Summary notes from the Harold Wolpe Forumdebate of 23 October 2000ParticipantsPhillip Dexter (lead-in speaker), JohanMaree (respondent), Rob Davies, Shirley Walters, Rob Turrell, Mervyn Bennun,AnnMarie Wolpe, Norman Levy, Alex Lichtenstein, Sybil Lipschultz, ChrisTapscott, Dimiter Dimitrov, Richard Rosenthal, Neil Coleman, Stephen Heyns(rapporteur). ‘Is an accord between the government, business, community and labourdesirable and necessary for development in South Africa and what is the role ofNedlac in the structuring of such an accord?’
Philip Dexter,Executive Director, National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) The views expressed in these discussions by PhillipDexter are his own and should not be attributed to the South African CommunistParty (SACP), the African National Congress (ANC) or Nedlac. IntroductionNedlac is an institution created by a 1995Act of Parliament. Its predecessors, the National Manpower Commission and theNational Economic Forum, were set up largely in response to a strategy andpressure from the progressive trade unions and progressive sections of businessthat was exerted on then apartheid government. The ANC has always supported thenotion of social dialogue and welcomed and led the process of drafting legislationthat created Nedlac. Nedlac is a statutory body that brings togethergovernment, business, community and labour to negotiate and discuss anything ofa socio-economic nature.
Nedlac has representatives from civilsociety formations in the form of its community constituency. This last featuremakes Nedlac different to comparable tri-partite institutions in most othercountries. The International Labour Organisation and people in other countriesare paying a great deal of attention to this model of civil societyparticipation as organised social forces. Nedlac has four chambers – trade andindustry, development, the labour market, and public finance & monetarypolicy.
I have been executive director for a yearnow. My role is to run the secretariat, although I also have some ability tohelp shape agreements and discussions. Obviously, I have my own politicalbeliefs and affiliations and therefore have to be careful to be even-handed inmanaging the negotiating processes.
The National Manpower Commission (NMC), anadvisory body in which originally only white labour formations were representedalongside the apartheid government and business, preceded Nedlac. In the late1980s Cosatu forced its way into the NMC. Once the idea of institutionalisedsocial dialogue became accepted, the National Economic Forum (NEF) was set up.Although not a statutory body, it had the support of the government of the day,the ANC, as well as organised business and labour.
All this is supposed to make me sound asthough I am an authority on social dialogue! Although I am caricatured by someas a dogmatic Stalinist, by others simply as dogmatic, there will obviously bedifferent opinions on any such claim. I have, however, done a tremendous amountof reading in the last year to bring myself up to speed on issues pertaining tosocial dialogue both at home and abroad. It is more interesting than I hadexpected and the possibilities for successful outcomes through social dialoguecannot be easily dismissed. One recurring issue in my work is the perceivedneed for an accord between government, business, labour and the community toensure shared growth and social equity. The need for a socialaccord
There is nothing new about trying to putaccords into place, but in South Africa this has always been a vexed issue. Aminority of trade unions believe they should not bind themselves into anyagreements or accords with business and government. Those that agree to anyrole for institutions of social dialogue advocate using the institutions strategicallyto extract concessions from government and capital, while continuing to usemass mobilisation as the main driver of social transformation.
A second group, not that distinct from thefirst, is more pragmatic and believes both in engaging through institutions ofsocial dialogue that require unions’ active participation, but are hesitantwhen it comes to the notion of a social accord. This is because such accordshave traditionally been structured around limiting wages and prices, and thisis seen as this limiting the scope of unions to use their power to improveconditions and fight for the interests of workers.
Another view, not necessarily incontradiction with the above, is that some kind of an arrangement or series ofagreements between government, business, community and labour aroundsocio-economic issues is essential for growth and social equity. This requiresa negotiated approach to socio-economic transformation.
There are of course those in labour whoreject any notion of social dialogue and those that are not committed to anyform of mobilisation for direct action. These are obviously minority views thatdo no dictate any course of action in the labour movement. It is important to note that thesedisparate views are mirrored or echoed, for different ideological reasons ofcourse, in government, business and in the rest of civil society. There is,however, a recognisable consensus among the majority of leadership across theconstituencies that social dialogue and Nedlac are important and should besupported.
