 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello, you're watching People's Dispatch. Today, we hear from South Africa where the workers of the country's largest and oldest dairy sector employer, that's Clover, are on strike. Now, the workers' strike has entered its second month. There have been a lot of rounds of negotiations, but the government has not accepted the demands and the workers are determined that they will continue their protests until these demands are met. To know more about these demands as well as the nature of the protests, we have with us John Apollis, who is the General Secretary of Jeevusa. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Yes, so first of all, I just wanted to ask you about the strike itself. There are about 5,000 workers involved here. This is the second month that the strike has been going on. So what are the key labour issues that have really caused the strike? The key issues are one, the massive job losses that was affected by Clover SA and Milko. At the end of July, this year, they retrenched, cut about 843 jobs. At the end of November, they cut 874 jobs and they are planning to cut another 812 jobs in February 2022. So one of the key demands of the strike is that the company must stop these job cuts and take back and reinstate those workers that they have dismissed through the process of retrenchment. The second key issue is the cuts in the salaries. The company has imposed a unilateral cut in the salaries of workers to the tune of 20%. In fact, this has also led to the retrenchment of workers because they are saying that if you do not accept the 20% cut in your salaries, then you will be retrenched and many of the workers, especially the 874 workers, have rejected the 20% cut in their salaries. Hence, they were then dismissed and retrenched at the end of November. The third issue is the issue of what we call austerity measures. Here, the company is forcing workers to work on a Saturday and a Sunday as well as public holidays. Now in South Africa, we have about 10 paid public holidays where workers are supposed to be off on those particular days and get paid for being off on the public holidays. So the company is forcing them to work on those particular public holidays. They are also cutting the transport allowance. There are workers who work night shift and they get a transport allowance and the company wants to cut it by 50%. Then the other issue is the issue of what they called permanent short time. In other words, when there's a slack in demand for their goods, orders are down, they want to have the right to inform the worker not to come to work because there are no orders, there are no products to deliver to the various retailers. And then they want to have a situation where they don't have to pay those particular workers. And these workers are permanent workers, they supposed to have guaranteed working hours per week and per month. So they want to now acquire this right to inform permanent workers not to come to work, put them on short time and not be able to pay them. And then there's the last issue, which is one of the major issues is what we called a working operation, where currently when workers do deliveries of the dairy products to the different retailers, the driver has two van assistance, two assistance in the truck with him because they deliver huge tons of products to the different retailers, especially the major retailers in our country. Now the company wants to away with the two van assistance and want to impose one van assistance. That means that the driver must now, in addition to driving the trucks and be responsible for the products, must also do delivery, picking up orders on the truck and also offloading and also taking the products into the retailers. Now, and sorry, the last one is what we call, they want to impose a compressed working week where they want to change the ordering hours from nine hours to 12 hours. Now you can see combined with this scrapping of the two van assistance system and a 12 hour shift work. Clearly, you can see the workload and on the workers are going to intensify. So those are the issues that our members are striking and our demands are clear. One, that the company must stop the job cuts, reinstate those workers, stop the salary cuts and also withdraw all these austerity measures as we call them in our propaganda, in our agitation. So those are the issues that has led to the strike from the 22nd of November this year. Absolutely. Just quickly to follow up, has the company responded to any of these demands at all in any manner? In fact, we have been in negotiations with them for about four months and in fact, the problem that we had is that every time we have a meeting with the company, they increase the numbers of the job cuts. They start out to maybe 200 and then the next meeting say no, because they are doing certain calculations, the numbers increase, etc., etc. So they have not moved one inch from their position. The only issue that they sort of compromise on was the issue of the reinstatement of certain numbers of workers. They are saying that they are prepared to take back 763 workers, but these workers must accept the 20 percent wage cuts. They must also accept all these other changes in the operations and the conditions of employment, which our members are not prepared to exceed. Now, what's important to understand here is that the company is embarking on this major onslaught against workers' wages and jobs and their living standards, because they told us that in order to restore their levels of profitability, they need to cut labor costs by 300 million REN per annum. So they have set themselves that particular target of saving labor costs to the tune of 300 million REN, and hence they are now implementing all these different measures to achieve that particular target. So clearly they have made up the mind that they want to achieve a certain rate of return on the investment of their shareholders, and therefore the workers have to carry the burden of achieving that level of profitability. Absolutely. And in this context, of course, it's not only the workers of clover who might be affected, but also the larger dairy sector and farmers as well. So could you maybe also talk about how these plans might affect them? Yeah, I mean, in fact, as you correctly say, clover is the biggest dairy producer and distributor of dairy products in our country, and they have a network of farmers from who they are acquiring their milk. So clearly the strike is having an impact on those particular farmers because milk is a big problem with the delivery of milk. And secondly, also the consumer, the consumers, we have launched a national boycott of clover