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LABOUR IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
CHALLENGES AND ALTERNATIVES FOR WORKERS
LABOUR IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
CHALLENGES AND ALTERNATIVES FOR WORKERS
edited by Sarah Mosoetsa and Michelle Williams
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE
• GENEVA
Copyright © International Labour Organization 2012
First published 2012
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Front cover image: El Ven dedor de Alcatr as by Diego Rivera © Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums
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Typeset by Magheross Graphics, France & Ireland www.magheross.com
Printed in Switzerland
Mosoetsa, Sarah; Williams, Michelle
Labour in the global South: Challenges and alternatives for workers / edited by Sarah Mosoetsa and
Michelle Williams; International Labour Office – Geneva: ILO, 2012
232 p.
ISBN 978-92-2-126238-1 (print)
ISBN 978-92-2-126239-8 (web pdf)
International Labour Office
labour relations / trade union / labour movement / developing countries / Argentina /
Bangladesh / Brazil / India / South Africa R / Uruguay
13.06.1
ILO Cataloguing in Publication Data
In the decades following the Second World War, the mature industrial relations
systems of the advanced economies served as an example and even as a model for labour
movements in the South. Informal employment in the South was largely seen as a
problem of insufficiently regulated markets and high labour surpluses in developing
countries, one which would disappear through the process of industrialization.
Trade unions in industrialized countries, with their long and proud history, were
in many cases regarded and often saw themselves as representatives of a trade union
practice that could also inspire and guide the labour movements of the industrializ-
ing South. Their potential to serve as role models has proved to be an illusion on several
counts. In the age of globalization and financialization, the traditional industrial
relations system has been undermined, and trade unions in the North are losing ground.
Social dialogue, corporatism and collective bargaining are, in a growing number of
instances, changing from institutions that ensure fair sharing of productivity gains to
instruments that accommodate the demands of capital and governments to lower
wages and erode working conditions in the name of competitiveness. Labour market
reform, the downsizing of welfare state provisions and the return of mass unemploy-
ment created precarious employment for millions of workers, and the wage share in
nearly all industrialized countries has been declining for decades. The current crisis has
reinforced and intensified the pressures on the traditional models of trade unionism,
social dialogue and collective bargaining, particularly in Europe.
In sum, instead of “good” labour market systems of the North acting as models
for development in the South, features of unregulated and informal labour markets
associated with the South have increasingly been adopted in industrialized countries.
At the same time, it is increasingly evident in the developing and industrializing
countries that informality is not merely a transitional phenomenon. A relatively small
formal sector is linked through outsourcing and sophisticated supply chains with large
v
PREFACE
numbers of workers in different forms of precarious and informal employment. Trade
union movements face the harsh reality that this is not some backward model of
industrial production, but rather cutting-edge twenty-first-century capitalism used by
the most advanced multinational companies to maximize their profits.
Given these structural changes and new challenges, trade unions in all countries
are discussing and exploring new forms of organizing and mobilizing, new means of
international cooperation, and new alliances with other civil society organizations.
Trade unions in the South have been pioneering many of these new strategies. SEWA
in India shows that even the most vulnerable workers – women in the informal
economy – can organize successfully. The Brazilian trade unions were an important
partner in the launch of the World Social Forum, and the political achievement of the
Lula Government would be unimaginable without the role of organized labour.
COSATU is running one of the strongest campaigns against labour brokers and is a
crucial pillar of democracy in South Africa. In Uruguay, the trade unions were instru -
mental in achieving nearly universal collective bargaining coverage and extending
social protection to many vulnerable informal workers. And significantly, the new
International Domestic Workers’ Network has many of its key affiliates and leaders in
countries of the South.
Industrial workplaces have also shifted to new destinations, which has had the
inevitable effect of reshaping the international labour movement. The Global Labour
University (GLU) itself is part of this shift in international trade union and labour
research cooperation. GLU works as a global knowledge and research network to
overcome the traditional concept of the North−South knowledge transfer. Working
in close cooperation with the national and international trade union movements,
GLU offers masters’ programmes at universities in Brazil, Germany, India and South
Africa, through which it provides the opportunity to look at the world and the labour
movement from different perspectives, and it creates a forum in which to debate
responses to the changing world of industrial relations.
