Cast in a Racial Mould; Labour Process and trade unionism in the foundries . 1985. Ravan Press: Johannesburg.
Abstract
This book analyzes the nature of work and wore resistance in the metal industry which lies at the core of South Africa's manufacturing industry. It analyzes the interplay between the transformation of the labour process and the crisis in the system of racial capitalism as a whole to show how worker organisations , in resisting the state's incorporative strategy , have begun to develop a working class politics.
... Collective bargaining in South Africa has received much attention against the background of the struggle by Black workers for recognition, equal treatment at work, and access to workers' rights. For example, Webster (1985) looks at collective bargaining from the perspective of the labour process and trade unionism in the foundries up to 1985. Forrest (2011) presents the history of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and covers its engagement and that of its predecessors with collective bargaining up to 1995. ...
... However, while the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1979 paved the way for the recognition of the right of African workers to form, join, and participate in the activities of trade unions, thus allowing the registration of those unions and entitling them to join Industrial Councils, it imposed restrictions that still made it difficult for the Black workers to unionise freely and participate fully in collective bargaining (Webster, 1985). The opening of the Industrial Councils was restricted to African workers with the so-called permanent urban residence rights, excluding African workers who were either migrants or commuters from Bantustans, 5 and contract workers with the so-called temporary urban residence rights (Godfrey et al., 2011). ...
... Thus, industrial relations in South Africa remained racially segregated in the context, on the one hand, involving collaboration between successive colonial-apartheid regimes, employers, and White workers' trade unions. The historical prohibition of African workers from collective bargaining under the Industrial Council system was underpinned by their exclusion from the definition of an employee and fortified by their forbidding to organise into trade unions (Godfrey et al., 2011;Webster, 1985) on the other. That was reinforced by multiracial/non-racial unionisation also being prohibited. ...
“Finally, a set of analyses that explicitly brings power relations into the study of Global Value Chains. This excellent book highlights various dimensions of a critical but understudied feature: power asymmetries of both demand and supply at each stage, which give rise to rent seeking in the upper levels and reduce capacities for upgrading at the lower levels of the chain. Public policies are crucial in determining the outcomes, which makes this book essential reading for anyone interested in economic development.”
— Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.
“This book is an important contribution to the debate on global value chains. It is particularly important because it takes the perspective of the Global South and shows the risks for developing countries integrating through global value chains in a global economy with massive power imbalances. It also gives some hope that risks can be turned into success with strategic industrial and trade policies, social upgrading, strong international human rights due diligence regulations and a strong voice for workers.”
— Atle Høie, General Secretary of IndustriALL Global Union
This book investigates how global value chain governance, public institutions and strategies in the area of industrial policy and industrial relations by stakeholders such as national or global trade unions, governments, companies or international NGOs shape upgrading in the Global South. A special feature is its interdisciplinarity, combining sociological, economic, legal and political dimensions. Case studies systematically compare different industry trajectories. Furthermore, it encompasses far-reaching insights into the role of global value chains for development, economic catching-up of countries and socio-political aspects such as working conditions and interest representation.
Christina Teipen is Professor for social sciences with a focus on economic sociology at HWR Berlin (Berlin School of Economics and Law).
Petra Dünhaupt is a research associate and lecturer at HWR Berlin.
Hansjörg Herr is Professor (retired) for supranational integration at HWR Berlin.
Fabian Mehl is a research associate and lecturer at HWR Berlin.
... Collective bargaining in South Africa has received much attention against the background of the struggle by Black workers for recognition, equal treatment at work, and access to workers' rights. For example, Webster (1985) looks at collective bargaining from the perspective of the labour process and trade unionism in the foundries up to 1985. Forrest (2011) presents the history of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and covers its engagement and that of its predecessors with collective bargaining up to 1995. ...
... However, while the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1979 paved the way for the recognition of the right of African workers to form, join, and participate in the activities of trade unions, thus allowing the registration of those unions and entitling them to join Industrial Councils, it imposed restrictions that still made it difficult for the Black workers to unionise freely and participate fully in collective bargaining (Webster, 1985). The opening of the Industrial Councils was restricted to African workers with the so-called permanent urban residence rights, excluding African workers who were either migrants or commuters from Bantustans, 5 and contract workers with the so-called temporary urban residence rights (Godfrey et al., 2011). ...
... Thus, industrial relations in South Africa remained racially segregated in the context, on the one hand, involving collaboration between successive colonial-apartheid regimes, employers, and White workers' trade unions. The historical prohibition of African workers from collective bargaining under the Industrial Council system was underpinned by their exclusion from the definition of an employee and fortified by their forbidding to organise into trade unions (Godfrey et al., 2011;Webster, 1985) on the other. That was reinforced by multiracial/non-racial unionisation also being prohibited. ...
