There are times when a long running conflict between an employer and trade unions and their members has to be reckoned with in a conflictual manner.
It is not unusual for tensions to simmer for years, resulting in periodic strikes, lawful or unlawful. The employer capitulates for peace and stability.
An example is the Eskom strike in 2022 which led to stage 6 load shedding. It was unlawful, violent and resulted in an unaffordable wage increase Eskom and its ministers capitulated into giving. Inevitably the same circumstances recur the following year and the taxpayer is liable for the money.
At some point the only way to deal with such conflict is to stare it down, irrespective of the short term costs. In the case of employer/ employee scenarios, the employer has to rebalance the power in the relationship between it and the union.
This is what the Cape Town City Council did with the taxi strike. The taxi industry and its national body, the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco), were opposed to the disruptive impounding of taxis for legal infringements (where issuing fines had clearly had little effect).
Santaco decided to strike. As is usual with taxi strikes, this one led to death, injury, destruction of property and other crime. And the industry gets away with it time and again because of its importance. This has happened for over 20 years.
There is no explicable reason why taxis should be exempt from the rules of the road, given their responsibilities for taking care of the lives of passengers.
If the modus operandi of the industry relies on law-breaking to achieve a profit through too many trips being needed to make any money, then the business model is flawed and Santaco should be doing something about it; that should be its job.
* Sara Gon, Institute of Race Relations.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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