These different perspectives areessentially concerned with the same challenges that entering into such aprocess would bring. The caricature is that once agreements were struck, nomore involvement of the rank and file trade union membership or otherorganisational membership would be possible. I don’t think this would be thecase if the agreements are carefully structured and if they are a series ofagreements rather than one single accord. It also depends on what the tradeunions and community organisations do to involve their membership in theprocess of structuring such agreements.
We are dealing with enormous structuralproblems in our economy and an unequalled social deficit in South Africa.People have legitimate aspirations for some significant improvement to theirlives, and want access to opportunities and resources. There are othercountries with similar problems, but South Africa is somewhat unique that thereis a conscious group of fairly well-organised people, recently engaged indirect political action, who want these things put right before too long. Thereare sound arguments about the impossibility of any stability outside anegotiated approach to socio-economic transformation – the idea that, forexample, if you don’t get water, electricity and other basics to people theywill ultimately riot or engage in physical confrontation with theestablishment. Within the ANC alliance, some people would say unless we engagein negotiating socio-economic transformation, little economic success ispossible. Because we were able to negotiate a relatively peaceful transitionfrom apartheid, there is a generally favourable sentiment towards negotiatingsocio-economic transformation.
Any idea that the government is going toachieve its objectives and delivery targets without mobilising business, labourand the rest of civil society in support of its programme is really pie in thesky. The capacity of the state to transform and deliver without popularmobilisation is old-fashioned, but some people, even in government, still holdthat view. They see the state, or the state and private capital alone at best,as being able to achieve socio-economic development or, at worst, as being ableto ensure growth and eventually some participation for the marginalised and thepoor in the economy. The constituencies inNedlac
The business constituency – organisedbusiness – is not as representative as one would like to see. It is dominatedorganisationally and intellectually by a small group of people who essentiallyrepresent the interests of monopoly capital. Small business, emerging businessand black business are not as well represented as they need to be in terms ofdiscussions and decision making. Some of the reasons for this are historicaland others are simply due to a lack of resources, especially on the part ofsmall business. There is a consequently something of a disjuncture between whatis required of organised business and what it actually does. It may be that thenotion that business on its own is going to restructure this economy and thatorganised business will provide the intellectual framework still prevails incertain quarters. If that is so, it is a profoundly mistaken view.
Labour is fairly strong and well organised,but the trade union density is not enough to get everything the unions want outof any process of negotiations. The level of trade union organisation isremarkable given the history of trade unionism and repression against organisedworkers by the previous regime. There is a notion in some quarters that thestrategic capacity of the unions has been diminished by the departure ofcertain individual leaders into government. This view is an unfortunate, andquite frankly, patronising one.
What is true is that the challenges of thisnew period, in which the economy has been radically restructured in certainrespects, in which external shocks have had a negative impact on the economygenerally, and in which the general imperatives of globalisation are againstthe interests of workers, are immense. No organisations were prepared for theseprocesses and their impacts, least of all the trade unions and in certainrespects they have been on the back foot, as it were. But that is not tosuggest that anyone in government, business or the community has responded tothese challenges any better. It is just that the scoreboard tallies much morenegatively in terms of trade union membership and thus is seen as an indicationof the performance of the trade union leadership.
The community constituency is an unusual,loose body of organisations. While there are important social forces notrepresented in the community constituency, such as the churches andco-operatives, the fact that organised formations of civil society outside oflabour and business are included in Nedlac is an important opportunity tomobilise beyond labour, business and government. The community constituency hasfive sectors: the disabled (who are very well organised), civics, women’sorganisations (who are fairly weak), the rural development forum (which hascollapsed) and youth (which is fairly a vibrant if not always strategic group). Public and privateinvestment
Some strategic agreements that ensureprivate capital invests in the local economy are necessary. Domestic capital istrying to invest outside the country as much as possible. I receivedinformation that the amount of capital in funds which may be invested offshoremay increase from 15 per cent to 30 per cent. The government was somewhat naïveabout allowing companies to have their primary listings offshore. It acceptedthe argument of companies that offshore listings were necessary to get betteraccess to capital, but this has not been demonstrated in any tangible fashion.What has happened instead is a loss of capital, a loss of revenue forgovernment and a loss of prestige attached to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
I am not suggesting business should becomephilanthropists. A notion of shared growth – stakeholder capitalism – can bemarried with social equity. It allows for interfering with the process ofaccumulation by extracting material commitments from business to invest inSouth Africa. This would positively affect the way the country is viewedinternationally. It would also mean that government would be forced to make aparticular kind of commitment to spending that would also stimulate growth andequity. The fact that we have managed to stabilise our economy is anachievement, but this does not mean you have to accept the Growth, Employmentand Redistribution macroeconomic strategy (Gear) as the answer to all oureconomic problems. This view has led to a characterisation by some that Gearwas a necessary but not sufficient policy framework for economic growth. Theextra effort that is needed to drive growth can be best mobilised throughconcrete agreements between the Nedlac constituencies.