For over 20 years, the Brazilian economy has faced enormous challenges as a result of neoliberal structural reforms, economic stagnation and external crises, particularly after the Latin American crisis of the late 1990s to early 2000s and after 2014. Deep economic structural changes and fluctuations in the pace of growth profoundly affected Brazilian production and consumption, various sectors of activity, and the social and working conditions of the population. One of the largest and most historically significant industrial sectors in Brazil is the automotive industry. While working conditions in the industry have greatly improved since the beginning of the 2000s, with worsening macroeconomic conditions since 2014 the Brazilian labour movement’s ability to continue achieving an upwards trajectory for workers seems to be under threat. This analysis focuses on the automotive industry as a point of reference to better understand Brazil’s economic development since the late 1990s, the challenges inherent to integration in global value chains (GVCs) and how all of these factors influence working conditions and the ability of organised labour to achieve improvements.
... In South Africa, we argue, the analysis of the growth of precarious labour has largely been abstracted from an understanding of the labour process. Indeed, since the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, there has been a shift away from analysing the labour process despite a rich history in this regard (see Sitas, 1983;Webster, 1985;Moodie and Ndatshe, 1994). As a result, South African labour studies have tended to understand precarious workers in the formal economy as flexible extras to the labour process, rather than as "core" to production. ...
... For both Braverman and Marx, changes in production were driven by capital in its struggle for control over the labour process -that is, its struggle for control over workers and ultimately over the production of surplus value. In the two decades after Braverman (1974) published Labour and Monopoly Capital, there was an explosion of sociological literature on the capitalist labour process -much of which criticised both Braverman and Marx for not paying sufficient attention to the role that worker resistance and consent plays in the structuring of labour processes (Friedman, 1977;Edwards, 1979;Burawoy, 1982;Webster, 1985). Defenders of Braverman and Marx argued that their work did indeed factor in the role of class struggle inside and outside the factory in mediating capital's intended changes to production (Zimbalist, 1979;Wardell, 1990). ...
This article recentres labour process theory in the analysis of the South African manufacturing sector to challenge the perception that precarious workers in the formal economy are largely “flexible extras” unrelated to the “core” of production. Through case study analysis of two manufacturing workplaces in Gauteng, South Africa, we demonstrate how precarious workers are both core to production and to the production of surplus value. Our analysis demonstrates how employers have increasingly restructured work through reclassifying large parts of the labour process as “non-core”. This trend has accelerated in recent years as employers seek to evade new legal responsibilities following amendments to the Labour Relations Act in 2014. Despite employers’ attempts to redefine the labour of precarious workers as non-core, we demonstrate that these workers nevertheless play an increasingly central role in the valorisation regimes of manufacturing companies – rendering them core to the production of surplus value for manufacturing capital. Our analysis problematises Von Holdt and Webster’s (2005) core/non-core schema for analysing the South African labour force, which locates precarious workers in the formal sector in the non-core. We argue that while this schema has some utility in describing the make-up of the labour force, its abstraction from an analysis of the labour process obscures the fact that precarious work has become central to manufacturing capital’s valorisation strategy. Finally, the article reflects on how precarious workers are attempting to organise within and in parallel to trade unions. This analysis highlights the importance of going beyond analysing trade unions if we are to contribute to rebuilding the labour movement under conditions of precarity.
KEYWORDS: labour-process theory; precarious work; surplus value; labour movement; manufacturing; South Africa
... The articulation of relations includes political, economic, social, cultural and the meaningful and material. This is not an effort to show causality or even correlate variables, but to show in a time and place how historically co-constituted relations produce a social field where contradictory tendencies are at play and which explain the power relations definitive of that moment (Hall 1980, 1985, 2003, and see Hart 2007. From this perspective, inequality is not merely a measure of unequal distribution, but must be understood as a set of (multiply determined) relations, including affective, describing power in place and time, which is to say within a longer historical duration in which the reproduction of those relations is a question (Hall 1980, Hart 2007. ...
... A further limitation of the PRA literature, we argue, is that it has tended to understand the strengthening of associational power only through the lens of trade unions (see also Sullivan 2010), neglecting an analysis of flexible, informal and/or independent forms of associational power. When the struggles of precarious workers are analysed using PRA, it has tended towards focussing the analysis upon societal power as a key resource to build precarious workers' power (Webster andLudwig 2017, Wilderman 2017). This is based on a further assumption that the restructuring of work, through the use of atypical labour, has limited the availability of other sources of power, particularly structural power. ...
... I acknowledge the sterling contributions made by South African literature on workplace changes and technological changes and trade union responses during the apartheid era (Sitas, 1983;Webster, 1985). Based on Webster's (1985) work, it can be argued that one of the responses of white craft workers was to open up to non-artisans, and that this was meant to give the unions additional bargaining power. ...
... I acknowledge the sterling contributions made by South African literature on workplace changes and technological changes and trade union responses during the apartheid era (Sitas, 1983;Webster, 1985). Based on Webster's (1985) work, it can be argued that one of the responses of white craft workers was to open up to non-artisans, and that this was meant to give the unions additional bargaining power. Until the 1960s, skilled white artisans controlled the metal industry through powerful craft unions (Forrest, 2005). ...
Under the impact of globalisation and intensified international competition there has been an increased use of technology in the production processes in South African enterprises. No specific study of the impacts of technological changes on work and workers, and how trade unions have responded to technological changes at the workplace has been undertaken in post-apartheid South Africa. This article seeks to fill this void by examining trade union responses to technological changes at the ArcelorMittal Vanderbijlpark Plant. The responses of National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA; a predominantly black union) and Solidarity (a predominantly white union) to technological changes were generally reactive or on the back foot, with a general focus on wage bargaining by both trade unions.
