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A mandate is a democratic decision taken by workers that binds representatives to a course of action. They are collectively agreed upon instructions and parameters from workers for union leaders to follow. Any changes to the collective mandate must be taken back through the collective decision-making process.
Mandates are often used in collective bargaining campaigns to set a collective goal prior to bargaining. In this situation, the mandate set collectively by the workers must be met or workers will strike or demonstrate.
A mandate can be very specific as to the exact wage increase workers must receive. Mandates can also set other standards, such as no worker will be worse off from these negotiations, no cutbacks or layoffs will be accepted, or all workers must make at least a certain wage, or causal workers must be made permanent.
Another example of a mandate would be if workers collectively agreed to send a mandate for minimum of 50% women leaders to a union event or to designate a specific number of youth leadership positions on the union’s executive board.
The difference with a mandate and a ‘political decision’ is that a mandate is a demand or instruction coming from workers. A “political decision” taken by union leaders occurs when the decision comes from upper structures top-down.
During negotiations, a mandate can help limit arbitrary behaviour of union leaders in negotiations. It can also help workers contrast the outcome of negotiations with objectively defined and collectively agreed to goals.
To create a mandate, workers need a union environment where they are encouraged and invited to bring their views and where these are listened to with respect. It is not possible for workers to give their mandates if they do not have a place to participate.
You might want to create a designated workshop with a goal of collectively consolidating the demands of the workers in your organising campaign into one document that is collectively agreed to and becomes a mandate.
In SATAWU, the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union, general membership meetings are held once a month at the workplace.
All members attend and shop stewards are elected to four-year terms. Workers set the policy and campaign priorities. Together, they decide the negotiations mandate, the fall-back position for negotiations, and the point at which they will strike.
SATAWU is driven by mandate. All elected leaders have a recall process. For example, if elected stewards do not follow the workers’ mandate they can be recalled with a majority vote at the monthly general meeting.
ITF Organising Manual, page 37
At the OR Tambo airport in Johansburg, workers came together from a variety of workplaces and types of work to discuss how to set standards of work and organisational rights at the airport. They researched and discussed what the standards should be.
To deepen thinking about how to get a mandate, and to go beyond simply saying “call a general meeting,” participants discussed the following questions:
“Investigating the Workplace: A Powerful and Challenging Approach to Airport Organising”. Satawu, Naledi and IHRG Participatory Action Research project at OR Tambo International Airport (2011-2014).
The Unified Workers‘ Central (Central Única dos Trabalhadores, CUT) of Brazil, one of the world’s largest trade union federations, the most important in Latin America, and the country’s most representative, in 2015 implemented a mandate for gender parity in its decision-making bodies at national and state levels.
Female workers have acquired associational and institutional power and have extended the social power of the CUT, which legitimates itself as a defender of women’s rights.
In 2005, the Central Working Committee of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, set up a membership recruitment committee with the mandate to develop programmes and activities to strengthen union organising in factories, and with a specific mandate to develop strategies for informal sector organising.
The committee developed the framework and organised series of meetings with tailors in Lagos that led to the initial recruitment of self-employed tailors there. Initially, the committee comprised of CWC members, but was later expanded to include a select group of Nigeria Union of Tailors officials in Lagos, who collaborated in drawing up the framework and programme of action.
The recommendations of the Committee formed the basis of the constitutional amendment in 2008 and the subsequent organising processes of the self-employed tailors.
In 2016, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, NUMSA was bargaining in the car manufacturing and motor sector, and as such organised a bargaining conference in March to collect demands of workers in that sector.
The procedure of collecting demands is a bottom-up process and controlled by the workers. As Hlokoza Motau puts it: “Our shop stewards from the plants from those sectors will meet with members and say, ‘What issues do you want to put forward for bargaining this year?’. Those demands will go to a local shop-stewards council where you bring shop stewards from different plants and then decide as a local what are the demands to be bargained on for 2016. And those demands then will go to the region, from the region will go to the National Bargaining Conference. And at the National Bargaining Conference we will adopt what we call national demands, which will be placed in front of all the employers. We can’t place different demands, we only place those demands.”
In which areas might the union benefit from a collective mandate?
If the collective mandate is not met, what will the process be?
