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The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] is convening it’s National Policy Conference as from the 26th -29th June 2019, at Birchwood Hotel, Boksburg, Gauteng Province.

This conference will be attended by more than 380 delegates drawn from all levels of the union including all 43 regions, 9 provinces, current and former National Office Bearers [NOB’s] from founding up to the current, alliance partners [ANC, COSATU, and the SACP], World Federation of Trade Union (WFTU), international guests, Progressive Youth Alliance in particular SASCO and YCLSA, partners and friends.

The National Policy Conference is convened to review the Strategic Policy Framework [SPF] of the union adopted in June 1997, three years after the 1994 democratic breakthrough. The SPF is our main strategic perspective that explains our medium term strategy and goals as they relate to our broad transformative objectives. At the same time it serves as our principal guideline for our strategies to resolve the immediate workplace challenges that face our members and also the broader working class.

The policy conference therefore, will reinforce this perspective considering the changing environment in society and workplace where our members shape and are shaped by these changes. The SPF will be strengthened as our main organising tool as well as our main reservoir of practical programmes and policy positions to change our sectors and society in general taking into account our historical concrete conditions and prevailing material conditions in anticipation of the future. Indeed, delegates at this conference will be tasked with developing a plan for the next decade in relation to working class internationalism, the national political situation, socio economic priorities such as health, education, political economy and the creation of a single public service including organisational imperatives such as quality service to members, growth and improvement of our basic unit as instrument to represent members at the workplace including improving capacity of our shop stewards.  

On the first day the conference will be addressed by the leadership of the tripartite alliance and the World Federations of Trade Unions [WFTU]. Messages of support will be presented by the Ambassadors from Western Sahara, Palestine, Venezuela and Cuba. On the second day, the conference will receive a presentation on the notion of a progressive developmental state as grounding the discussions for the SPF and will extensively discuss and locate our role in building such a state. Given the location of the union and terrain which is in the public sector and the private sector, the union will adopt its posture regarding its practical relationship with the 6th administration as led by President Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa. On the same day, presentations on the current and reviewed Strategic Policy Framework will be received in preparations for robust and in-depth discussions in commissions.

Commissions will start from the afternoon of the second day up to the end of the third day and plenary session will commence thereafter to receive reports from commissions and confirm the draft review strategic perspective of the national union for adoption in the next national congress. In this regard, commissions will be divided into four groups as follows:  

·       Commission 1: Character of NEHAWU (Ideological and political orientation of NEHAWU)

·       Commission 2: Contemporary analysis (current international and South African context).

·       Commission 3: Transformed Public Sector ( The outlook of a transformed public sector and the role of the union in creating such outlook – Public sector as a terrain of struggle and also our workplace)

·       Commission 4: Union pillars as a strategic and practical response to our quest to change the world – International Working Class Solidarity, ideological and political work – our role in pursuit of the national democratic revolution and struggles for socialism, socio-economic priorities – political economy, education, health and organising which deals with seamless machinery and organisational priorities located in the context of a workplace organisation which we are as NEHAWU.

This policy conference is a robust and extensive national policy platform of the union after the provincial consultative platforms preparing for public discourse or debates toward the 12th national congress in 2021 where public will be afforded an opportunity to interface with our policy proposals for inclusive views.

Issued by NEHAWU