Labour in the global South is an example of these debates. In their introductory
chapter, editors Sarah Mosoetsa and Michelle Williams put today’s challenges for
organized labour in the context of the seismic changes in the global distribution and
organization of work. Globalization has largely extended the possibilities for multi -
national companies to evade national regulations. However, the editors point out that
this new world of corporate globalization is not so new for the global South, precisely
because Keynesian capitalism, including the powerful institutional role for organized
labour and a comprehensive welfare state, never made it to the South.
In a competitive race to provide ever more generous investment climates, even
governments historically close to labour have shifted the balance of power further in
favour of capital through a whole range of deregulatory policies. The current volume
discusses the very different experiences of trade unions with governments they had
mobilized to vote for. It shows that winning elections is not enough, and that real
Labour in the global South
vi
change also requires a movement that has the strength and public authority to keep those
elected accountable to their voters as well as to help them to withstand the lobbying
pressure of the countervailing forces. This, as some of the authors highlight, will not
be possible without trade unions that reach out and mobilize beyond their tradition-
al strongholds. Facing a crisis that is not only economic and social but also ecological
rules out the possibility of another century of global economic growth during which
the South is supposed to catch up to the North by growing even faster than the
North does. Labour needs new strategies to mobilize and organize and to build new
alliances, but it also needs development concepts that question capitalism’s insatiable
appetite for growth, without denying the necessity of income growth for the billions
of people living in abject poverty.
By selecting diverging and potentially controversial views on these issues, this
book contributes the much-needed southern perspective to this essential debate, as
well as to the global discourse.
Bheki Ntshalintshali
Deputy Secretary-General
Congress of South African Trade Unions
Preface
vii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Notes on contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
1 Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
Sarah Mosoetsa and Michelle Williams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PART I COUNTERING EXPLOITATION AND MARGINALIZATION . . 17
2 South African labour’s response to climate change: The threat
of green neoliberal capitalism
Jacklyn Cock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Women, gender and power in trade unions
Akua Britwum, Karen Douglas and Sue Ledwith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4 Local government call centres: Challenge or opportunity
for South African labour?
Babalwa Magoqwana and Sandra Matatu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5 Why labour unions have failed Bangladesh’s garment workers
Zia Rahman and Tom Langford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
PART II POLITICAL MOVEMENTS AND TRADE UNIONS . . . . . . . . 107
6 Brazilian labour relations in Lula’s era: Telemarketing operators
and their unions
Ruy Braga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
ix
CONTENTS
7 Labour relations in Uruguay under the Frente Amplio Government,
2005–09: From neoliberalism to neocorporativism?
Jana Silverman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
8 Can a labour-friendly government be friendly to labour? A hegemonic
analysis of Brazilian, German and South African experiences
Christoph Scherrer and Luciana Hachmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
PART III WORKER ALTERNATIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
9 The recovered factories and the Argentine labour movement:
A grey zone in a “new” social movement
Bruno Dobrusin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
10 Organizing informal women workers for green livelihoods:
The Self Employed Women’s Association in Gujarat
Sarbeswara Sahoo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
LIST OF TABLES
3.1 Percentages of women on trade union decision-making bodies, 2009 . . . 50
3.2 Senior office-holders in selected trade unions and confederations,
by gender, with percentages for women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.3 Women and trade union equality structures, 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4 Successes and barriers for women in their unions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.1 Characteristics of call centre operations focused on, respectively,
quantity of calls handled and quality of service provided . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.1 The garment industry in Bangladesh: Numbers of factories
and employees, 1983/84 to 2010/11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.1 Percentage growth in numbers of telemarketing operators in Brazil,
by region, 2004–09 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.2 Numbers of telemarketing operators in Brazil, by region, 2003–09 . . . . 111
10.1 Sources of green livelihood, by sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
10.2 SEWA membership across India, by state, 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
10.3 Rural–urban distribution of SEWA membership in Gujarat, 2009 . . . . 185
LIST OF FIGURES
6.1 Numbers of telemarketing operators in Brazil, 2003–09 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
10.1 Outline of study coverage showing types of location,
activities and workers examined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Labour in the global South
x
Ruy Braga is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of São
Paulo, Brazil (USP). He was Director of USP’s Center for the Study of Citizenship
Rights (Cenedic) from 2006 to 2010 and is the Correspondence Secretary of the
magazine Outubro (periodical of the Brazilian Institute of Socialist Studies) and
Deputy Editor of the magazine Societies Without Borders (organ of the association
Sociologists Without Borders). He was Vice-Chair of USP’s Department of Sociology
from 2005 to 2009 and is President of the Human Resources General Commission of
USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences.
