South Africa’s annual wage bargaining — some say, strike — season has begun. In a
series of conferences this week, the various sides got together to decide on their
strategies and to plan the tactics they intend to follow as the hard talking gets
underway.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 20 March 2013
It was International Women’s Day (IWD) on Friday. And it seemed an appropriate
time for a reminder about the labour movement origins of the day and of its noble
aims and egalitarian promise. This because several recent studies reveal that the
female half of humanity is once again bearing the brunt of the global economic crisis.
After all, when it began in 1910, IWD was rich with the promise of equality.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 13 March 2013
In stygian depths 4km and more below the surface of the earth gold continues to be
harvested, but by fewer miners and with the aid of more—and increasingly efficient—mechanisation.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 20 February 2013
The government has loosed off the first major salvoes of the 2014 election campaign
— and all of them have backfired. That is one labour movement view of three
official announcements over the past ten days.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 13 February 2013
Yesterday, exactly 40 years ago, the modern trade union movement arrived on the
South African scene. Its birth was heralded by a wave of strikes in Durban that had
gestated over 22 days from the time 2,000 workers at Coronation Brick and Tile
downed tools.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 5 February 2013
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille is correct in claiming that there is
political interference in the strikes and recurrent violence in the Boland. And the
DA is as responsible as any other political grouping for being involved in — or
“interfering” — in the ongoing upheaval.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 23 January 2013
South Africa has continued to fail the children of the poor and is once again reaping
the results of that failure. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recurrent violent
eruptions in the fruit and wine farm regions of the Western Cape.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 16 January 2013
The promises and the policies, the personalities elected, even the potential political
punch-ups at Mangaung are basically irrelevant.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 19 December 2012
The Bill of Rights is rightly hailed throughout the labour movement and beyond as
perhaps the finest exposition of the desire of the bulk of humanity for a world that
guarantees the maximum level of dignity, equality and freedom for all.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 12 December 2012