Edward Webster

University of the Witwatersrand | wits · Southern Centre of Inequality Studies

The global decline in union representation offers a grim picture of the future of labour. Nevertheless, the proliferation of platform worker protest and organisation is a reminder that today’s precarious workers may well become tomorrow’s unionised working class. Most platform worker organisations in the global South have emerged outside of the tra...

Nearly three decades ago, Manuel Castells declared the atomising effects of the new technologies of the ‘information age’ to presage the ‘end of labour’. There is little doubt that the labour movement worldwide is no longer the social force it was in the twentieth century. Much of the debate on the future of work and consequences for worker organis...

While the tech giants are using privatisation to present themselves as providers of solutions to global problems, digitalisation is creating new forms of transnational activism. Global unions are emerging as players in this contest, helping to build counter power at both the local and global level. Through a comparison of the use of digital technol...

The idea of public sociology in its global form was inspired by sociological practice in South Africa, conceptualized as ‘critical engagement’, when the US sociologist Michael Burawoy visited the country in the 1990s. This volume explores the trajectory of critical engagement before and after Burawoy’s visit, comparing this to the trajectory of ‘pu...

Education International English: https://www.ei-ie.org/en/item/26239:challenging-global-tech-giants-the-critical-role-of-global-labour // French: https://www.ei-ie.org/fr/item/26239:challenging-global-tech-giants-the-critical-role-of-global-labour // Spanish: https://www.ei-ie.org/es/item/26239:challenging-global-tech-giants-the-critical-role-o...

From its beginnings, the sociology of work in South Africa has been preoccupied with three enduring themes: skill/deskilling, racism in the workplace, and Fordism/racial Fordism. With the advent of democracy in the 1990s there was a shift away from studying the labour process. We argue in this article that there has been a return to taking seriousl...

The article provides a socio-historical account of worker education rooted in the African working class, and more specifically in the three competing strands within this tradition – the communist strand, the “workerist” strand and the “professional” strand – each linked to contesting definitions of workers’ education. It details the rich history of...

Drawing on a network of transnational activists, this paper argues that a new type of regional network internationalism has emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa. Initiated by the Global Labour University (GLU), through a short two-month residential course called Engage, it has been able over the last seven years to develop the skills for a new type of uni...

The introduction of the concept of social upgrading was a welcome development in the study of Global Production Networks ( gpn s). We argue that although social upgrading is primarily a result of labour agency rather than automatically trickling down from economic upgrading, without economic upgrading social upgrading will not be sustainable. We sh...

Insufficient attention has been given to how workers organizations are challenging precarious work through new hybrid forms of organizing in the Global South. In this article we examine three examples where workers innovate and experiment with new forms of worker organization in three African cities. These include a traditional union reaching out t...

Este artigo apresenta as diretrizes de uma abordagem da desigualdade que seja apropriada para países do Sul Global do ponto de vista conceitual, metodológico e empírico. Buscamos inicialmente criticar os enfoques convencionais e, em seguida, apresentamos estudos que contribuem para entender as causas multidimensionais da desigualdade nesses países,...

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated inequalities in South Africa. The question posed in this article is whether the pandemic and its associated responses offer the opportunity for a more egalitarian society in South Africa, or a more intensively unequal society. The future is contested. On the one hand, there is the consolidation...

The International Labour Organization (ILO) at times played an important role in challenging race discrimination in the workplace, both as apartheid legislation intensified and in the new democratic South Africa. The controversy around forced labor, and the participation of independent African countries in the ILO, ultimately led to the withdrawal...

The authors argue that there is a need to rethink what a commitment to decent work would mean in the context of South Africa, a country with a large number of long term unemployed. Drawing on their experience of researching work in South Africa, they highlight the relevance of the agency of workers for the progressive realisation of a decent work a...

Under platform capitalism a new business model and a new work order has emerged. The tech giants such as Uber, Amazon and Apple that drive this business model have unprecedented levels of power . This power lies in the hands of a few individuals who divest themselves from employment responsibilities through technology-enabled outsourcing and subcon...

Hi Jon I attach the chapter. I guess I am doing something similar to what you seem to be doing ; going back over research over the past four decades on South Africa labour and reflecting on the past - But I am doing it through the lens of inequality and the paradox of the outcome . We had a. moment in the early nineties when we could have taken a m...

The article examines the origins of the Global Labour Journal (GLJ) and its goal of broadening labour studies. It shows how, over the past decade, the GLJ has recorded and analysed the forms of action and organisation that fall outside the traditional focus of labour studies. Through a range of careful case studies, the Journal has made an importan...

South Africa is something of a paradox; on the one hand, it is one of the most unequal countries in the world, if not the most unequal. Half of all South Africans continue to live in poverty, economic growth has stagnated and inflation remains high relative to the developed world, while the unemployment rate continues to climb towards 30 percent. O...

South Africa is a paradox; on the one hand, it is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Half of all South Africans continue to live in poverty, economic growth has stagnated and inflation remains high, while the unemployment rate continues to climb towards 30%. On the other hand, it has one of the most progressive constitutions in the wor...

The question raised in this article is whether the key role played under apartheid by labour in the transition to democracy can be revived in the struggle against the persistent and deepening inequality of the post-apartheid period. We argue that the transition to a neoliberal state in the post-apartheid period has fragmented workers and weakened t...

This article examines the attempt in a democratic South Africa to shift from an adversarial class struggle approach (with heavy racial overtones) towards a more participatory and cooperative industrial relations system based on workplace forums. The authors argue that the experiment failed because this attempt at institutional transfer from the suc...