Akua Britwum is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies,
University of Cape Coast, Ghana, where she has been teaching and carrying out
research in gender and labour studies since 1996.
Jacklyn Cock is a professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology, and an honorary
research associate of the Society, Work and Development Institute, at the University
of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Bruno Dobrusin is an adviser to the International Relations Secretariat of the
Argentine Workers’ Confederation and a PhD candidate at the University of Buenos
Aires. He has an MA in Globalization and Labour from the Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai, a member institution of the Global Labour University.
Karen Douglas is a Senior Industrial Officer of the Health and Community Services
Union, Victoria, Australia, and a graduate of the Masters in Labour Policies and
Globalization programme of the Global Labour University.
xi
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Luciana Hachmann is undertaking her PhD at the International Center for
Development and Decent Work at Kassel University, Germany. She is a graduate of
the Masters in Labour Policies and Globalization programme of the Global Labour
University.
Tom Langford is a professor in the Sociology Department at the University of
Calgary, Canada. He can be reached at langford@ucalgary.ca. His collaborative work
with Zia Rahman includes“The limitations of global social movement unionism as
an emancipatory labour strategy in majority world countries”, which was published in
the Canadian journal Socialist Studies in 2010.
Sue Ledwith is Leverhulme Emeritus Scholar in International Labour and Trade
Union Studies at Ruskin College, United Kingdom, www.ruskin.ac.uk, and can be
contacted by email at sledwith@ruskin.ac.uk.
Babalwa Magoqwana is a PhD candidatein sociology at Rhodes University, South
Africa. Her thesis focuses on call centre labour processes within local government in
South Africa.
Sandra Matatu is a PhD candidatein sociology at Rhodes University, South Africa.
Her thesis focuses on e-government and workplace restructuring in South African
municipalities.
Sarah Mosoetsa is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Witwatersrand,
South Africa, where she is a member of the Global Labour University executive
committee. Her publications include Eating from one pot: The dynamics of survival in
poor South African households (Wits University Press, 2011).
Zia Rahman is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Dhaka,
Bangladesh. He can be reached atzia_soc71@yahoo.com. His collaborative work with
Tom Langford includes“The limitations of global social movement unionism as an
emancipatory labour strategy in majority world countries”, which was published in the
Canadian journal Socialist Studies in 2010.
Sarbeswara Sahoo is an Assistant Professor in Economics at Mahatma Gandhi Labour
Institute, Gujarat, India, and can be reached by email at mgliahmedabad@gmail.com.
Christoph Scherrer is Professor for Globalization and Politics and Executive Director
of the International Center for Development and Decent Work at the University of
Kassel, Germany.
Labour in the global South
xii
Jana Silverman is the Programme Director of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center for
Brazil and Paraguay. In addition, she is a PhD candidate in labour and social
economics at the State University of Campinas in Brazil and holds a Master’s degree
in international affairs, specializing in human rights, from Columbia University. She
has published and presented extensively in academic forums in English, Spanish and
Portuguese on union strategies and labour relations in the Southern Cone countries
in the post-authoritarian period.
Michelle Williams is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Witwatersrand, South Africa, where she is chairperson of the Global Labour University
programme. Her publications include The roots of participatory democracy: Democratic
communists in South Africa and Kerala, India (Palgrave, 2008) and South Africa and
India: Shaping the global South (co-edited with Isabel Hofmeyr; Wits University Press,
2011).