... There are also times when shop stewards clash with trade union members especially when they are seen as uninspiring in the defence of a member or during salary negotiations (Gordon, 2013). This kind of conflict for shop stewards is inevitable (Webster, 1985). ...
Shop stewards in South Africa experience high job demands and pressures. They need role-related conflict management skills and support to remain engaged. This study aimed to develop a theoretical framework for conflict management for South African shop stewards. The study approach was exploratory and qualitative. From the two trade unions, 20 (n = 20) shop stewards were purposively selected and interviewed, and their responses were thematically and manually analysed. From the transcribed interviews and using inductive and deductive thematic data analysis techniques, the findings indicated that shop stewards encountered interpersonal, intrapersonal and inter-union rivalry conflicts. Practically, this study developed a conflict management framework for those who are in union leadership. Socially, the study provides for harmony in the workplace by making shop stewards aware of the conflicts and how to manage them. Line managers will understand the conflict-related challenges experienced by shop stewards and be able to understand and collaborate well with them. Organisations should develop policies and procedures for shop stewards or trade unions and adhere to existing structures and agreements that assist shop stewards in managing conflict in the workplace.
... Along with institution building, Eddie was writing his University of Witwatersrand dissertation that became Cast in a Racial Mould, a history of the transformation of the racial division of labour in the foundry industry (Webster, 1985). This is an account of South Africa's "racial capitalism"yes, Eddie was using that concept 40 years ago -in which a "caste" of white workers held on to their privileges, despite the deskilling of their labour process. ...
... From this perspective, the new wave of unionism from the 1970s was partly the result of the rise of big Fordist factories from the 1950s, run by local conglomerates and foreign multinationals: semiskilled industrial workers, centralised in larger factories and townships, were seen as the core of the new unionism (Southall 1985). This was part of a larger body of work that linked changes in trade unionism to changes in the labour process, with emphasis on the 1920s to the 1950s (Lewis 1984) and the 1960s to the 1970s (Webster 1985a). ...
... However, there are contestations over the Marxian approach to skills and the labour process among scholars of the sociology of work and labour. For instance, Webster (1985) maintains that Braverman ignores the new bargaining power conferred on unskilled and semi-skilled workers when mechanisation replaces craft skill: ...
... All three groups were influenced by the idea that a highly-skilled labour force capable of achieving flexible specialisation would enable South Africa to succeed in the global economy (Desaubin 2002;Kraak 1994;Lugg 2007;Mukora 2006;Von Holdt 1991). There was also acknowledgement that black workers had been denied access to formal education and training and denied promotions on the grounds of lacking formal qualifications (Samson andVally 1996a, 1996b;Webster 1985). Unionists hoped that a clear relationship between skills, grading and wages would allow workers to move up a career path (Industrial Strategy Project 1994). ...
This paper explores South African experiences in using formal credentials in worker education. In specific, it analyses the value and use of the outcomes-based, unit standards-based qualifications registered on the South African national qualifications framework for “trade union practice.” Creating formal qualifications for worker education programmes was hotly debated for many years in the labour movement. The paper finds little evidence of positive achievement of the creation of a formal qualification route for trade unionists. The main stated reason for the introduction of the formal qualification route was to support the educational and labour market mobility of union activists. There is no evidence of this to date, and the paper argues that the design of the qualification makes it unlikely to become a possibility. The existence of the qualification has facilitated funding for worker education, but a greater success would have been to convince public bodies to fund worker education according to its intrinsic logic. The paper also finds that to date the negative consequences that many unionists predicted in these debates have not arisen. However, this seems to be in spite of and not because of the qualification model and may be attributable to the strength of the single provider of the qualification.
... Economic and industrial development has been tied to a minerals value chain, particularly in the early phases of its industrialisation (Fine & Rustomjee, 1996). The economic development of the country was also shaped by a political system in which race-based ideology was coupled with wage suppression during apartheid, which had an impact on remuneration, skills levels for the black population, the levels of inequality in the country, and the access to advancement in the workplace (Fine & Rustomjee, 1996;Webster, 1985). The end of apartheid in 1994 allowed for massive changes to take place in the workplace and in access to skills. ...
Key Finding One Companies do not typically report skills shortages at lower levels. Key Finding Two At the higher occupational levels there are shortages, but this varies across manufacturing sectors. Across the three sectors, there are some shortages at operator levels with the Automotive sector expressing the lowest levels of shortages. Further, the majority of responding companies (between 76%-100% across sectors) indicate that they find it difficult or significantly difficult to recruit technicians with the required skills Key Finding Three The shortage of skills at operator level is perceived to have very little effect on growth in the Automotive sector but this is not true of the other sectors where almost half the companies that experience shortages state that these shortages have negatively affected growth. The limited supply of skilled technicians in the South African labour market has affected company growth negatively across the three sectors, but less than company operations and at varying degrees. 2 Key Finding Four While the skills shortage of operators had either no effect or only a minor negative effect on operations of companies in the Automotive sector, companies in the other two sectors experienced negative and in some cases significantly negative effects on their operations due to them struggling to find suitable operators.
