[Good morning. Thank you Lou Johnston for inviting me to speak.]

Speech by Kathy Devine to the United Steelworkers of America (USW) District 31 conference. AFSCME member Barbara Gude, part of the Labor Network Against Apartheid, has leaflets, Shell Boycott buttons, and Free Moses Mayekiso buttons. Devine said we cannot let the labor movement in South Africa be destroyed, as the apartheid regime is trying to do. We cannot compete with slave wages, and South African workers cannot live with them. A democratic multi-racial valiant labor movement has emerged in South Africa out of the ugliness of apartheid. In 1986, foreign reporters were banned from covering unrest, and a state of emergency went in effect that continues today. The South African government spends millions of dollars to send people to the U.S. to convince the American people and the U.S. Congress that South Africa is reforming. South African unions are fighting back. We in the U.S. have a responsibility to stand up for South African unionists because the Reagan administration, our government, has continually vetoed worldwide sanctions against South Africa in the United Nations. The Labor Network Against Apartheid came about because rank and file members, executive boards, district councils, and local union officers all knew that we could do more to help trade unionists in South Africa. We can campaign to get Shell out of South Africa, by boycotting Shell products ourselves and also by getting all mayors, city councils and state agencies to abide by the boycott. We also can get shareholders of Royal Dutch Shell - the parent company of Shell Oil Co. and Shell /South Africa - to vote Shell out of South Africa. The Labor Network went to American National Bank with representatives of the Chicago City Council, the Illinois State General Assembly, and a bishop of the United Methodist Church, whose pension funds are administered by the bank; we were armed with a long list of endorsements and with economic arguments that it makes no sense to invest in apartheid. Devine asked people to contact your congressman and Senator Dixon to tell them to support S. 556/H.R. 1580, the Comprehensive Sanctions bills, with no weakening amendments. Solidarity means calling worldwide attention to the outrageous trial of Moses Mayekiso, who is on trial for treason in Johannesburg. When Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers at 3M company in New Jersey were faced with layoffs, workers at 3M in South Africa staged a two- day strike. Devine invited people to a Labor Conference on South Africa on June 11 at the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union with keynote speaker South African mineworker in exile, Numonde Ngubo. Devine reported on hearings for a resolution introduced in City Council by Alderman Danny Davis at our request declaring March 18 a Day of Solidarity with South African Trade Unionists and calling for Comprehensive Sanctions. Alderman Roman Pucinski chaired the hearings, and Josephine Brooks testified for District 31. The resolution passed unanimously. On March 18, Jack Parton and Bill Stewart of the auto workers presented thousands of petitions from union members to the South African Consul General. Devine also mentioned the "war on poverty," striking California farmworkers, J.P. Stevens, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), tanks and armored cars, church and public employee union pension funds, Mercedes Benz workers, Stafford Garbutt, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Johnnie Jackson, Senator Simon, Congressman Yates, Pauline Morgan, and P.W. Botha.