 Kapkaupungin edustalle rakenteilla oleva Green Pointin stadion vetää valmistuttuaan 68 000 katsojaa. |
Mikko Myller, Johannesburg, text and photos
Translated by Linus Atarah
South Africa is preparing to host the World Championship Football tournament in 2010. The trade union movement wants more decent working conditions for workers building the stadiums.
Bafana Bafana, i.e., Boys, Boys! is South African’s great pride. In two years time when the country hosts the World Football Championship in 2010, South Africans are proud of their boys more than before. Bafana Bafana is South Africa’s national football team.
Football is the number one sport in the country whose more fanatical supporters live in poor slums of the cities known as townships. During apartheid football even invaded the more closed Robben Island, where Mandela and his colleagues were held prisoners. The prisoners succeeded in organizing a football league composed of nine teams. According to Tony Suze, who sat for 15 years in prison on the island, "football sustained the spirit of resistance in us".
Many of the former prisoners are today South Africa’s leaders. That is partly the reason why to South Africa, the World Football championship is an enormous national project.
A preliminary government report published in March estimated that up till this time 1.6 billion Euros have been spent in building infrastructure for the games. The money has been used among other things, in improving public transportation and telecommunication.
Among them is construction of the Gautrain railway station between Johannesburg and the capital Tshwane (former Pretoria) – its timetable is badly behind schedule. In spite of the government’s pledge there are suspicions about the capability of South Africa to organize the games. Costs have already risen far above what has been planned.
Some of the visible projects are football stadia. The tournaments are going to be played in 10 arenas whose renovation or construction have been estimated to cost 2.3 billion Euros. The state will cover a bigger part of the costs.
The final match will be played in the 100 000 capacity Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. For the purpose of the games five stadiums will be renovated and five new built altogether. According to government estimates construction work will generate 20 000 new jobs. All in all it is estimated that the games will generate 160 000 new jobs. This is a considerable number in a country suffering 40 per cent unemployment.
Also the International Football Federation (FIFA) has said a lot about how the games would increase social justice. Even though the choice of South for the tournament was based on continental rotation, FIFA President Sepp Blatter has often placed emphasis on how South Africa’s development could be enhanced with the help of the games.
Timetable problems
The last (non-political) prisoners left Robin Island in 1996. If prisoners had been left on the Island their view to the main land would have been changed. The newest and most visible change is the rising 68 000-capacity Green Point stadium in the vicinity of Cape Town. The stadium’s construction timetable has created repeated problems for the contractors. It is still not certain whether Green Point will meet the timetable before the end of next year.
In order to speed up the completion of construction works, construction firms Murray & Roberts as well as WBHO offered extra bonus at the beginning of the year to their workers if Green Point’s preliminary goals are ready before the deadline. The firms have calculated that if the bonus programme succeeds the stadium would be ready in six months ahead of schedule in the best case scenario.
The proposal aroused local trade union members who vociferously criticized the companies’ proposals. They threatened to strike. Trade unionists charged that the bonus proposal was fraudulent. They calculated that if the stadium gets completed six months ahead of schedule the employer would save about half a million Euros from salary expenses of 2000 workers. Thus at the bottom of it all the bonus system would be taken out of workers incomes.
In addition people working for subcontractors who make up about 70 per cent of the stadium construction workers would not have been included in the bonus system.
The companies have also tried to speed up construction work by urging workers to work overtime. In practice the overtimes are half compulsory.
“Part of the workforce was not informed that the overtimes are voluntary. They were simply informed that you will work late”, says Eugenia Peter, shop steward of the local building workers union BCAWU.
The employer could also have forced workers to work late by a very simply means, by resorting to bus transportation.
“A large majority of the workers live far off in the townships where the employer has provided transportation. When the bus departure was delayed by two hours workers were left with no alternative but to remain at the work place”, says Peter.
“Too long working days have led to a situation whereby work efficiency has gradually declined. The benefit of overtime is continuously diminishing”, says one shop steward.
