Cooperation Now Byword on Factory Floor in S. Africa : Labor: Unions and management take their cue from political leaders. A new law is likely to enshrine avoidance of historical conflict.

VANDERBIJLPARK, South Africa —  During apartheid, the Divpac can factory here was known as “Beirut,” and with good reason.

Racial and political hostilities poisoned labor relations. In 1990, a race riot on the factory floor left more than 30 employees injured. Whites carried handguns as they worked, while blacks brandished knives. Bitter strikes and lockouts were frequent.

Adding to the tension, Lee Coetzee, head of the local whites-only union, was regional commandant of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB. The white supremacist group was known for its Nazi-like insignia, paramilitary army and reactionary politics.

His nemesis was Joe Msibi, head of the black union and local leader of the African National Congress. Msibi, a hard-core Marxist, boasted of battling police in the surrounding slums of the Vaal Triangle, an area infamous for bloody township wars and nightmarish police massacres.

“They were ultra-left wing,” Coetzee said. “We were militant right wing. And we were not working together. We weren’t even talking. And management was caught in the middle.”

Today, Coetzee and Msibi--known to their colleagues as “the Boer and the Bolshevik”--are working side by side, and the Divpac factory has just completed its first year without a strike. It is perhaps the most dramatic proof of a radical transformation of labor relations under way in Africa’s largest and richest economy.

“There will always be differences between us,” Msibi said of Coetzee and his union. “But we’re both organized labor. That means we have a common agenda. And we can work together.”

They are not alone. Labor unions and management are increasingly following South Africa’s new political leadership and seeking cooperation over conflict. The shift is easy to measure: The nation lost 95,000 days of work in the first six months of this year from industrial action, compared to 1.2 million in the same period last year.

A new law is now likely to enshrine those changes. On Friday, Parliament began debating a sweeping new labor relations bill that, according to both business and labor leaders, will prevent the kind of militant strikes and heavy-handed management tactics that so often brought South Africa to its knees during the apartheid era.

“This bill will stabilize industrial relations for the first time,” said Kgalema Motlanthe, secretary general of the National Union of Mineworkers, the nation’s largest trade union. “This bill goes a long way to taking politics off the shop floor.”

Adrian Du Plessis, a general manager of the Chamber of Mines and member of Business South Africa, a lobbying group for industry, said the proposed law provides for economic growth as well as industrial peace. “This is a law under which we can conduct our business,” he said.

The stakes are huge. South Africa’s hopes of luring foreign investment and expanding its economy fivefold in coming years will require labor peace. And unless the economy grows significantly, President Nelson Mandela’s government will be unable to fulfill its promise of delivering tangible improvements in health, housing and education to the vast majority of impoverished blacks.

The proposed legislation is unusual in many ways. For one thing, it was drafted at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, by a team sent by Labor Minister Tito Mboweni. Their orders were to pick the best of labor practices from around the world.

The resulting 200-page draft was handed in mid-June to 18 representatives of Big Business, Big Labor and government. They hammered out compromises in closed-door, often tense negotiations that ended in a burst of all-nighters last week.

The final draft draws from the United States for adjudication of disputes, from Canada for strike provisions, from Germany for worker participation, from Australia for institutions and from Britain for collective bargaining.

But the final package probably would afford greater rights to South Africa’s 2.5 million unionized employees--out of about 9 million workers in the formal economy--than unions have obtained anywhere else, officials here say.

“It’s amongst the most progressive pieces of labor legislation in the world,” said Karl Von Holdt, editor of the South African Labor Bulletin. “In terms of strike rights, dispute resolution, union organizational rights, rights to disclosure and joint decision-making, it’s a very powerful bill.”

‘A New Experiment’

“Ours is a new experiment,” agreed Bokkie Botha, chairman of Business South Africa and a general manager at AECI Ltd., the country’s largest chemical manufacturer. “We’ve gone further, I believe, in developing labor-friendly legislation than anyone else in the world.”

He and others said the goal of the proposed bill is not just to let South Africa raise productivity and be more competitive in world markets. It also aims to end apartheid-created inequalities in wages and work, setting a standard for other parts of society.

