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Page context: Home > Transport International Magazine > Issue 28 - July 2007 > Facing up to the free market
In recent years many developing countries have formed or joined a range of regional and international structures and bilateral and multilateral agreements in the hope of boosting their economies through increased, liberalised trade. Many have also undertaken various restructuring processes in order to attract foreign investment and to facilitate capital accumulation.
In the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, member states are working towards becoming a free trade area in 2008, a customs union in 2010 and a common market in 2015. All SADC countries are also members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and some are also members of other regional integration areas and international agreements – a situation that has the potential to cause conflicts in their multiple implementation.
| Results of restructuring Some general common trends are discernible in Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa as a result of transport sector restructuring. These include job losses, increasing casualisation and the usage of labour brokers, decreasing membership of unions and greater difficulties in organising. Negotiating with an increasing number of employers also takes up a large amount of time, effort and resources from the unions. Unions in the countries studied have adopted a range of strategies to build their respective unions and protect workers, with different degrees of success. Unions in South Africa and Namibia have won some of their struggles against restructuring or minimised the effects of such processes. In South Africa, unions have stopped full privatisation of the railways and have signed agreements on consultation processes, while unions in both South Africa and Namibia have achieved some measure of protection for workers employed via labour brokers. However, workers and unions in Mozambique have felt the most devastating effects, for example a 60 to 67 per cent reduction of the labour force in the port and railway company CFM and a reduction in national union density from 67.9 per cent to 35.9 per cent. This is a reflection of the greater extent of privatisation of transport in that country, greater penetration by multinational companies and a lack of union power and capacity to resist the restructuring processes. Some of the biggest difficulties in getting union recognition and in organising are experienced with the smaller employers. However, unions must also equip themselves to deal with larger employers (foreign-based or national), who have the greatest leverage to lobby governments to change laws and undermine the rights and benefits enjoyed in the past. |
It is not clear how the various regional and international trade agreements will ultimately impact on the transport sector. In Mozambique, for example, the privatisation of transport has so far been overseen by impositions from the IMF and World Bank rather than by implementations directly related to trade agreements.
Here, concerns are being raised over the potential impact on emerging Mozambican operators of the declaration of a free trade area in SADC in 2008.
The free trade area is likely to have different implications for the different member states, bearing in mind the domination of South African operators – including Spoornet’s International Joint Ventures, which has become an investor in the road and railway systems of other African and Latin American countries.
International financial institutions
Of the four case studies developed for the ITF study, only one shows the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to be playing a key role in transport restructuring. Their role in that country, Mozambique, has been in financing as well as in shaping policy direction.
In Angola the rehabilitation and development of transport infrastructure is reportedly being financed by loans from China, Portugal, Brazil and Spain. In Namibia the World Bank is reportedly just one among several other international institutions that have been approached to finance planned infrastructure developments along the transport corridors. Other institutions include the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the African Development Bank, the European Union, and the Bank of Japan.
In South Africa restructuring has been home-driven. The World Bank’s advice has been in the background, but it does not appear to have played a financial role so far.
It is clear that for unions to play a meaningful part in any finance-linked transport reforms, the role of a whole range of financial institutions, and their own set of conditionalities and interplay with the World Trade Organization, need to be understood.
Restructuring through privatisation
The restructuring of transport has assumed different forms in different SADC countries. However, they all involve the implementation of neo-liberal policies and all amount to privatisation if one adopts a broad definition of privatisation beyond that based strictly on the transfer of ownership of assets. A broader definition includes corporatisation, commercialisation, concessioning, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, price liberalisation and other measures to attract private capital or aid private capital formation.
All of these forms of privatisation are evident to differing extents in the transport sector in the countries we studied. However, it became evident during the course of our research that there is no common understanding of what privatisation entails, and it tends to be equated with the stricter definition of transfer of ownership and concessioning or outsourcing but not with commercialisation or corporatisation, for instance. Thus, while commercialisation is evident in all restructuring processes, and “cost recovery” underpins the SADC Transport Protocol, it is usually not acknowledged as a form of privatisation.
It is important for unions to understand the different forms and processes of privatisation in their own countries, to enable them to develop strategies to resist and shape the different processes of privatisation of state-owned enterprises. Ideally transport unions in the SADC countries should debate and develop a common understanding of what privatisation entails.
