The Story Of

PROCESSED THE STORY OF 1 F th e CAPE TOWN ~[ r d e u n i o n j LIBRARY CONTENTS Part One : Page: 2 How the workers make the bosses rich. Part Two Page: 4 How the workers fight the bosses. Part Three Page: 8 How the state is a tool of the bosses Part Four Page: 11 How the workers organise against bosses. Part Five Page: 13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Workers and the women’s struggle We wish to express our sincere thanks to all those people who Part Six Page: 16 have sacrificed their time and Who are the friends of the workers energy to produce Jane G. We recognise their commitment to the Part Seven Page: 19 workers’ struggle reflected by the many hours of voluntary What is the role of the working class work. Without access to the many photographs and graphics from Part Eight Page: 23 various progressive publications this series wouldnot have been How the workers fight for their children. possible. COPYRIGHT? Prepared and published by You are free to reproduce all The C.A.L. Media Collective or parts of this booklet for Copies obtainable from:: educational and non-profit purposes. CAPE ACTION LEAGUE 701 Atlantic House 16 Corporation Street Cape Town. 8000 Published 1989. Phone :(021) 461-1509 INTRODUCTION The story of Jane G has its roots in the daily experiences of an ordinary black working mother living in South Africa/Azania. She is the mother you meet at the bus stop, meet in the taxi, talk to at the corner shop or prayer meeting. In this series, Jane G’s struggle is typical of the millions of workers suffering a similar fate in our country. Jane speaks of the hardship she faces under the exploitative cycle of earning low wages and paying high rents. The burden of working long hours and paying high prices for basic food in order to look after her family. She finds relief by joining the Clothing Workers’ Union which organises workers at the Rex-Tex factory where she works. As time passes, jane participates in the debates and discussions affecting the lives of workers at Rex-Tex, She realises that the only way she can protect and advance workers rights is to build a strong membership at the factory. But her greatest liberating experience is the strike at Rex-Tex. Her involvement in the mass actions against the Labour Relations Amendment Act helps her understand that the real cause of her suffering is not apartheid but the entire system of racial capitalism. When workers are asked to support the rent boycott, Jane sees the link between factory and community struggles. She realises that factory struggles are part of a much wider struggle for worker democracy. Increasingly, Jane becomes more involved in the CWU and finds it difficult to do her job as a machinist, care for her family and participate in her union. As she becomes armed with new ideas, she is no longer intimidated by the bosses ’fear tactics’ about politics and joins the Cape Action League. As a member of the CAL, she grapples with many important ideas before she is convinced that the building of a democratic worker republic can remove poverty, low wages, ignorance and disease and the many ills of the racial capitalist system. Jane G, first appeared as a series in Solidarity, the mouthpiece of the Cape Action League. The series was read by activists in community, student, youth and worker organisations. At the request of our readers, the Cape Action League decided to publish the series as a booklet. The book is written in easy English in order for it to be used by workers and their allies as an instrument for active struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation ------ FORWARD TO SOCIALISM------ i PART ONE Jane G works at a clothing factory in Cape she now has. Or sometimes when the price of Town. Like most clothing workers, she is excited one of these items is increased, she cannot make on a Friday afternoon when she gets her pay ends meet for a long time. packet. Like most clothing workers, she also wonders What Jane does not know is that her pay why she gets so little money for the hard work that packet is not an accident. She is but one of many she does. She always reads her Union’s news millions who find themselves in a similar position. letter where she discovered that the bosses in the They are all part of the same system. All those clothing industry always people in South Africa who make very large profits. So work for wages have the she has often asked herself same kinds of problems. why it is that the bosses do Whether they work in cloth not give the workers more ing factories or any other wages. kind of factory, whether they work in offices, on farms, in Jane has two little children, the mines, in shops oron the a boy Themba and a little girl docks: they are all wage- Amilcar. With the wages she earners. They all work for a earns, she can just about boss or a company which is manage to pay for all the owned by two or more things that she has to buy or bosses. Sometimes the pay for every week. bosses employ many These wage goods include people who don’t even know the following items: one another. All those * food people who have to work for * clothing wages help to produce * rent/electricity/water profits for the bosses in one * bus fares/train fares way or another. * creche fees * furniture HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? * medical expenses * entertainment Here is a simple explanation. In real life, the answer is much more difficult to find because After she has paid for these things, Jane things are not so straightforward. But when we usually finds that she has no more money left have dropped all the frills, this is what the picture over. She cannot save anything for a rainy day. looks like. In fact, she often has too little money especially STEP 1 when she has to buy an expensive piece of The workers are forced to go to work so that furniture such as the little black and white TV set they can feed their families. 2 STEP 2 The bosses own the factories, the mines, the farms and all other means of producing the goods that we need to live in the world of today. STEP 3 As a result, the workers sell to the bosses their ability to work (or labour power), no matter what product they will be making. (Jane G, of course, helps to make clothes). In most South African businesses today the workers have to work at least 8 hours per day for five days a week. Some work longer hours and for 5 and a half days a week. STEP 4 Let us imagine that in one week, a worker such as Jane produces about R200 worth of goods. Jane, however only gets R100 per week. Her wages (of R100,00) per week, as we have seen, are just enough to cover her expenses if she doesn’t buy any ‘unnecessary’ things. STEP 5 So she has produced R100 extra (or surplus). This surplus is pocketed by the bosses as a profit. When we multiply this surplus by millions of wor kers who are employed in the factories, in the mines, on the farms and elsewhere, we get some idea of the amount of surplus value that is pro duced by the working class Solidarity in our country. STEP 6 the workers to work for no pay for part of the day, We can ask: the bosses create a system of capitalist exploita But hasn’t the tion. Exploitation of the workers is, therefore the boss robbed essential part of this system of the bosses, which Jane of the we cail the capitalist system. extra R100 Later we shall see how it comes about that a that she has few people in this system become bosses whiie produced? the great majority are forced to become workers. T-; Clearly, it would have been enough for Jane if she had worked for only 4 hours per day. This INSIDE The answer to the ques would have had the extra benefit to her of allow tion is a firm ing her to spend more time with little Amilcarand NO! Be with Themba. And she would have been less cause, as the tired at the end of the day and at the end of the system works, week.But if she had done this, she would (accord READ A WORKERS’ NEWSPAPER according to ing to the rules of the game) have been ‘robbing’ ‘the rules of the the boss because she would not have worked for game’ Jane agreed, by contract, to work 8 hours the full time of her contract, that is, for 8 hours a per day. Remember, she sold her ability to work day or 40 hours a week. (her labour power) to the boss. And so, the hundreds of workers at Jane’s So the boss is the owner of that ability of (all) factory together produce the huge profits of their the 8 hour day and the 5 day week. All that the company. And the millions of workers in South bosses can be accused of is that they exploit the Africa together produce the great wealth which workers: the capitalist class of bosses enjoy in South Africa In other words, by taking control of the surplus (and in all other capitalist countries in the world).

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