The bill, for example, would require creation of “workers’ forums” in workplaces of more than 100 employees. Management would be required not only to inform but to consult workers on a range of sensitive issues, including restructuring and dismissals.

“We’ll have a statutory mechanism for democracy in the workplace,” said Botha. “Management will have to sit down and explain why they do what they do. That’s a major departure from our past practices.”

Management retained the right to negotiate contracts at a decentralized level, and to hire replacement workers during strikes. Unions can maintain closed shops and have won far greater protection for strikers. In the past, employers could simply fire strikers, often fueling further violence.

But an independent commission will be created for compulsory mediation and arbitration of problems, such as dismissals, before they escalate to strikes. The goal is swift settlement of disputes and an end to the current morass of labor justice, in which cases often drag on for years.

“What’s hoped for is a kind of trade-off,” explained Tom Lodge, a political scientist at the University of the Witwatersrand. “In return for more responsibility, for more authority, workers are expected to invest more in terms of commitment and productivity. It’s a very skillful attempt to create cooperation and remove conflict.”

Conflict, of course, has been the hallmark of labor relations here. Under apartheid, union activity was severely restricted. A strike by blacks was by definition illegal until 1981. After that, black unions were granted rights similar to those of white unions, including collective bargaining and access to industrial courts.

That meant black unions became effectively enfranchised while blacks as a group were still denied basic rights. Not surprisingly, the newly empowered black unions soon saw their role as not only getting the best deal for their workers but bringing down the apartheid economy. They became the cutting edge of the anti-apartheid struggle, especially as the white regime gunned down or jailed political opposition in the streets.

By the late 1980s, the forefront of organized resistance had shifted to the factory floor in many areas. In 1987, the worst year for strikes, the country lost 5.8 million workdays due to industrial action. Violent strikes, stay-aways, slowdowns and sabotage became tools of the political battle, especially in factories that mirrored the turmoil outside.

A Case in Point

Such was the case at Divpac, which produced tin cans for shoe and furniture polish. It was a classic apartheid workshop.

The whites-only Mine Workers Union held the best-paying jobs, while blacks in the National Union of Metal Workers were confined to dirtier, more dangerous jobs. Toilets and the canteen were segregated. Assaults were common, productivity low and tensions high.

And Coetzee, the white union leader, made no secret of his political leanings.

In June, 1993, the AWB leader had his photo on front pages around the country when he and other heavily armed AWB members smashed a truck through the plate-glass doors of the auditorium in Kempton Park where multi-party negotiations were under way to prepare for democracy. The assault backfired since it encouraged the negotiators to intensify their efforts.

In March, 1994, Coetzee rushed to the then-homeland of Bophuthatswana on another disastrous mission. The AWB had invaded to prop up a local dictator and derail democracy. The whites went on a rampage instead, shooting black residents and beating journalists. In the end, TV cameras captured a black policeman executing two wounded AWB members after their comrades had abandoned them.

The rout destroyed the myth of Afrikaner supremacy and ensured that the first all-race elections would proceed. Coetzee, now 33, says he has quit the AWB and no longer carries a gun at work. He also says some of the 130 members of his union have mellowed in post-apartheid South Africa.

Coming Together

Jurie Grobler, managing director of the factory, says he played the peace broker when he brought Coetzee and Msibi to a three-day bosberaad , or bush conference, at a local hotel in July last year. It was the first time they had ever talked. The pair later were sent to England for two weeks to study labor relations there.

The end of apartheid-related economic sanctions meant the company faced open markets for the first time--but it also meant open competition. The rival union leaders agreed with management’s pleas that shop-floor conflict must go if the company--and their members’ jobs--were to survive.

To be sure, whites hold the best jobs at Divpac, and their union has a “whites only” clause in its constitution. And Msibi and Coetzee have never visited each other’s homes.

“I don’t think we’ve changed the world,” said Grobler. “What we have done is work on the fear and distrust. . . . We’re talking to each other constructively. About business. That’s the main agenda item now. Not politics.”