CWAO IN THE NEWS

From that time, the SWF has won permanent jobs, wage increases, better conditions of employment and pension fund and medical aid membership for thousands of workers.

Since its formation, the SWF has been in the forefront of fighting the bosses’ efforts to create cheaper labour. It has been in the forefront of fighting the government’s attacks on worker rights. The SWF openly fights against the trade unions who, as puppets of the capitalist class, have supported the attacks on worker rights and allowed the capitalists to increase their profits.

Most importantly, the SWF is uniting non-unionised workers who are in the forefront of the struggle against neoliberal capitalism. These workers include labour broker workers, short-term contract and EPWP workers.

Workers are seeing that the bosses can be defeated when workers unite in collective struggle. They increasingly understand that capitalism cannot give the working class a meaningful life. Through the SWF, members are sharpening their political understanding of capitalist society and the need to overthrow it.

Through their daily struggles in the workplace, involvement in SWF campaigns and the SWF’s principled alliances with other progressive working class forces, members are developing the experience and skills to build a new working class movement that can lead the struggle against capitalism. They also understand that capitalism is a system that always finds new ways to exploit the working class. Therefore, the rise of new ways of exploitation must be followed by new ways in which workers organise themselves.

How the SWF was formed
Labour broker workers started to meet at the Germiston offices of the Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO) from March 2015 onwards in response to the CWAO campaign about new labour broker worker rights.

Changes in the Labour Relations Act (LRA) meant that, after three months, labour broker workers had to be made permanent by the client company, and they had to get the same pay and working conditions as other permanents in the company.

Workers came in large numbers to the CWAO meetings. They came from different sectors and from big companies. Their main demands were to be permanently employed by the client company and to be ‘equalised’ with other permanents.

Workers met every second week, where they discussed their labour broking experience and how to get the new rights. On 1 April 2015, CWAO began referring disputes to the CCMA. By June 2017, over 260 referrals had been made to the CCMA and to bargaining councils. More than 17 000 workers entered conciliations and arbitrations. At CWAO, attendance swelled to over 200 workers per meeting. This led CWAO to move to bigger premises and to employ more staff.

An important feature of the meetings was that workers from individual companies would attend in large numbers. They did not send one or two representatives or ‘shop stewards’ in the way traditional trade unions would do. It was not unusual to have 80 or 90 workers from a particular workplace in each meeting.

Workers were taking direct control over their struggles.

In some of the early 2015 meetings already, workers raised the question of the identity of the meetings. What were these meetings? Were they the seeds for a future trade union, should the meetings just stay a loose gathering space for workers, or should they be the start of something completely new? But this was not the most burning issue. Workers were more focused on the fight for permanent jobs.

In February 2016, workers discussed and rejected the idea of forming a new trade union. They decided to form the Simunye Workers Forum instead. The majority view was that the trade unions were failing workers and it was time to build new kinds of worker organisations that reflected the changes in the world of work.

The SWF adopted a one-page constitution. Employed and unemployed workers could join. Workers became members simply by signing an attendance register, and there were no office-bearers and no subscriptions.

Workers faced difficulties getting their new rights
Two main difficulties immediately faced workers trying to get the new rights. The first one was that client companies were ignoring the new rights. This meant workers had to declare CCMA disputes to get the rights.

But this raised a second problem - who would refer these disputes to the CCMA? Workers had the legal right to refer a dispute themselves but had very little experience with institutions like the CCMA. They were still learning about the new law, as were the CCMA and the bosses. Unlike trade union members, who could be represented by union officials, the workers would have to represent themselves at the CCMA and every single one of them would have to be present at arbitration.

CWAO could not represent the workers, because the rules of the CCMA only allowed workers to be represented by registered trade unions or lawyers. This meant that the job of referring cases around permanent work fell to a single, progressive lawyer, David Cartwright.

CWAO also challenged the CCMA rule in the labour court, with partial success. This allowed CWAO and other advice offices to represent non-unionised workers, but only if the CCMA chose to allow it. More labour broker workers could now get legal support with the complicated new law.

The new labour broker worker rights in section 198 in the LRA did not come from trade unions mobilising and organising contract and casual workers. The unions had long before become the puppets of the capitalist class. They were always paving the way for increased capitalist profits at the expense of the working class and justifying the continued existence of the capitalist system.

However, to play this role successfully, the unions must keep some legitimacy among workers. So the government and bosses make some small concessions – often in exchange for much bigger ones from the unions. It was clear that the government and bosses did not expect the massive number of disputes that were then referred by so many labour broker workers. In September 2015, the labour court rescued the government and bosses with a ridiculous judgment that said the new rights meant that the client company and the labour broker were now both the employer of the worker.

But this nonsensical judgment did not stop workers from fighting to be permanently employed by only the client company. Workers in the SWF continued to refer disputes to the CCMA. Many of these workers lost their jobs as the bosses began victimising and dismissing worker activists.

Victory for the SWF in South Africa’s top court
In 2018, the matter went to the Constitutional Court - South Africa’s top, or apex court. The Constitutional Court ruled that the new rights meant that after three months the client company became workers’ only employer. The experience of the SWF workers was a major contributor to this victory. The bosses, the CCMA and the labour court were now all bound by this judgment.

