<P> Today trade unions are still an important force in South Africa, with 3.11 million members representing 25.3% of the formal work force . The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is the largest of the three major trade union centres, with a membership of 1.8 million, and is part of the Tripartite alliance with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). </P> <P> Early trade unions were often for whites only, with organizations like the South African Confederation of Labour (SACoL) favouring employment policies based on racial discrimination . They also often did not fully accept women into the unions . Mary Fitzgerald is considered the first female South African trade unionist and who led many strikes and sit ins before 1911 . The first trade union to organise black workers was the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA), formed in September 1917 by the revolutionary syndicalist International Socialist League (ISL). The IWA merged into the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union of Africa (ICU), formed in 1919, in 1920 . The ICU was initially a union for black and coloured dockworkers in Cape Town and formed by Clements Kadalie and Arthur F. Batty . It was the first nationally organized union for black workers who would eventually include rural farm workers, domestic and factory workers, dockworkers, teachers and retailers . By the 1920s it was said to be more popular than the ANC and eventually had branches in the Free State, Transvaal and Natal and in 1925 it moved its headquarters to Johannesburg . In 1924, the South African Trade Union Congress (SATUC) was formed with 30,000 members of black trade unions with Bill Andrews as its secretary . It would attract black trade unions from the dry - cleaning, furniture, sweets and automobile industries . </P> <P> By the 1930s the South African Trades and Labour Council (SATLC) had united much of the country . The SATLC maintained an explicitly non-racial stance, and accepted affiliation of black trade unions, as well as calling for full legal rights for black trade unionists . Some black unions joined SATLC, while in the 1940s others affiliated with the Council of Non-European Trade Unions, raising it to a peak of 119 unions and 158,000 members in 1945 . </P> <P> In 1946, the CNETU with the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party pushed for the African Mine Workers' Strike to become a General Strike . The strike was broken by the police brutality which was part of the rise of the National Party (NP) and their slogan of apartheid as all black trade unions were violently suppressed . </P>

Impact of trade unions on the south african economy