... 13 Although the iron moulding trade was first mechanised as early as the First World War, the impact of this new technology took many decades to restructure the labour process in the foundries and its associated occupational division of labour completely. 114 These iron-moulding machines were the first important technological development to dilute the artisans trade such that the work could be performed by semi-skilled production moulders. The extent to which the trade of iron moulding was mechanised by the introduction of moulding machines can be gauged by the changing occupational composition of the members of the Iron Moulders Society of South Africa. ...
... However, FOSATU provided a wider education, rooted in a broadly socialist (but anti-Soviet) perspective. This could facilitate the development of a 'working class politics' implanted in what FOSATU called a 'working class movement' 5 that went beyond the unions, influencing workers in the material, political, ideological and cultural aspects of their lives (1982c;Webster 1985). ...
... The first will be the struggles of metal workers on the East Rand in the 1980s when the foundations for a national shop floor based union in the metal industry were laid. These organizational achievements increased the bargaining power of labour and opened up opportunities for black workers to participate democratically in organizations that had significant potential for change (Webster, 1985). In our second case study, we focus on the recent struggle of precarious workers in a Heineken brewery in Ekurhuleni. ...
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 their capacity to build sustainable workplace organization. However, in spite of this, we identify the emergence of collective action and organization amongst these precarious workers. We show how in response to the degeneration of their traditional organizations, these workers are rebuilding worker organization still very much inscribed in the organizational traditions built on the East Rand over 40 years ago. We challenge the pessimistic ‘end of labour’ thesis that suggests that the informalization of employment has made collective organization impossible.
... Labour studies literature has tended to focus on trade unions as institutions of workers that had a national presence and were able to develop organisational infrastructure, with the main purpose being struggle for social and economic justice in the context of racial capitalism (Buhlungu 2010;Forrest 2011;Friedman 1987;von Holdt 2003;Webster 1985). With few exceptions (Lowry 1999;Luckett, Walters, and von Kotze 2017;Motala 2017), there has not been much debate and discussion on the role played by labour support organisations (LSOs) as institutions for workers' education in the context of the struggle against apartheid. ...
In South Africa, with few exceptions, scholarship on the modern labour movement which emerged after the Durban strikes of 1973 tends to focus on trade unions that constituted the labour movement, strikes, collective bargaining, and workplace changes. While all these topics covered by labour scholars are of great importance, there is less emphasis on the role played by labour support organisations (LSOs) which, in some cases, predate the formation of the major trade unions. Based on an analysis of historical writings, some archival and internet sources, this article critically discusses the contribution of LSOs and their use of workers' education to build and strengthen trade unions, which became one of the critical forces in the struggles against racial capitalism in the 1980s. In particular, it critically examines the work of the Urban Training Project (UTP) and the South African Committee for Higher Education (SACHED) workers' education programmes as a contribution to building the labour movement. The relationship between trade unions which had elaborated structures of accountability and LSOs which were staffed by a relatively small layer of activists also led to debates about accountability and mandates.
... First, it is to represent the interests of union members in their department and to protect their interests against management. Each department elects its own shop steward; on average, there was one shop steward to every 60 members in the early 1980s (Webster, 1985). The shop stewards collectively constitute a shop steward committee, which is instrumental in plantlevel negotiations over wages and working conditions (in the absence of bargaining councils). ...
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 successful system of German co-determination did not take sufficient account of the specific social and economic context of South Africa’s distinct industrial relations system. The majority of organized workers in South Africa have over the past three decades opted for engagement with employers on the basis of a union agenda and union independence in order to transform and democratize the workplace. At the centre of this strategy has been the shop steward as the instrument for worker participation at plant level. However, the ethnographic account of participation at plant level suggests that workers feel disempowered and unable to significantly shape decision-making.
... Following Braverman (1974), labour process analysts have addressed this question, focusing on how employers shape the workplace 'to give [them] the most effective control and profitability' (Thompson and McHugh, 2002, p. 367), making them so 'successful in extracting effort from workers' (Burawoy, 1996). Even though Braverman's arguments were revised or problematized by subsequent writers (for overviews, see, e.g., Adler, 2007;Adler et al., 2007;Burawoy, 1996; for an extension in the South African context, see Webster, 1985), one of his key claims remains axiomatic: in designing and controlling the labour process, 'manipulation is primary and coercion is held in reserve. . . The apparent acclimatization of the worker. . . ...
... Following Braverman (1974), labour process analysts have addressed this question, focusing on how employers shape the workplace 'to give [them] the most effective control and profitability' (Thompson and McHugh, 2002, p. 367), making them so 'successful in extracting effort from workers' (Burawoy, 1996). Even though Braverman's arguments were revised or problematized by subsequent writers (for overviews, see, e.g., Adler, 2007;Adler et al., 2007;Burawoy, 1996; for an extension in the South African context, see Webster, 1985), one of his key claims remains axiomatic: in designing and controlling the labour process, 'manipulation is primary and coercion is held in reserve. . . The apparent acclimatization of the worker. . . ...