Notes on contributors
xiii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Books are always collective projects; edited volumes especially so. We would like
to thank the following organizations: the International Labour Organization,
the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung and the Department of Sociology, University of the
Witwatersrand. Many people have contributed to this volume either directly or
indirectly, and while we cannot thank them all individually, a few deserve special
mention: Pulane Ditlhake, Frank Hoffer, Claire Hobden, Musa Malabela, Vishwas
Satgar, Edward Webster, Jacklyn Cock, Devan Pillay, Chris Edgar, Alison Irvine, our
copy editor Gillian Somerscales and three reviewers who reviewed the manuscript in
a “double blind” process. We would also like to thank all the contributors, who
worked to very strict deadlines in order to keep up with an extremely stringent
publication schedule.
xiv
AAFLI Asian American Free Labor Institute
ACD automatic call distributor
ADOS Asociación de Obras Sociales (Argentina)
AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial
Organizations
AITUC All India Trade Union Congress
ANC African National Congress
ANTA Self-administered Workers’ Association (Argentina)
AO automatic operator
APCOL All Pakistan Confederation of Labour
ATE State Workers Association (Argentina)
BAG Bargaining Agenda for Gender
BEE Black Economic Empowerment
BGMEA Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association
BGWUC Bangladesh Garment Workers Unity Council
BIGU Bangladesh Independent Garment-Workers Union
BNCL Bengal National Chamber of Labour
BNDES Brazilian Development Bank
BNP Bangladesh Nationalist Party
CAN Climate Justice Network
CDES Economic and Social Development Council (Brazil)
CDM Clean Development Mechanism
CGT General Labour Confederation (Argentina)
CIFE Chief Inspector of Factories and Establishment (Bangladesh)
CJN Climate Justice Now
CJNSA Climate Justice Now South Africa
xv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CLC Canadian Labour Congress
COB customer-oriented bureaucracies
COP Conference of the Parties
COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions
CS consejos de salarios (Uruguay)
CTA Workers’ Confederation of Argentina
CTAs tele-activity centres (Brazil)
CUT Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Brazil)
CWU Communication Workers Union (South Africa)
DGB Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
DIEESE Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic
Studies (Brazil)
DL Directorate of Labour (Bangladesh)
EPFL East Pakistan Federation of Labour
EPZ export processing zone
ETUC European Trade Union Confederation
FA Frente Amplio (Uruguay)
FASINPAT Fábrica sin patrones (Argentina)
FDI foreign direct investment
FEDUSA Federation of Unions of South Africa
FORU Uruguayan Regional Workers’ Federation
GATS General Agreement on Trade in Services
GDP gross domestic product
GEAR Growth, Employment and Redistribution
GHG(s) greenhouse gas(es)
GLU Global Labour University
HR human resources
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
IFL Indian Federation of Labour
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
INTUC Indian National Trade Union Congress
IRP Integrated Resource Plan (South Africa)
ITUC International Trade Union Confederation
IUF International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant,
Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations
IVR interactive voice response
LGBT Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals
and transgendered people
LRK Little Rann of Kutch
MEF Ministry of Economy and Finances (Uruguay)
Labour in the global South
xvi
MPN Movimiento Popular Neuquino (Argentina)
MTSS Ministry of Labour and Social Security (Uruguay)
NACTU National Council of Trade Unions (South Africa)
NGO non-governmental organization
NGP New Growth Path (South Africa)
NLC Nigerian Labour Congress
NMM Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality
NPM New Public Management
NUM National Union of Mineworkers (South Africa)
NUMSA National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
PIT-CNT Uruguayan labour confederation
PSDB Partido da Social Democracia Brasiliera (Social Democratic Party
of Brazil)
PT Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, Brazil)
RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme
REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation
RG research group
RMG ready-made garments
SACP South African Communist Party
SALGA South African Local Government Association
SAMWU South African Municipal Workers Union
SATAWU South African Transport and Allied Workers Unions
SC Solidarity Center (Bangladesh)
SEWA Self Employed Women’s Association (India)
SKOP Sramik Karmachari Okkyo Parishad (Bangladesh)
SOECN Sindicato de Obreros y Empleados Ceramistas de Neuquén
(Argentina)
SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
SUTRASPRIN Sindicato de Salud Privada del Neuquén (Argentina)
TRIPS Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
UACs utilities, agencies and corporatized entities
UCR Unión Cívica Radical
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions
WTO World Trade Organization
WWF World Wildlife Fund
List of abbreviations
xvii
In recent years, news broadcasts across the world have been awash with stories of
governments in advanced capitalist countries such as Britain, France, Germany and
the United States, saving corporations and banks in a desperate attempt to rescue the
global economic system. These events signal the emer gence of a new global crisis of
capitalism triggered by the actions of an unscrupulous financial sector. This new crisis
is global in character, originating in and most directly affecting the global North, and
is compounded by the widespread crisis of the State. At the root of the economic crisis
is a greedy financial sector, motivated by the ideals of the free market and self-
regulation, whose disregard for its own fiscal and credit rules led to a credit collapse.