Building workers among the poorest workforce
Green Point is not an isolated case. Similar and more serious examples are found in all construction sites. For this reason the Building and Wood Workers International (BWI), the trade union representing the construction sector and its South African member unions began a joint campaign last year named Decent Work Towards and Beyond 2010
The campaign wants to sound a reminder that new jobs and salary per se are not enough. Workers should also receive fair treatment at the new jobs. The goal is to ensure that decent work is guaranteed in all construction works of the world football championship.
South Africa’s construction workers are among the worst income earners. Only agricultural workers earn less than them on the average. Even though the country’s economic situation has been positive within the last few years, there has been hardly any progress in the incomes of construction workers
The minimum wage of construction workers is about 80 cents, i.e., 160 Euros a month. There was a slight increase in purchasing power during the last salary raise. The rise in food process in its aftermath brought down purchasing power below to the level before the salary raise. A highly skilled person can earn even up to 400 Euros a month.
Better living conditions for immigrant workers
A large portion of construction workers are immigrants from Zimbabwe or Mozambique, still several others without proper documents into the country.
“They are often assigned to the most difficult and dangerous work. Due to their status they dare not join a trade union or in any in other way defend their rights”, says Peter.
”Some of them are also paid below the agreed wages or overtime work is left unpaid. These issues are difficult to verify later since agreements are almost ways made verbally”.
Alongside salaries, some of the big problems of construction work are related to work protection. The biggest part of the risks is familiar in all construction work around the world. Alongside instances of deaths, some of the bigger problems are weakening hearing or becoming deaf, illnesses arising from earth trembles, back injuries and breathing problems. A joke of South Africa’s construction workers is the number infecting HIV/AIDS which is even higher than the nation’s alarmingly high average.
Visitors to Green Point are gladly shown the high level of protection that exists at the construction site. Each worker must go through a one-and-half-hour course where risk prevention is thought using the most basic examples. Supervisors say with pride that they have zero tolerance in relation to risks.
But to workers the situation is not that clear cut.
“Although according to workers working directly for main contractors, the situation is better than the national level, the same conditions do not hold for those working for subcontractors. Everyone, surely, participates in the courses. However, dozens of languages are spoken at the construction site and many do not understand a word in the course. The course’s benefit remains minimal. For the same reason work supervision is very difficult”, says one shop steward.
”At the construction site work protection overseers are chosen by the employers, even though according to the law, that should be a joint decision by the workers and employers.
The construction site had managed to avoid accident related deaths up till December, at the time of my visit to South Africa.
Competition for workers
The level of workers organisation at Green point is low just like South Africa’s other construction sites.
”At the moment about five per cent of the workers belong to trade a trade union. Our goal is 30 per cent. It is difficult to go beyond that”, Eugenia Peter admits
The fundamental problem is that very few workers stay for long at a construction site. A tiny portion of the workers are permanent. The interest of temporary workers to organize is far less than that of permanent skilled workers. Many immigrant workers simply fear the consequences of being fired for organising.
The problem is that there are three different unions competing for the souls of workers and the relationship between them or outcomes are often not being the best.
“Companies are continuously competing for trade unions with different agreements. It creates friction between us”, says Peter.
Construction of the stadiums will continue for about a year. Already now it can be seen that the campaign of the trade union movement has produced positive results.
“We have opened up contacts with different construction work places around South Africa. When we began contacts were non-existent”, leader of the trade union joint campaign Eddie Cottle says.
"Our visibility has increased considerably. The voice of construction workers is being heard, thanks to the games."
This does not hold only in South Africa. Even a brief look at articles on the games on the internet there indicates that are surprisingly a sentence or two too much about the work conditions of the stadiums).
On the other hand, the campaign’s practical impacts are difficult to evaluate at this point.
“Working conditions have not improved significantly. Salary level is low. The state authorities at the moment are more interested in the success of the games than improving the situation of workers”, Cottle adds.
What about Bafana Bafana? How will the team fair in its home grown? As hosting nation it has automatic place in the tournament but the signs are not so good. The national team has progressively won fewer and matches. South Africa is 71 on FIFA ranking while Finland is 35. What is certain is that the first match of the tournament will be played in Cape Town Green Point stadium on June 21 2010.