Through some kind of strategic engagementwith public and private capital, the chances of achieving greater economicgrowth and social equity to meaningfully address the social deficit becomespossible. There is scope for trade-offs, providing a commitment to expandingthe role of the public sector is extracted. For example, public worksprogrammes may require agreeing to low wages, but the trade-off will be lowerunemployment. Conclusion
Ireland has experienced phenomenal economicgrowth and increases in real wages over the last 20 years. This has beenpossible by increasing investment, enhancing people’s skills and thus enablingthem to access better jobs, and restructuring the tax regime. The benefits toworkers come through higher wages, and tax on lower paid workers is reduced. Itneeds to be said that Ireland was able to secure resources for socialdevelopment and skills training through the EU, a source of funding we do nothave access to. There are other examples – Holland, for example. The MillenniumCouncil was born of a visit of South African labour and business to some ofthese countries.
Two interesting points emerge for me: 1. I don’t think anyone who calls himself or herself a Marxist orbelieves in a socialist project has a blueprint for how to get from capitalismto socialism. This is a complex issue because we are talking about anengagement with capitalism that is essentially reformist in nature. That I thinkis fine, but if such a series of agreements were to become possible, itpresents the possibility that any progress towards socialism in my lifetime maywell be put on the back burner – development will take place within anessentially capitalist framework. Although Ireland has become a Mecca forventure capitalists, it has offered the possibility of socio-economicdevelopment and opportunities for ordinary people to improve their lives. Thisachievement is too important to dismiss lightly. 2. One of the key things in an accord would do is create accumulationopportunities for black people, in other words be a driver for black economicempowerment and the creation of black middle class or what some haveerroneously characterised as a patriotic bourgeoisie. But there is something ofa contradiction here. Although the process is driven largely by labour, one ofthe main beneficiaries would be a class of people who would probably ultimatelystand in opposition to the interests of labour. 3. I am not sure if I am in favour of one over-arching accord, but I amin favour of a series of strategic agreements. This presupposes that business,labour, community and government remain committed to an ongoing process ofinstitutionalised social dialogue. We are unique in having this arrangement ina developing economy. Such institutions are traditionally found in Europeansocial democracies. In the case of Nedlac, there are significant legislativepowers that force people into the process. In other countries, participation ininstitutionalised social dialogue is voluntary. The degree to which the processis voluntary or legislated needs to be considered in the future. Discussant’sinputJohan Maree,University of Cape TownI agree with a great deal of what Philliphas said. What are the goals of these accords? Why dowe need an accord? We will not get out of the hole we are in without it. Aprimary goal for me would be to get the country into a job-creating growthpath. We are losing jobs in the formal sector for two main reasons:
1. Trade liberalisation has opened us to the world economy and we arefacing challenges that were not there before. 2. Our years of isolation have made us inefficient. Resources, whichwere being used inefficiently, are being shaken out, and much new investment isin technology that reduces the need for labour.
There is a need for social partnership,given the current environment of a lack of trust. We need a society thatemphasises the need for partnership. Should this/these accord/s happen throughNedlac or in Nedlac? Is Nedlac just a facilitator? The Presidential Commissionon Labour Market Reform proposed that an institution like Nedlac should performsuch a facilitation function.
The state needs labour and business toimplement its policy instead of relying so heavily on macroeconomic tools. Thestate needs to get labour to moderate demands and business to invest in jobcreation. In Sweden this kind of corporatism worked for 40 years – at its peak,labour, the state and business were able to secure full employment in thatcountry through an agreement which included wage restraint and other measuresto achieve equity. The system worked until the public sector started organisingitself through unions which did not have the same interest in sticking to the agreedlevel of wages. The state then started to use economic tools, tightened itsbelt, and this led to a loss of jobs.