One offshoot of privatisation is the practice, demonstrated in South Africa, whereby unions are being offered the chance to become partners and acquire financial interests in the transport sector through the privatisation process. For example, they have been offered a first option, through investment companies, in the sale of state-owned road freight companies and they have negotiated that workers become shareholders if plans for public private partnershps in the port of Durban are to go ahead.
The ITF study recommends that unions in the SADC region debate the potentially positive and negative consequences of acquiring financial interests in newly restructured transport entities.
Campaigning potential
SADC member states have adopted the SADC Employment and Labour Sector and the SADC Social Charters, which commit them to implement ILO core labour standards. All member states have ratified these ILO conventions and the national laws of Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa provide for the right to organise, collective bargaining and the right to strike.
However, this does not mean that labour law is effectively implemented, monitored and /or enforced. In Angola for instance, the definition of essential services allegedly restricts the labour rights of transport workers. In Mozambique the law does not sufficiently protect workers against anti-union discrimination, nor are workers freely able to exercise union activities.
Some aspects of labour law in Namibia and Mozambique were being revised at the time the research was carried out, or were under pressure for change. In Mozambique employers are lobbying for a drastic reduction in severance pay requirements, and the IMF’s latest Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PARPA II) is calling for “improved labour market flexibility”.
These may be issues around which unions could coordinate joint campaigning to ensure implementation, monitoring and enforcement of ILO labour standards throughout the SADC region. Cross-border cooperation could also galvanise support for national campaigns against laws that erode existing and previously won rights.
Specific cross-border issues could also become the focus of common campaigns to pressurise SADC governments into harmonising and enforcing not only labour standards and the Labour and Social Charters but also the transport codes and regulations adopted by member states under SADC’s Protocol on Transport.
During the study, for example, unions in Namibia and Mozambique reported a few cross-border issues that involved differential and lower payment of workers from their respective countries when they perform work in South Africa, both in road freight and in the ports. The Namibian Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (NATAU) reported truck drivers having to pay bribes to Angolan road authorities and Mozambique operators reported that drivers were experiencing victimisation once they entered South Africa.
| Privatisation in Mozambique Most of the transport sector has been privatised. The dominant form has been concessioning of management and operations. In the ports, the government has retained 33 to 49 per cent of equity shares. In the ports of Maputo and Nacala concessioning of operations and management has been total (with the state only maintaining control over the strategic terminals for oil and cereals in Maputo), whereas in Beira a joint venture has been set up. Railways remain stateowned but concessions have been awarded in two of the four rail networks. A third concession (the Ressano Garcia line linking Maputo to South Africa) has been cancelled and the responsibility for rehabilitation has reverted back to the state. In October 2006 it was reported that Spoornet (South Africa’s state-owned railways) will become involved in the running of freight trains and providing infrastructure. Although both private companies and the state have historically operated freight and passenger road transport, it is now almost fully privatised. The exceptions are some passenger services in urban centres such as Maputo and Beira, which are currently under commercialisation pressure. |
Towards unity
In Mozambique there are four unions organising workers in the transport sector, some of which are competing for members even where they are part of the same federation. In Namibia and South Africa there is only one significant union organising in the respective transport sectors.
While two of the unions in Mozambique are engaging in merger negotiations, they and the other two consider the formation of a federation of transport unions as a necessary first step. These unions have shown an interest in learning from SATAWU’s merger experience in South Africa and have requested support from SATAWU and the ITF, which the researchers see as a positive step.
However, restructuring makes the organisation of workers much harder. With the splitting of large state enterprises into smaller companies or units (through outsourcing and full privatisation for instance), unions experience a fragmentation of the work force and loss of members as workers are then organised by different unions.
In view of the different restructuring and privatisation approaches, the challenge is for unions to engage in debate and decide whether to organise by ownership, industry, or the type of work performed by workers.
Paula Cardoso is a researcher for Labour Resource Services (LRS), based in Cape Town, South Africa. This article is an edited extract of her report, “Transport Corridors in South Africa: A focus on Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa”.
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Issue 28 - July 2007
Other pages for Issue 28 - July 2007:
Zamora murder | An educated approach | Web forum in Asia | Consensus by committee? | Delivering global rights | Global dialogue with Maersk | Working life | Integration and social justice | Stronger than ever? | In tribute | Reflections
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