Luke Sinwell and Siphiwe Mbatha, The Spirit of Marikana: the rise of insurgent trade unionism in South Africa. London: Pluto Press (hb £65 – 978 0 7453 3653 4; pb £19.99 – 978 0 7453 3648 0). 2016, 224 pp. - Volume 88 Issue 2 - Edward Webster

This lecture was given at the Celebrating Ari Sitas: the World of Work and the Power of Poetics, Global Studies Programme (GSP) conference, September 4 & 5 2017, at the Centre for African Studies Gallery, University of Cape Town.

Political and social change in South Africa has been crucially shaped by large-scale strikes that have often taken a violent form. In spite of South Africa establishing a constitutional democracy in 1994 – and a new vision of industrial relations – violence has become so entangled in institutional life that South Africa has been described as a “vio...

The re-emergence of debates on the decolonisation of knowledge has revived interest in the National Question, which began over a century ago and remains unresolved. Tensions that were suppressed and hidden in the past are now being openly debated. Despite this, the goal of one united nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remai...

The focus of this paper is the character and role of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in securing and sustaining a cheap labour regime within China. This labour regime is shaping the character of neoliberal regimes across the globe with dire consequences for societies everywhere. We argue that the international labour movement has t...

The chapter identifies three responses to globalisation by labour and suggests that a new Southern labour paradigm is emerging around on-going worker struggles in the global South. These new forms of organisation and sources of power are opening up spaces for developing alternatives to neoliberalism

This is a study of institutional change and continuity, comparing the trajectories followed by Mozambique and its formal colonial power Portugal in HRM, based on two surveys of firm level practices. The colonial power sought to extend the institutions of the metropole in the closing years of its rule, and despite all the adjustments and shocks that...

This article identifies a growing number of workers falling outside the regulatory net of both the state and the trade union movement in South Africa on the basis of an examination of working conditions among private security guards and survivalist enterprises in the clothing sector. Traditional unions have had limited success in organizing these s...

Résumé En s'appuyant sur les indicateurs identifiés par la Réunion tripartite d'experts sur la mesure du travail décent, réunie en 2008 au BIT, les auteurs élaborent un questionnaire complété par des entretiens approfondis afin d'évaluer la qualité de l'emploi dans la sécurité, l'agriculture et l'hôtellerie‐restauration en Afrique du Sud. Leur outi...

Resumen A partir de nueve de los indicadores establecidos en 2008 por la Reunión tripartita de expertos sobre la medición del trabajo decente de la OIT, los autores realizan una encuesta, complementada con entrevistas en profundidad, para evaluar la calidad del empleo en los sectores de la seguridad privada, la agricultura y la hotelería y restaura...

Post-apartheid South Africa's turbulent industrial relations and experience of wider social protest movements mirror the challenges confronting industrial relations systems globally, suggesting how workers' representation could be reconfigured in the future. Traditional trade unions have so far failed to address the agenda of marginalization, inequ...

The article outlines the various sources of workers power, distinguishing between 'old' and 'new' sources. Drawing on the notion of labour as an active agent in responding to globalisation and providing examples of struggles from three different sectors, the article sets out to develop a conceptual framework for understanding changes in power sourc...

The rapid growth of a new labour studies presents us with a paradox: in a context where the traditional labour movement is in decline, labour studies is thriving. What this new labour studies is identifying are the initiatives, organisational forms and sources of power that are emerging at the periphery of traditional labour. There is a “growing in...

Using the International Labour Organisation (ILO) decent work indicators, the paper develops a diagnostic tool to measure decent work in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. Through a quantitative survey instrument, supplemented with qualitative in-depth interviews, research was undertaken into working conditions amongst vulnerable workers in thr...

It is perhaps a reflection of our times of disillusionment with the current political parties that we have begun to see the emergence of autobiographies that reflect critically on the post-apartheid period: Frank Chikane, Jay Naidoo, Ronnie Kasrils, Ben Turok, all part of the post-apartheid political order, now deeply critical of its failures and r...

In the light of the shift in the policy-making processes post-Polokwane, the global economic crisis that began in 2008 and the growing wave of unrest, both workplace and around service delivery over the last five years, this report revisits the 2006 External Review of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC). Indeed, some comme...

The private security industry has grown rapidly over the past two decades generating a widespread debate on how it can best be regulated and professionalised. Drawing on a survey of 1 205 security guards and twenty-five in-depth interviews we examine the neglected question of working conditions in the industry. The industry is characterised by inse...

A new vision of industrial relations emerged in the 1990s that grew out of a confident and militant labour movement which (unconsciously) drew on some of the key characteristics of a Coordinated Market Economy (CME). This outcome involved compromise which was contested from the beginning by all three social partners - labour, employers and governme...

In 2009 South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma announced that “the creation of decent work will be at the centre of our economic policies and will influence our investment attraction and job creation initiatives”. This paper reports on research developing and applying a sector-based diagnostic tool and policy instrument to assist the government of th...

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of how the representation gap in micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in nine countries can be closed through a mapping exercise (both horizontal and vertical). The study draws on peripheral workers in MSEs predominantly from countries on the periphery of the global economy. The assumption underlying...

Workers in the informal economy are generally considered to be unorganisable into trade unions. The article examines the successful organisation of informal workers in India into the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) through the biographical lens of its founder Ela Bhatt.

The reconfiguration of the employment relationship — through the growing intensification, informalization and casualization of work, downsizing and retrenchments — impacts directly on workers’ households and the communities within which they are embedded. To understand these responses, we need to rethink the way we study the changing employment rel...

'Men at the Side of the Road' is a registered not-for-profit non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Cape Town that assists day labourers find casual employment. It was set up, initially, to establish the legal right of day labourers to stand and wait for work on the pavement. The organisation had to go to the High Court to stop the police from arre...