Does the National African Federated Chamberof Commerce (Nafcoc) not represent business interests unrepresented in Nedlac?The key assumption is that all constituencies will be bound by agreements madeat a forum like Nedlac. There is a problem with Business South Africarepresenting the business constituency – it was cobbled together and does nothave enough power to properly represent business.
Accords of this kind demand labour agreeingto stay wage demands. The state must give and take. If labour stays itsdemands, the state must make up for this by improving the social wage throughheavy spending in areas such as education, health and welfare. Can labourdeliver its constituency? Can the leaders hold the members to sticking toaccords? In Germany, the consultation collapsed because labour got tired ofadhering to what their leaders agreed on their behalf.
What about representivity – are theunemployed, the weak, the jobless, represented in Nedlac? The powerful tend tobreak through accords. Finance is the strongest partner. Often the financialsector, particularly that of the state, does not comply with the terms of anaccord. An example is the way the Department of Finance came up with Gear. Gearis a sound policy, but the process through which it was arrived at was wrong –there was no negotiation. How will it be possible to contain the strong andlift up the weak? Those with power get what they want. It requires great efforton the part of the state to continue to represent rural, weak and unemployedpeople.
From the point of view of the socialistproject – the kind of agreement we have talked about is a social partnershipagreement, based on accepting that labour and business are partners andessential to the process. If Cosatu did not push for Nedlac, it would notexist. But does Cosatu want to use Nedlac or the ANC alliance to achieve itsends? These are two quite different projects – one builds social democracy, theother is a strategy for achieving a more fundamental democratic socialism.Which will it be?
Nedlac gives constituencies powers to reachdecisions by consensus. All labour legislation, all significant socio-economiclegislation has to go to Nedlac. Parliament has autonomy, it has final power,but it has ceded some of its power to Nedlac. In his study of transitions todemocracy, Adam Przeworsky said a second transition, an economic one, isnecessary. He says the consolidation of a democracy will only be achieved ifall the major social forces work through an institution. Nedlac is such aninstitution. Questions,observations and commentsRepresentation inNedlac
· What about the community constituency– who is the voice of the sector, is having such a constituency not just goingthrough the motions? People may claim to speak on behalf of the community butnot in fact do so. · The community sector’s strength hasdeclined since 1994. What about the disenfranchised, the unemployed and therural? · The unemployed and the informal sectorrepresent more of the potentially employed people than organised labour does.The bulk of the population is not represented in this forum in the labour orthe community constituency.
Phillip: Theonly representative people in a democracy are those members of Parliament whohave to be directly elected. Regardless of how many people are included as partof organised labour or any other constituency, some will always beunrepresented. You don’t need labour to be represented 100 per cent in theNedlac organised labour constituency or 100 per cent of business to berepresented in Nedlac to get a good outcome. This is particularly true of thecommunity constituency. To some extent you have to say, ‘if you want to berepresented, get organised’. Two million disabled people are very wellrepresented as an interest group – in some ways they are the best-organisedinterest group outside of labour within Nedlac at the moment. If an interestgroup is unhappy about how they are represented (or not represented) they needto organise themselves. The theory is that sectors in social compacts usesocial compacts to advance their interests. For example, organised labour hassecured a very good labour relations framework for all South Africans.