Social inequality is underpinned by exploitative labour institutions, yet the agency of employers in establishing and maintaining such institutions remains underexplored. We thus adopt the lens of institutional work in analysing South African mining employers' purposive efforts to ensure reliable access to cheap labour from the 1860s through until the infamous Marikana Massacre in 2012. We find that while labour is scarce, employers engage in forcing: creating exploitative institutional devices through conscripting and controlling. But as labour becomes abundant (and political winds shift), employers engage in freeing: liberalizing institutional controls to give workers “choice,” while simultaneously outsourcing responsibilities and costs associated with the unjust employment relationship to others, including workers themselves. We thus explain how employers purposefully create and perpetuate their advantage in interaction with labour market dynamics, contributing to our understanding of inequality and the role of actors' intentions in impacting social systems. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... However, FOSATU provided a wider education, rooted in a broadly socialist (but anti-Soviet) perspective. This could facilitate the development of a 'working class politics' implanted in what FOSATU called a 'working class movement' 5 that went beyond the unions, influencing workers in the material, political, ideological and cultural aspects of their lives (1982c;Webster 1985). ...
During the 1970s and early 1980s, sections of the trade union movement questioned the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party’s (SACP’s) narrow vision of freedom, which was based on the capture of the colonial state by a nationalist elite. Located within a distinct political current that prioritised participatory/direct-democracy and egalitarianism, workers were regarded as the locus of transformative power in society, and their organisations were viewed as prefiguring a radically democratic future. This article examines the very different kind of radical anti-colonial engagement offered by ‘workers’ control’ in the 1970s and ‘workerism’ in the early 1980s that was developed by the Trade Union Advisory Coordinating Council (TUACC) and the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU), respectively. Keen to draw lessons for the trade union movement today, this article outlines the key characteristics and limits of these traditions that facilitated their decline in the post-apartheid context.
... Employers pursued this strategy because they were allowed to employ black workers on semiskilled manual tasks but not on skilled artisanal tasks, which were reserved for whites. In this way, manufacturing employment was able to grow dramatically, in spite of a shortage of white workers during the boom years of the 1960s and early 1970s (Crankshaw, 1997;Webster, 1985). ...
... Karl von Holdt (2003) notes that at Highveld Steel under the auspices of the Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU) and then later the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), tensions arose between shop stewards who used institutional procedures to influence management directly and strike committees who were directly linked to the pulse of the rank and file. Once a 'guerilla fighter' (Webster 1984, 81) acting as a mouthpiece of the rank and file, Webster suggests that the shop steward would over time become tame, 'managing discontent', as the union became relatively 'normalized' into collective bargaining structures (Webster 1985, 235 -236, 244, in von Holdt 2003. ...
This article investigates the relationship between the workers’ committee, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) at Amplats between 2012 and 2014. Drawing from in-depth interviews with worker leaders, it explores the contestation over representation and recognition in the platinum mines during a time when workers waged historic strikes putting forward radical demands for pay increases. There has been a rocky transition (one that is incomplete) from the values and culture of the workers’ committee at Amplats to that of the union – AMCU. Gouldner's critique of Michels’ classic ‘Iron Law of Oligarchy’ provides a useful starting point from which to understand this transition as well as the contemporary mineworkers’ movement in South Africa more generally. Gouldner suggested that Michels ignored democratic impulses thereby putting forth a model which was monolithic and static rather than socially constructed and contextually specific. The article advances the concept of Insurgent Trade Unionism in order to argue that when the rank and file takes on an insurgent character, the trade union's bureaucratic or official power (at the national, regional and branch level) becomes marginal, but only relatively so in this case, as the events reveal.
The historiography of the Durban mass strikes in 1973 has tended to focus on the role of white scholars or on the competing accounts of the events by different political currents that were active at the time. The most astonishing omission in these accounts was that while it is widely acknowledged that the textile and clothing workers gave the strikes an explosive character, the role of women as prominent actors remains invisible. This article will provide evidence and analysis of the leadership role in the strikes of women in the textile and clothing industry.
The main role of shop stewards, whether part-time or full-time, is to act as workplace representatives for trade unions. However, they face several challenges while fulfilling their roles, more specifically shop stewards in the higher education sector due to marginalisa-tion and politicisation in the sector. This study employs qualitative research methods to explore these challenges and proposes effective solutions for shop stewards. The study involved interviews with 15 shop stewards from a higher education organisation. After analysing the data, the findings revealed that part-time shop stewards get challenged by role overload and face the risk of career suicide. On the other hand, full-time shop stewards are challenged by the prolonged working hours. Similarly, both types of shop stewards experience work-family and interpersonal conflicts. South African labour legislation needs to be relooked at to accommodate the dual roles of part-time shop stewards and reduce the hostility they encounter from line managers or employers. Moreover, shop stewards need to develop on self-and others' awareness skills, and create own awareness with workplace policies so that they carefully navigate between their two roles without any major ramifications like disciplinary hearings. These findings provide new information on shop stewards challenges by type in the higher education sector. ARTICLE HISTORY
Professor Edward Webster, affectionately known as Eddie, breathed his last on 5 March 2024, twenty-four days before his eighty-second birthday. Eddie was healthy and had just participated in a run. The shocking untimely death has left a profound void. His impactful research work, integrating a consistent focus on work and labour, spanned decades, dating back to the early 1970s. Eddie went beyond just researching and publishing – activities in which he engaged extensively. He was an engaged intellectual, actively involved in the emancipatory working-class movement to change the world he researched. Writing with Lynford Dor, Webster defends the power resources approach which identifies the sources of workers' power and includes a focus on workers' resistance to exploitation in pursuit of their interests. Webster successfully challenges the “end of labour thesis” using evidence-based sectoral case studies from a selection of global South countries. He brought together contributions by other scholars in the edited book. The “end of labour thesis” can also be challenged from the standpoint of the labour theory of value. However, this is not part of the authors’ chosen approach, which suffices on its own merits.
