“I joined Autonomous because of unemployment,” said Nosipho Mpose (34). “Unemployment is too much in our community and I am one of those who are not working.” Autonomous is a new union of job seekers and poor workers in South Africa.
Nosipho is one of 7.2 million people looking for a job at a time when the economy lost more than half a million jobs over the last year and 3.1 million people have given up the search for a job. For a young, Black woman the situation is especially bad, as one in four young women are officially not in employment, education or training. The covid pandemic and lockdown have made things worse. Despite this, Nosipho is far from giving up.
“I am always looking for a job,” she said. “I am even trying to open my own business and I have been asking government to support me. When I go on Facebook, all I do is look for information about how I can get a job.”
In opinion polls South Africa’s poor, Black township residents have consistently identified unemployment as a priority issue. Yet there are relatively few protests and organisations focused on the conditions of unemployment and job seeking specifically. Part of the reason for this is that it is not easy for job seekers to know who to address their demands to. Government and big business may seem like obvious targets, but to succeed with demands for millions of jobs that pay living wages will take big, fierce struggles involving millions of people. Job seekers do not have movements with that kind of capability right now.
Nosipho is one of a small group of job seekers who came together in Autonomous with the aim of creating such movements over time. Their present focus is to formulate demands and organise actions that can help them win jobs and resources from government and big business in the short term. They understand that the demands and actions need to be in line with the current state of both Autonomous and the general struggle of job seekers. In other words, it must be winnable and doable by small groups with little resources. The idea is that such victories will attract and inspire more job seekers to join the union or create their own organisations, which will help open up the way towards the mass movements needed for victory over the capitalist system.
Over the last few months, Nosipho and other Autonomous members have gotten together every two weeks in order to discuss demands, tactics and actions. “Autonomous is a good thing,”she says. “It gives young people hope because we learn to know our rights and how to fight for them.”
“One of the things I really like about Autonomous is that we bring job seekers and workers together. When we demand jobs from a company, we first get the workers there on our side so they know we want the company to appoint more people. We don’t want the jobs of the workers who are already there. We are saying they are working too much and more people are needed, so appoint us as well. So it is a win-win for both job seekers and workers.” End.
Sources
Quarterly Labour Force Survey Quarter 1: 2021, Stats SA