The Clover Strike Solidarity Campaign, run by Clover workers and strike supporters, has called for an international day of action in support of the strike. The Workers and Socialist Party, along with International Socialist Alternative are calling on trade unionists, community activists, women and young people to mobilise as many working class people as possible to take part in an international day of working class solidarity in this ongoing struggle against a multinational company who are trying to sack 1,500 workers.
Workers are demanding:
- No austerity measures
- No job losses
- 10% wage increase
- The disinvestment of MILCO/CBC
- Nationalisation of Clover on the basis of democratic workers control and management as an alternative to the hostile and imperialist MILCO take-over and dismembering of Clover, factory closures and job losses.
Clover workers are in their third month on strike against factory closures, a jobs bloodbath, wage cuts and their racist, right-wing bosses. Milco SA, a consortium led by Israel’s Central Bottling Company (CBC), purchased a majority stake in highly profitable Clover in 2019. The Clover workers opposed the takeover on the basis that CBC and Milco operate in the occupied Palestinian territories. Through their strike, workers have demonstrated solidarity with Palestinian masses in their struggle against the colonial occupation of their territories.
Despite its claims of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, the ANC goverment approved the merger on the basis of Clover’s alleged “job creation”. Clover has since dismantled this project; all 500 new jobs promised are gone. Their restructuring project, Sencillo, has instead been brought forward and over 2 000 jobs have already been lost. Further factory closures, relocations and restructuring add almost 1500 more jobs on the chopping block, in the context of 46% unemployment in South Africa.
Decent jobs for all! No to xenophobia and scapegoating!
The flames of xenophobia are being opportunistically stoked by politicians like Julius Malema and state-sanctioned by the ANC government itself through the denial to renew the Zimbabwe Exemption Permits. Their anti-immigrant stances seek to shift the blame from those responsible for skyrocketing unemployment – the big corporations and their allies in government – onto the most oppressed and exploited people in society. In its refusal so far to decisively put an end to the factory closures and jobs bloodbath inflicted by multinational companies like Milco, the ANC is exposing that it is not only on the side of the bosses, but it will assist them in their efforts to divide the working class.
This divide-and-rule strategy will be accompanied by escalated xenophobic instigation. Claims will be made of “putting South Africans first” for jobs, houses etc – nothing could be further from the truth. We are one working class and weakening one section weakens us all. South African workers must not concede a millimetre to this division – the answer is instead to fight together against racism and xenophobia, for equal pay for equal work, living wages, decent working conditions, housing, health care, education and services for ALL.
The demand of nationalisation of Clover under worker and community control is critical here, because it is through nationalising large-scale agriculture, manufacturing, mining etc. that we can put the wealth currently in the capitalist’s hands to use to address the needs of all working class and poor people in South Africa, no matter where they were born.
Rolling mass actions pressure the bosses
The strike has consisted of pickets and marches since it began on 22 November 2021. Both unions; FAWU and GIWUSA along with the organisations in solidarity with the Clover workers, including WASP, have maintained a rolling mass action programme in the spirit of non-violence for the workers to achieve their demands. Led by an understanding that this is a working class struggle that can only be won through organised and disciplined actions, the Solidarity Campaign has tirelessly worked to build the broadest, international solidarity and support possible, while also campaigning for a consumer boycott of all Clover products for the duration of the strike. The boycott has seen activists removing Clover products from shelves across the country, and some small business owners have refused to stock these products in solidarity.
These principled methods of escalating the strike have pushed Clover and its supporters to attempt to crush the strike by any means necessary. After the January 8th Mass Meeting in Hillbrow, WASP received reports that workers cars’ had been fire bombed, and shop stewards had received intimidating phone calls and visits demanding an end the strike. Clover illegally withheld worker’s bonuses to starve them out during the strike, and this week lodged desperate court applications to stop the consumer boycott and declare the strike illegal. On 18 January, while striking workers were queuing for food parcels, Clover’s private security fired rubber bullets and teargas at the workers outside Clover’s Clayville plant. WASP condemns this use of violence and intimidation to break the strike, but we are not surprised that these methods are becoming more desperate.
When Clover bosses cut the benefits of workers still reporting for duty to instigate more divisions in the workforce to end the strike, it only revealed their heartlessness and those workers have now joined the picket lines.
International solidarity to fight imperialism
In recent weeks there have been massive shows of solidarity, locally and internationally. Workers organised under CSAAWU have picketed against Clover using their factories for production in South Africa. Elected officials like Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant (USA), and Member of Irish Parliament Mick Barry are amongst over 130 organisations, elected officials, trade unionists and activists that have endorsed the solidarity statement on the strike. Palestinian New Unions and the Palestinian Farmers Union have also pledged support. This show of solidarity has boosted the strike, and highlighted its international character.
The struggle against Clover is a struggle against a multinational corporation that uses imperialist tactics to grow its profits. CBC Israel is linked to Coca Cola internationally – it manufactures Coca Cola products and sells them. Along with taking over the dairy industry in South Africa and running operations in Atarot industrial settlement in occupied East Jerusalem, it has also bought factories in Turkey, Uzbekistan and Romania. Coca Cola tries to distance themselves from CBC’s involvement in the occupation of Palestine by hiding behind a “franchise” business model, and using the same language Milco used in the Clover take-over: job creation. These expansions have nothing to do with creating jobs and helping communities. They are part of the imperialist system where multinational companies owned by wealthy families seek the cheapest labour, the biggest markets, the highest profits, especially in the neo-colonial world. This comes at the expense of local farms, manufacturing and communities, and slashes the jobs in these areas.
But CBC Israel does not limit itself to imperialist expansion – they have also donated to the far right group Im Tirtzu in Israel, which McCarthyist which-hunt campaigns against Palestinians and Israeli left activists. While receiving $15,000 from CBC, Im Tirtzu had a crowd funding campaign to buy bottles of Coca-Cola for Israeli Army soldiers from CBC! This is a scandalous cooperation. This comes as no surprise to us, as the Wertheimer family that owns the CBC also owns the Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank. This bank gives loans to construction companies that operate in the colonial settlements, and is yet another example of the CBC’s links to the illegal and inhumane military occupation of Palestinians.
With its involvement in the occupation of Palestine, funding Im Tirtzu, and brutal exploitation of black workers in South Africa, CBC Israel is a racist, right-wing corporation whose imperialist tactics must be fought with the broadest international working class solidarity possible.
Mobilise for the 27th of January!
We are calling on workers at factories owned by CBC Israel – in Tel Aviv, Turkey and Uzbekistan – to stand with their fellow exploited workers in South Africa and organise solidarity actions like pickets or protests for the 27th of January.
Our comrades in the International Socialist Alternative will be targeting South African embassies and consulates to put pressure on the ANC government to reverse this hostile takeover by Milco and nationalise Clover under democratic worker and community control. We will also be targeting Coca Cola head offices and factories to make public what Coca Cola keeps trying to cover up – their direct links to the brutal exploitation of people in the neo-colonial world for the sake of profits. We are calling on workers, communities and young people across the world to show your solidarity with this struggle and with the people of Palestine in the same way. Share photos of your actions on social media under the hashtag #CloverStrike.
It is clear Clover/Milco bosses are feeling the heat. While they have tried to quietly dismember the productive capacity in South Africa, and secure their market share, the world has started talking about the #CloverStrike. They are losing in the courts, and they have had to concede their brand is becoming tainted in the international public eye – for the first time in 3 months they have agreed to meet with the unions and government. Now is the time to increase this pressure to ensure an emphatic victory for the Clover workers and for the working class internationally.