The importance of worker education around the presence of foreign national migrants “beyond the apartheid workplace” (Webster & von Holdt, 2005: 4) is undisputed. Our intention is to establish the extent to which worker education programmes benefit foreign-national migrants and also to establish the possible challenges in the implementation of the related legislation and policies. The current context of neoliberal capitalism and growing informalisation of work (Webster & von Holdt, 2005; Muller & Esselaar, 2004) is particularly important, as it tends to challenge the existence and effectiveness of worker education while promoting divisions among the workers. During the apartheid era, worker education was a resource used by the trade union movement to address struggles in the workplace and those percolating to the communities (see Xulu-Gama, 2018; Von Holdt, 2002; Webster, 1985; Friedman, 1987). Worker education always took into consideration the history of the South African workplace, which made it relevant, comprehensive, critical and progressive (Hamilton, 2014).
This paper explores why young Black South African men refuse low-wage jobs in a time of mass joblessness. Drawing on in-depth qualitative data from an informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the paper examines the work histories and social aspirations that underpin young men’s decision to voluntarily quit low-wage employment. This inquiry is animated by a long history of urban young men rejecting the wage relation in favour of alternative livelihoods. It shows that the refusal of low-wage jobs is sustained by other forms of inequality and is closely entangled with race, gender and citizenship. The paper argues that the refusal of low-wage jobs is at once a critique of precariousness and racialized inequality, and a political demand for social and economic inclusion. In taking this demand seriously, the paper maintains that voluntary quitting is a relatively unrecognized form of worker resistance, with implications for how we understand labour market volatility, and the place of wage labour in South Africa’s policy debates and politics.
Collective bargaining in South Africa has received much attention against the background of the struggle by Black workers for recognition, equal treatment at work, and access to workers’ rights.
Workers in the global South are becoming increasingly sensitive to their pension rights. In recent years, rural migrant workers in China have staged a series of protests to fight for pension protection. Drawing from two in-depth case studies conducted in the Pearl River Delta, we explain why workers staged pension strikes, what these protests looked like, how the employers and the government responded, and how these protests differed from previous strikes. Building upon insights from the sociology of collective action and labour process theory, we formulate a new framework for examining labour protests. In addition to seeing workers’ collective action as defensive or offensive, this framework helps us interpret these actions in relation to the spheres of production and reproduction. It classifies pension strikes in China as defensive actions located in the sphere of reproduction, which are distinct from previous strikes that were either defensive or offensive actions situated in the sphere of production. This synthesised framework assists us in theorising that workers’ protest activities, especially in the global South, are not restricted to the traditional production sphere but can also be found in the reproduction sphere.
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 seriously the ways new forms of work in this postcolonial context pose new questions to the global study of work. A central preoccupation in the study of work has been the racialised reinscription of post-apartheid workplace orders, now in the context of new dynamics of externalisation and casualisation of employment. Another important theme is the shift away from studies of the formal sector workplace and toward the broader implications of the precarianisation and informalisation of labour. This focus coincided with the growth of new social movements by mostly unemployed (black) township residents around state services provision. This includes studies on working-class politics more broadly, with attention focusing on questions of organising and mobilising. More recently this interest in precarious labour has grown into studies of the gig economy, returning to earlier themes of technology and skill, as well as new forms of waged labour and wagelessness. We argue for the ongoing salience of labour process studies for understanding the specific issues of the securing and obscuring of value, and through the articulations of ‘racial capitalism’ offered by the long tradition of labour studies in South Africa.
SUMMARY
The aim of this study was to explore the role conflict experiences of South African shop stewards and in the process develop a theoretical framework on the role conflict of shop stewards. The theoretical framework was based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, which has never been used on shop stewards in South Africa.
The study took a case study approach to explore an unknown ‘human experience’ phenomenon using an existing JD-R model. The study used both inductive and deductive approaches during the thematic qualitative data analysis of data collected from 20 NEHAWU and NUM shop stewards through interviews and observations.
The study deductively derived five themes from a thorough literature review and validated them using a pilot study. However, from the five themes, namely reasons and motivations, challenges, effects, coping strategies and biographical differences, sub-themes emerged, and other sub-themes also inductively emerged, which was new information that was unknown to the researcher and not reported in existing literature.
The reasons and motivations theme had three sub-themes, namely represent employees, hold employer to account and political background. These themes served as personal resources that buffer the effects of role conflict within the role played by shop stewards.
