Fight the bosses
Leaflet for the 1997 General strike

We workers must support the struggle organised by COSATU against the bosses. Only mass action will make Mr FAT CAT boss listen to our demands. In the end, socialism remains the only road. The workers solution is revolutionary industrial unionism- implement workers control over the land and factories through trade union action.

COSATU calls for double pay for Sunday work, six months paid maternity leave, four months of which must be paid, a 40 hour work week, and an end to workplace apartheid. COSATU calls for reconstruction and development.

The BOSSES call for lower pay, less paid maternity leave, low wages, less safety regulations, and other forms of so-called “flexibility”. The bosses stand for exploitation and continued poverty amongst Black workers.

MASS ACTION THE ONLY WAY

The bosses are unwilling to compromise. They want to be “internationally competitive”: to pay low wages and enforce bad safety conditions so they can keep up their profits. Only mass action can force them back.

To win we our powerful industrial unions- democratically controlled by the workers. To win, we need to fight in the spirit of no compromise.

REJECT GEAR

In this fight we cannot rely on the government and politicians. They have replaced the RDP with the so-called GEAR programme. GEAR calls for privatisation, more tax on workers, cuts in social spending, wage restraint, and less regulations on the bosses. GEAR is a bosses programme.

REVOLUTIONARY INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM

Freedom will never come through parliament. Freedom can only come through the trade unions taking over the land and factories in a socialist revolution. This is revolutionary industrial unionism.

This leaflet was produced by Workers Solidarity Federation,

a socialist/ anarcho-syndicalist political organisation for militant workers and youth.

There can be no peace in society while the bosses have all the good things of life, while millions of workers suffer and starve. This system of capitalist oppression can only end when the workers unite in militant trade unions to take the factories and land from the bosses, and run them for the good of all.

Only in this way can we end capitalist exploitation and the legacy of apartheid oppression.

Phantsi ngecapitalism, phambili basabenzi, forward to revolutionary industrioal unionism.