The real problem comes in the class andsocial structure changes that are occurring in our society and the shift inpatterns of mobilisation and organisation. There has been a decline in socialmobilisation, and less participation in elections. Perhaps we have aromanticised view of how much success we had in mobilising people, for example,the idea that we had organised all the coloured people in the Western Cape. Theopportunities exist for representation, but not much is done to assist peopleto get organised and represent their constituencies. I argue that the ANC as apolitical organisation does represent unemployed people, and a wide variety andcross-section of the people as a whole. This doesn’t mean these groupingsshould not organise themselves independently. The strength of representation insocial dialogue is broader than Nedlac; it is in the general discourse, in thepages of newspapers and in other places. It would be a problem if Nedlac had aveto over government. At the moment, what Nedlac can do is make a very strongsuggestion in its input, based on the outcome of negotiations between Nedlacstakeholders. Legislators, for example, cannot easily ignore this. Taking account of theindividual circumstances of women
· I am interested to know about the roleof women in Nedlac. There is this notion of a community. But 52 per cent ofthem are women, and they are the people who bear the consequences of decisionstaken here and elsewhere. If you have a formalistic notion of ‘community’, youare relying on women to get organised in the same the way men get organised. · No serious attention has been paid towomen who constitute the rural poor, the unemployed, and the survivors at anindividual level. Mobilising these women is really crucial. · A number of these women who holdsociety together are unpaid workers. Society needs to compensate them for doingthe most important work – raising children. It is terrible that this goesunrecognised. They also do physical, unpaid labour. These people also lack timeand time is the most important requirement for becoming politically involved.You must go to them. Some lawyers are going out into the community to informpeople that they have property rights –people who would think it is toodifficult to go to a court, too overwhelming. These people do not have theluxury of time. It is overwhelming to take on the state. The style ofgovernment you are talking about in Nedlac was invented by women in the US andEurope at the turn of the 20th century. In the US they set up wageboards for women staffed by one feminist, one person from capital, and onerepresentative from the working women. The Supreme Court declared theseinstitutions unconstitutional, reverting to the old style of power relations.What they got under the New Deal was not nearly as powerful, or as sensitive toindividual circumstances. Blanket solutions will never work. You must take intoaccount people’s individual circumstances. A multi-layeredapproach is necessary
· The challenge is to think about socialaccords that enable people to participate without seeing consensus building asa romantic ideal. How do you mobilise people around issues like job creation?If representation is seen too formalistically, it only includes some people. Webrought together 70 people from the five higher education institutions in theWestern Cape, labour, government, business to discuss their economic role aspart of the ‘learning Cape’ pillar of the provincial government’s economicdevelopment strategy. This is an example of a way of getting people into layersto work on a common social project. A multi-layered approach to accords is morelikely to hold people. It is necessary to get people to buy in to an approach.We need to bring more people in to think about, for example, job creation – howfar we should look inside the country, and how far outside. This isconsciousness-raising approach rather than a formalistic one. Inwardindustrialisation
· Is there a possibility for extendinginward industrialisation as one possibility for growth? HIV/AIDS
· What has Nedlac done about HIV/AIDS?
Phillip:HIV/AIDS has been on our agenda for some time. Our HIV/AIDS code is nowcomplete. There were attempts on the part of business to get compulsory testingapproved, but this was unsuccessful. At each workplace, representatives ofemployers and employees must work out a strategy for dealing with the epidemic.Employers were reluctant to sign the code initially because they were afraidthat committing themselves would mean bearing huge costs in the workplace.There was also clear evidence in the discussions on HIV/AIDS of a continuing inracist perception of the problem, which sees only a black horde with AIDS. Someof the sentiments expressed on this issue were frightening. The agreement whichwas reached will now go to Parliament.
Securing thecommitment of capital
· In housing there was an agreement anda series of commitments on the part of capital, but capital has subsequentlywriggled out of this. · The government currently offersincentives to business up-front, but it does not impose any conditions toensure progress towards reducing the social deficit. · After World War II, social accordswere strongly state and labour-led, and there was strong post-warreconstruction. This presupposed patriotic capital and a convergence betweenthe vision of labour and that of the state. Gear is a package of incentivemeasures to business to invest – but none of the investment targets it proposedhave been met. There is a stalemate. We need to encourage public sectorinvestment and a social wage via the ANC alliance or Nedlac. We need a radicalsocial development project to achieve the objectives of the Reconstruction andDevelopment Programme. The state believed it was too weak to do reconstructionand development, so it relinquished control to capital. There is currently nobalance of forces. Business is far from a sense of pervading crisis and a needto reach an agreement. Business is too far away from the social reality ofsocial dislocation to respond appropriately.
Phillip:Business people say investment is about sentiment. Showing people there is anagreement on socio-economic transformation would be a powerful foundation forimproving sentiment, but one overarching agreement is unlikely. There is astalemate in the struggle between the key social forces – it is clear we arenot achieving our targets with regard to poverty eradication, job creation andso on. If we have government and powerful social forces ranged around importantissues (like Cosatu is organised around broader social issues, not only theeconomic issues affecting its members) we have an opportunity to do somethingqualitatively different. The big problem is that, in the current arrangement,there is no compulsion on business to participate in any national project.There has been some investment, but not in the way and at the kind of scalethat is required to really drive growth. The banks realise there is astalemate: this could be seen in their response to the recent SACP marches –they were all there to say they want to discuss the issues that were beingraised. The Americanexperience
· The New Deal under Roosevelt was atripartite accord. State capacity was weak until that point. The accord wasprovisional. Capital bided its time for 35 years until it could smash theaccord in the 80s. The accord was confined to regional industrial regions, nowknown as the rust belt. It left out the South, and had race and genderinequalities. It provided a minimum wage and an income grant to women withdependant children. The accord had many flaws – certain sectors andconstituencies were left out, and it may have strengthened the hand of capital.There were labour victories in the 1930s, but these have since been overruled.The social wage component was attached primarily attached to people belongingto strong unions, especially men. Labour was brought in only in the form oforganised labour, leaving out women, agricultural workers, domestic workers,and unorganised women in the South.