The theme challenges had nine sub-themes, namely work–family conflict, role overload, interpersonal conflict, intrapersonal conflict, inter-union rivalry, career suicide, political differences, shop steward face-offs, and accidents and deaths. According to the JD-R model, these are the role demands that negatively influence shop stewards’ performance within the role.
The theme effects yielded three sub-themes, namely physiological effects, emotional effects and psychological effects. These sub-themes covered all consequences of unmanaged challenges (job demands) that shop stewards experience.
The theme coping strategies had six sub-themes, namely education, training and development; personal beliefs/ideology and union commitment; political connections, support (family, trade union, employer, shop stewards); social and relaxation activities; and soft skills. Education, training and development, political connections and social and relaxation activities sub-themes forms part of the problem-focused coping strategy whereby shop stewards eliminate the stress/challenges or role demands to minimize the effects, whereas personal beliefs/ideology and union commitment and support are emotion-focused coping strategies aimed at regulating the stress or not acknowledging the existence of the stress/challenge or role demand. Soft skills take the form of both emotion-focused and problem focused coping strategies. By acquiring soft skills, they eliminate the problem (stress) to cope better but the skills eliminate or minimize their anxiety levels and prepares them emotionally for the role. These were the mechanisms or job resources that shop stewards used or hoped will help them positively cope within the role.
The theme biographical differences had predetermined sub-themes such as age, gender, sector (education vs. mining), type of shop steward by employment (full-time vs. part-time) and type of shop steward by representation (white-collar vs. blue-collar). The biographical differences revealed that older and male shop stewards coped better compared to younger and female shop stewards. Furthermore, the comparisons revealed similarities as well as differences between education and mining sector shop stewards, between full-time and part-time shop stewards and between white-collar and blue-collar shop stewards.
Most of the findings (themes and sub-themes) were supported by existing international research studies, except the new information that emerged in the study.
Based on the findings, a shop stewards role conflict experiences framework was developed as a contribution of the study and recommendations and conclusions were made.
In many countries, the contours of skills formation systems are traced back to early struggles over control of apprenticeship. This paper uses a curriculum lens to examine two distinctive policy moments in the history of formal apprenticeships in South Africa and to trace the legacy imprint of direct and indirect race-based exclusion as well as the imprint of educational deprivation in social class terms. The policy trajectory shows how an apprenticeship curriculum that had to cater for White working-class youth with low educational credentials led to a steady erosion of the formal knowledge component of the curriculum in favour of practical workplace experience. Alongside race-based exclusion, a neglect of science-based knowledge emerges as a lasting curriculum legacy of apprenticeship trajectories under conditions of segregation, Apartheid and their colonial precursors.
Starting with a discussion of some of the seminal texts of South African industrial sociology, this paper argues that since the late twentieth century the world of work in South Africa has been transformed in a number of ways. These transformations are linked to the global expansion of industrial supply chains as a result of the political and economic transition, technological changes, labour market transformations and a changing conception of time. A key argument is that rather than being discreet, the consequences of these transformations are deeply connected across place.
This book showcases new research by emerging and established scholars on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa.
Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the geographical and chronological limitations of existing scholarship by presenting case studies from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe that track the fortunes of nonhegemonic whites during the era of white minority rule. Arguing against prevalent understandings of white society as uniformly wealthy or culturally homogeneous during this period, it demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa’s white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region. Addressing themes such as the class-based disruption of racial norms and practices, state surveillance and interventions – and their failures – towards nonhegemonic whites, and the opportunities and limitations of physical and social mobility, the book mounts a forceful argument for the regional consideration of white societies in this historical context. Centrally, it extends the path-breaking insights emanating from scholarship on racialized class identities from North America to the African context to argue that race and class cannot be considered independently in Southern Africa.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students of southern African studies, African history, and the history of race.
This article analyses labour relations and management strategies in the Hex River Textiles factory in Worcester, South Africa, from the 1940s to the early 1990s. The factory was established by a French textile manufacturer in 1946, who relocated an entire mill from Bradford in England, to exploit the low wage labour provided by primarily coloured women. The strategy also included investments in new technology. The workers who were drawn into capitalist production resisted exploitation despite government attempts to crush the trade unions. In the late 1980s, trade union activity was rekindled, not least because there was a core group of coloured workers, who carried on the tradition. The strategy in the 1980s was less militant than in the 1950s, but, arguably more successful.
South African research has shown that that there is a
significant degree of mismatch between what workplaces require and the skills acquired by apprentices and learners. Reasons for this mostly point to limitations of formal curricula and trade tests. A further concern is that qualifications are currently obtained mostly at lower and intermediate skill levels and not at intermediate and higher levels.
The innovation of this study is that instead of focusing on the learning pathways of individuals, or studying curricula and assessment, the study turns to work itself, to its organisation and to the diagnostics and problem-solving found in the work of artisans and technicians. It is a demand-focused study that takes the changing nature of work as its central theme and seeks to contribute to labour market intelligence thorugh an evidence-based argument for how artisans and technicians of the future should be
prepared to be work-ready.