products. We have called on the public and the communities not to buy the products of clover. As you can see behind me, we do have a poster calling on the public to boycott clover products. We have produced many pamphlets and stickers that we stick on the products. We get teams of people, squads of people to go to the supermarkets, the retail shops, and they stick these boycott stickers on the products of clover. In that sense, we're also popularizing the boycott of clover products. And in this context, of course, quickly wanted to check before going into the international aspect, what has been the government's response? Because I think one of the demands has been that clover should be nationalized as well. So how is the government engaged with the unity? Well, I mean, the government has not really responded. In fact, we wrote a letter to the Minister of Trade and Industry because enterprises, especially enterprises who have undertaken particular mergers fall under the sphere of the Minister of Trade and Industry. So we wrote a letter towards the end of November, requesting a meeting with the Minister. We only got a response, not directly from the Minister, but one of the public servants, the Deputy Director General in the Department of Competition Policy and Economic Planning. We met on two occasions now, last week, Thursday and this Tuesday. In the first meeting, she wanted the details of what are the developments at clover, because she was indicating she must develop a briefing document for the Minister. We then provided her with all the information. And then on Tuesday, when we got the feedback from her, all she said was that she gave the briefing to the Minister. He asked a couple of questions, but he did not give any indication whether he is prepared to meet with us or intervene in this particular dispute and strike that is currently in place. In fact, we are not surprised by the lack of response and lack of interest on the part of the Minister and the government as a whole. Because for the past 20 years, the ANC government has pursued a new liberal economic program where they put at the center the interests of the private sector, capitalist enterprises. In fact, for them, I mean, economic development and development in a country will be premised on the private sector creating economic growth. And we all know that economic growth means making more profits for employers, for the capitalists. So they don't want to upset the employers, the capitalists. So therefore they are kind of dragging the feet to intervene. Because for us, what's important here is that Clover was taken over by an Israeli-based company called Central Bottling Company in 2019. They paid out the the shareholders to the tune of four comma, I think two billion REN. And they became then the major shareholder of Clover. We opposed the merger as unions. And also with the Palestinian Solidarity Organization in South Africa, we made a submission to the what we call the competition commission that has the right to determine whether a merger must go ahead or not. We made the submission, raised all the problems of the fact that the CBC, the Central Bottling Company, is a company that is operating in the occupied territories of Palestine and is very complicit in the in the violation of human rights and the oppression of the Palestinian people. In fact, the Palestinian Solidarity Groups assisted us in doing research on the CBC. And they found a whole range of violations and anti-worker and anti-human rights practices on the part of CBC. In fact, they operate in the Gulen Heights and also in parts of the West Bank. They also have a dairy that they have in Israel. They also have a beverage company. So we then indicated to the to the competition commission and to the government that the takeover by CBC, first of all is in violation of the international law because of the the fact that this company is operating in the occupied territories. Secondly, that CBC, this takeover is going to lead to a major process of rationalization and reorganization restructuring. This is not going to lead to drop creation or development of the local manufacturing capacity in the country. And this is what is playing out now. I mean, besides now the job losses and the tax on workers wages, Clover is also shutting down its inland production facilities. They claim they are shifting it to the coastal areas, you know, like Durban, which is one of the coastal areas and in Port Elizabeth, another coastal areas. But from from our perspective, we kind of saying that this is really to prepare Clover to become a distribution network for the products of CBC because they are putting Clover at key harbor ports in our countries. And we know CBC is a major player also in the dairy industry in the Middle East and also in the beverages, which is where Clover is also operating within the markets. So and therefore, Clover will become for us a destination for the products of CBC and they're going to scale down its Clover's manufacturing capacity and turn it into a major distribution network for the products of Israel. So that's how we can analyze the situation. And therefore, the ANC government, although it pays lip service to the support of the struggle and liberation of the Palestinian people, but when it comes down to it, when it comes to taking real action, you can see the ANC government runs away from actually doing anything substantial and concrete to assist the Palestinian people. And therefore, we are not surprised by the lack of response or interest on the part of the Minister of Trade and Industry in the issues that workers are facing as well as the Palestinian people. And finally, quickly, how do you see the strike action continuing in the coming weeks as well, considering the response? Well, we are organizing a major mass rally on the 8th of January. We are inviting and calling all organizations and progressive individuals. We are doing it together with the Palestinian Support Committee, support organizations like the BDS, the Palestinian Solidarity Alliance, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, as well as SAFTA, that is one of the trade unifederations, and with FAU, is the other union that is also part of this strike. So we're calling a major mass meeting where we're going to kind of strategize in terms of how do we going to intensify the struggle against clover. We're also planning a major march to the offices of the Minister of Trade and Industry on the 13th of January, so that we can highlight the call for the disinvestment of CPC from South Africa. Thank you so much for talking to us. Okay. Thank you very much for having me. That's all your time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.