A basic income grantas part of a social wage
· The notion of a basic income grant hasbeen knocking about for years. It is the single best way of getting resourcesto people. Some process of agreements will be necessary to implement this. · Cosatu put a proposal on the agendafor a basic income grant in 1998. A commission of inquiry has now beenappointed under the leadership of Vivien Taylor to investigate the issue. Theproposal is for a universal income grant to all adults (not to households, thatis, to men). The idea is to get away from private health, private transport,private housing, medical aids, and private retirement funds. Cosatu has beenpushing away from the privatisation of these things. A public social wage wouldmassively lower the non-wage costs of labour. Unskilled wages form a very smallpart of wage costs in any case. Since 1994 increases in labour productivityhave far outstripped wages, and yet we are not getting more jobs. If we look atthe social wage package, we can get away from the idea that labour must acceptlower wages. · There have been such real increasesfor lower-paid workers in Scandinavia that they have to import lower skilledworkers. The role of Nedlac
· What Nedlac does after agreements arestruck? Oversight, monitoring, holding people accountable, especially when itcomes to issues of delivery (for example, housing and pensions? Phillip:Nedlac has moved from primarily making input legislation to doing moremonitoring work and engaging around strategic issues. I like the idea of aseries of accords, a rolling process of social dialogue as a way of ensuringgood governance. Some local authorities are coming to us to ask us to set upinstitutional mechanisms, but we do not have a budget for outreach activities. · How do you monitor and ensurecomplaints with agreements, especially since capital is represented by a smallsector?
Phillip:Because the agreements reached at Nedlac often go on to become legislation,some of them are easy to monitor, for example, the Basic Conditions of EmploymentAct. Others are more difficult. Government almost withdrew from the Nedlacchamber that deals with macro-economic policy, arguing it did not need tonegotiate this. The Jobs Summit, a series of agreement with some very goodcomponents, saw little implementation and no real commitment from the partiesafter the 1999 election. The constituencies could have ditched it, but decidedinstead to force themselves to go back to Nedlac and commit to implementingthese. Government has made commitments to housing project pilots, and there isa flurry of activity. Another example was the Buy South Africa campaign (toencourage ‘made in South Africa’ as a brand). Initially there was littleaction, now the parties have committed money to it, and it is being launched.When one of the constituencies is active, you see a result. There is animpending agreement between a trade union and a company in this respect. Nedlacpresents opportunities to bring things into the public arena. Trade unions wentthrough some difficulties, but are now mobilising themselves. There are manysmall victories. In one management meeting, labour asked about whether thegoods needed for the government’s taxi recapitalisation programme would comefrom South Africa. Government has had to promise to come back.
· Is Nedlac facilitator or controller?
Phillip:Nedlac is more than just a secretariat. At times detailed work is done there,at times the constituencies just use it to float issues. Nedlac is not animplementation agency. The people who represent the various constituencies havelearnt to use the institution intelligently.
Conclusion
Phillip: Wehave a fragmented and diverse society, a history of conflict coupled with hugesocio-economic inequalities. We need places to engage in debate. Parliament isone such place. There could be improvements in the way representation works inParliament through a constituency-based system, but the institution is a verygood one nonetheless. When the President set up working groups and business andlabour launched the Millennium Council, people said Nedlac is dead. When I wasinterviewed for the job of executive director, I asked the labour, business,community and government constituencies whether they were committed to it, andthey said yes, Nedlac is the primary institution for social dialogue. They havehonoured this pledge. These other developments are proof that our democracy ismaturing and that social dialogue is expanding. Workers have been talking tobosses for a long time – the idea of a high-level chamber for bilateraldialogue such as the Millennium Council is an extension of that. Would we bebetter off without Nedlac? One businessperson put it this way; ‘if we did nothave Nedlac we would have to invent it’. I agree with that sentiment. |
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