In this chapter, the constitution of the retail sector in and around Johannesburg through the labour of white women from the 1930s to the 1970s in service to a “white public” is examined. A gendered and racialized notion of service became central to directing expanding consumption under apartheid. Working-class white women organized into their union to contest poor conditions in stores, but a class identity became harder for them to maintain under apartheid. Their experiences were individualized, and they reproduced social hierarchies within shops while securing these spaces of consumption for their customers.
This chapter examines the socio-legal history of the category of “employee” in the retail sector. It describes the connection between the categories of employee and that of servant/native/labourer in law. It then traces the shifting uses of casual, part-time, and contract labour, key employment categories defining the retail sector through its history from the 1930s to the post-apartheid period. The chapter shows how workers’ claims to labour rights developed in relation to legal categories with affective histories. It tracks how the full-time, permanent worker became the ideal category. Gendered and racialized legal categories conditioned the collective political subject emerging in workers’ struggles.
At the extremes, there are two forms of engagement with strangers—the anthropophagic, where outsiders are swallowed and digested, and the anthropoemic, where aliens are discarded, institutionalized, incarcerated or expelled. Using this dyad as a conceptual tool, I examine seven patterns of inclusion/exclusion in African societies, covering early agricultural societies, the formation of kingdoms, societies formed by refugees, strangers in pre-colonial cities, migrants in colonial cities, ethnic expulsions as a result of modern state formation and migrants in contemporary global cities. The aim of the article, based on an extensive review of secondary literature, is to add historical, comparative and typological elements to an often inadequate sociological and anthropological sensibility concerning hosts and strangers.
By imposing similar priorities on each of the belligerents, wars provide a valuable setting for cross-national comparison. Despite this, none of the fine comparative studies of the US and South Africa considered the period 1939–45 in any detail.’ In addressing this weakness, an attempt will be made to justify two related conclusions. First, in the period under consideration, although there were important differences between the two countries’ labour movements, similar trends were also apparent. More specifically, it was particularly in this period that, as a consequence of war-related industrialisation and resistance, black workers joined labour movements en masse. Secondly, the claims of exceptionalism that have been made for the working class of both countries are implicitly regarded as unhelpful (because they inhibit valuable comparative enquiry) and with respect to this period they are explicitly rejected as unwarranted.2
The truly remarkable nature of South Africa’s transition was captured in the election and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the new president during the last week of April and the first week of May 1994. Contrary to widespread expectations of violence descending into chaos, the three voting days were among the most peaceful in the country’s recent history. Whites and Blacks queued for hours — indeed days in some cases — to cast their votes. For South Africans, it became a deeply emotional experience, with the overwhelming majority of eligible voters participating in this first-ever democratic election. The atmosphere of euphoria carried through into the following week of national celebrations, culminating in an all-day gathering outside the former seat of White political domination, the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Music and dancing provided by South Africa’s best entertainers continued well into the night, and similar scenes of jubilation were repeated throughout the country.
In 2015, the South African Government, organised business and organised labour agreed to the introduction of a national minimum wage (NMW) in principle, but without any agreement over the level at which it should be set. One of the key arguments for a high NMW is that the experiences of other countries (including especially Brazil and Germany) supposedly show that a NMW can be increased rapidly to a high level and covering a majority of the workforce without any adverse effects on either economic growth or employment. We show that this is a misinterpretation of comparative experiences because in both advanced capitalist and middle-income economies NMWs are set at modest levels, covering the minority of lowest-paid workers, and taking into account the real risks of job destruction. Most countries have slowly raised minima because low unemployment made them confident that modest increases would lead to little or no job destruction. South Africa’s current sectoral minima are already broadly in line with minima in most other countries. International experience does not support the contention that South Africa, with its exceptionally high unemployment rate, should raise rapidly the NMW to a very high level without regard for job destruction.
Abstract
Finding explanations for the inability of numerous postcolonial African states to transcend many of the legacies of colonialism has led to a position that is best described as Afro-pessimism.1 In the context of ‘global informational capitalism’, argues Manuel Castells (1998) for example, the African continent can be considered to be part of the ‘Fourth World’ — a space that has become irrelevant to the global economy. Yet, renewed interest in some of the concerns of now unpopular theories of underdevelopment, in the form of what has become known as commodity chain analysis, shows that Africa does indeed link into the global economy, but mostly at the lower ends of commodity chains (Gereffi 1999; Kaplinsky 2000; Gibbon 2001). In the last decade, there has been a mining boom in many parts of Africa, often driven by South African mining firms, but sometimes linked into wars for control of mines in the context of ‘collapsed states’.2
The sociological study of work emerged as a specialized field within general sociology in South African universities in the late 1960s.1 This was a logical development, since South Africa was becoming a modern industrial economy. The concerns of management and the views of Elton Mayo’ Human Relations School dictated much of the syllabus, focusing on factors affecting productivity, such as high labor turnover, morale, and monotony in industry (Jubber, 1979). The emergence of strong shop-floor-based unions in the 1970s among black workers led to a growing interest in universities in sociological research into the workplace (Webster, 1981:95–102). This included anthropological research on informal work groups, as well as a growing interest in the history of labor among a group of activist scholars sympathetic to the emerging trade unions (Alverson, 1975; Gordon, 1978; Webster, 1978).
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