In the same year, the SWF was one of the leading organisations in a campaign to scrap changes to the labour laws that undermined workers’ right to strike and other legal protections, like sectoral determinations.

Mass meetings of the SWF - a high point
By 2019, the SWF reached a high point, with an average of 324 workers attending its fortnightly general meetings. But by this time, the bosses were attacking the Constitutional Court victory in different ways. Some of them claimed that the labour brokers were service providers and were not affected by section 198 of the LRA.

Other bosses started putting workers onto short-term contracts and setting up labour pools, with ‘seasonal’ workers. Others would say the labour broker workers were permanent but keep them on lower wages, variable hours and even continue to use the labour broker to pay the workers, with labour broker pay slips. Yet others would say the workers were now permanent but would punish the workers by bringing in new labour broker workers and giving them more weekly hours than the new ‘permanents’.

The bosses’ attack on the new rights was soon supported by the CCMA, the labour court and the labour appeal court, to a point where workers had very little legal room left to claim the important rights of permanent employment and equal treatment with other permanents.

Today, the situation has developed to a point where the SWF and CWAO have launched a fresh constitutional challenge to uphold the rights in section 198 of the LRA.

Covid-19, registration and the rebuilding of the SWF
The outbreak of Covid-19 at the beginning of 2020 was a big setback to the SWF. Unlike traditional trade unions which rely mainly on trade union officials and a small handful of shop stewards, the SWF operates through the active involvement of all its members. The frequent meetings of hundreds of workers were the life blood of the SWF. When the SWF could not meet in Covid-19, this was a setback to the organisation.

Although essential service workers continued to be supported by CWAO, no meetings of the SWF could be held. Several months later, the SWF started convening meetings via Zoom, with an average of 80 to 90 workers attending per meeting. But the loss of two million jobs, limited access to smart phones, the problems of connectivity and the alienating nature of such meetings had a very negative effect on the organisation.

SWF applies for registration as a union
The SWF started physical meetings again at the beginning of 2022. But the numbers of workers attending were much lower than in any of the previous years.

By this time, the organisation had applied to be a registered trade union, so that it could build a stronger workplace presence and represent members at the CCMA. But after Covid, fewer workers were coming forward with demands to be made permanent. Many were fearful of losing their jobs after going without wages for such a long time during the pandemic.

This was when the SWF began campaigning, calling for the reopening of the CCMA, and holding solidarity actions. This and recruitment drives were all led by SWF members. Through these actions, the SWF was able to rebuild itself, to a point where its now-monthly general meetings attract an average of 239 workers per meeting. New workplaces continue to join the Forum and the number of workers again fighting for permanent jobs has increased significantly.

Women and the SWF
Women labour broker workers are the majority in sectors like food processing and make up big minorities in others. They occupy the lowest paying jobs, and are most affected by work with no guaranteed hours.

They’re also affected by ‘scheduling’, which leads to sexual violence by supervisors and managers (when women workers only get hours in exchange for sex).

It is therefore no surprise that women are the most active in SWF activities, from solidarity actions with striking workers through to workshops, campaigns, demonstrations and events like May Day.

The SWF entrenches this leading role of women. Its constitution states that the majority of Standing Committee members must be women and any meeting not chaired or recorded by a woman is automatically unconstitutional.

The Simunye Women Workers Forum, launched in 2018, is a space for solidarity and strengthening women’s activism, at work and in the community. Through the SWWF, the SWF has been able to bring a strong women’s perspective into campaigns like the national minimum wage and the latest attacks on worker rights that the SWF is one of the spearheads of. These are important contributions towards building a working class women’s movement.

Migrant workers have a home in the SWF
South African capitalism was built on cheap migrant labour drawn from the whole of Southern Africa. Today, South African bosses treat the whole continent as their labour market. They are happy to exploit undocumented migrants with poor working conditions wages well below the already-low national minimum, knowing such workers fear approaching the department of labour or the CCMA. The government is equally happy to stir up xenophobia within the working class as a way of dividing and weakening it. It blames migrants for unemployment and all other working class problems that result from its laws and policies that favour the capitalist class. The SWF has from its earliest days consciously included migrant workers in its organising. It is currently involved in several migrant worker struggles, including one where workers are earning R9.50 per hour (the national minimum is R30.23) and another where workers were dismissed for not having the required documents despite working for the company for 26 years. The SWF is clear: the enemy is capitalism, not migrant workers who are forced to follow the profits of the capitalist exploiters.

2026: The SWF grows stronger
In 2026, 11 new companies, each with hundreds of workers, have joined the forum and workers at eight companies have declared disputes over permanent jobs. All of this despite the SWF still being an unregistered union.

A feature of the forum is that many workers who attend meetings, workshops and events come because the SWF has become a political home for them. Some have been in the forum since 2015. These comrades do not have immediate issues they are fighting in their workplaces. Some of them have been unemployed for a long time, dismissed because they fought to be made permanent. Instead, they attend SWF activities because they regard the organisation as belonging to them, as one that they control, and one that is committed to building a broader working class movement to overthrow capitalism. These comrades have developed friendships with SWF members committed to the same political tasks. They have forged comradely connections through common struggle and solidarity, and they are very consciously building a new kind of organisation. This has been shown most clearly in how the SWF has refused to compromise with the registrar of labour relations and even the Labour Appeal Court over changes to its constitution.