversary. However, the federation acknowledged that it was once growing with over two million members, which was halfway through its planned target of four million by 2015, the year of the 30th year of its existence.
To reach 2.5 million members in the next dozen years, Cosatu will have a holistic programme of membership retention, ideological training and capacity building and recruitment of new members across ages and races and continuously serving them.
It has also called on its affiliates to start organising workers in new sectors relevant to the green economy to build their strength, particularly in renewable energy. Cosatu said it would deliberate on the state of organised labour, how to strengthen unions to be able to shield workers and increase the number of unionised workers to realise its founding mission of “one union, one industry, one country, one federation”.