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SA/Israeli unions hit it off big in Cape Town
ANT KATZ
The meeting, says Bagraim, had been most successful and the issue with regard to the BDS movement came up. Both the SA and Israeli unions “certainly all pledged to help counter this”, says Bagraim.
RIGHT: Michael Bagraim is the immediate past president of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, He is also the Opposition’s deputy shadow minister of labour
Two South African trade union leaders were present, as was the president of The Chamber of Commerce & Industry of the Cape, a representative from the Commission for Conciliation Mediation & Arbitration (CCMA) and representatives of WIZO and the Zionist Federation.
The principal of United Herzlia Schools welcomed the trade unionists from Israel to Cape Town.
Israeli unions looking out for Palestinians
Said Bagraim afterwards: “The discussion was extremely useful in the sense that the local trade unions could see that the Israeli trade unions were doing everything in their power to ensure that Palestinians found jobs and remained in employ.”
This, he said, was a completely fresh and interesting outlook to the Israeli boycott movement.
The Israeli trade unions held out a hand of friendship to the local trade union movement and invited them to visit Israel during the course of 2015.
“With the help of the Israeli Ambassador to South Africa, we will arrange such a visit,” Bagraim (who is also a DA MP and the Opposition’s deputy shadow minister of labour) told Jewish Report. “Engaging with this Israeli trade union delegation could open many more doors in South Africa.”
Internal Cosatu politics aired at conference
Speaking at an international trade union conference, the fourth UNI World Indaba, in Cape Town on Tuesday, Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi also bemoaned the fissures that have spread through the country’s largest trade union federation, but nonetheless held up hope that these wounds would heal and Cosatu would regain its former glory.
On Monday Cosatu president, S’dumo Dlamini made it clear that even with the ANC’s intervention, the expulsion of Numsa could not be reversed.
In his speech Vavi told the international trade unionists that Cosatu was paralysed, with the roots of the division lying squarely in differing approaches to the ongoing triple crises of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
The meeting at Bagraims last Sunday
Ray Wolder
Dec 13, 2014 at 10:30 am
‘Brilliant!! More power to you all. One of the few shining lights in a forest of negativity, cruelty and loss of innocent lives. May your deliberations bring peace and a positive settlement to a world in turmoil.’
david
Dec 28, 2014 at 2:05 am
‘I cannot help feeling that the ‘many more Doors that could open in SA’ could just as easily be the doors that hit you in the bum on the way out.
I believe that getting into bed with unions of any ilk, in any country, is a walk down a path with snakes of all kinds. Unions have the regular propensity to be led by self serving, power building, interests, who become self anointed ‘politicians’, very rarely fulfilling the function of improving the lot of workers as much as their own.
Thuggery, more often than not, rears it’s ugly head with almost invariably extra financial benefits, only for the ‘leaders’ or executives of the unions.’