Despite their culpability in creating the crisis, banks, transnational corpora tions
and domestic firms have been bailed out by governments in coordinated efforts to
save local and global economies from ruin, proving anew that states and capital can
work together to save each other, especially in times of instability. Our question is:
at whose expense?
The recent crisis must be seen within the context of the past 30 years of neolib -
eral globalization, with its increasingly pernicious effects on growing numbers of
people: “The number of people unemployed and the number of unstable, insecure
jobs has actually increased – from 141 million to 190 million (1993 to 2007) and
from 1,338 million to 1,485 million (1997 to 2007)
respectively” (War on Want,
2009, p. 4). This crisis has exacerbated trends that have been under way for some
time, with effects felt across the globe. While responses to the crisis in the global
North have focused inward on national economies and companies, they also affect
the global South. Promises to support development in the global South have been
forgotten, with foreign development aid declining at an alarming rate. Corporate
bailouts are accompanied by “austerity” measures that are being forced on
CHALLENGES AND ALTERNATIVES
FOR WORKERS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Sarah Mosoetsa and Michelle Williams
1
1
populations, threatening such meagre safety nets as are still in place to protect
the poor and the working class. The focus in mainstream debate has been on
simultaneous intervention of the State in saving negligent corpo rations and in
disciplining populations, purportedly in pursuit of the public good. As Bowles
(2011) reminds us, neoliberal globalization is a political project aimed at increasing
the power of capital in relation to the State and labour.
While the importance of state action in regulating and facilitating markets has
gained a new salience across the globe, less attention has been given in the popular
media to the effects of the crisis on organized and unor ganized workers. For example,
the loss of over one million jobs in 2010–11 in South Africa alone hardly registered
on the news radar of even local broadcasters. And yet the repercussions of this crisis
in global capitalism for the developing and post-colonial world are immediate,
albeit indirect.
For these countries of the global South, crisis has been a familiar state of affairs
for at least three decades. In the 1980s and 1990s it came in the wake of the Structural
Adjustment Programmes orchestrated by the world financial institutions, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade
Organization (WTO), which took over from the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade in 1995. Structural adjustment really meant financial and trade liberalization,
and its imposition ushered in crisis after crisis across countries in the developing world.
The effects were retrench ments, unemployment, poverty and rising inequalities.
These events have come as no surprise for many who have noted rising inequal -
ities between and within states, over-consumption and high levels of household debt,
and over-extraction in the natural environment. Neoliberal globalization has created
growing insecurity and deteriorating conditions for workers across the globe, often
pitting workers against each other (Bieler and Lindberg, 2011). Yet the warning signs
have been ignored. The world chose to focus on giant US technology and IT
companies such as Apple as examples of the success of global capitalism, paying little
attention to labour conditions in these companies. As soaring profits were registered
by transnational corporations, increasingly precarious conditions for labour were
seen as the necessary price to be paid for such spectacular “success” in profits and
growth. We thus see alongside extraordinary wealth an increase in informalization
of production through, for example, outsourced workers, export processing zones
(EPZs) and the growth in the informal economy. The effects have been global, with
“global inequality [rising] steadily from .43 in 1980 to .67 in 2005” (Bieler and
Lindberg, 2011, p. 3).
As predicted by scholars such as Karl Polanyi in The great transformation, such times
require a return from the market to society to resolve the crisis brought about by the
contradictions of marketization and the commod ification of labour, land and money.
Polanyi argued that capitalism came at a high cost for industrial workers and democratic
political institutions: “[T]he idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such
Labour in the global South
2
an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human
and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and trans-
formed his surrounding into a wilderness” (Polanyi, 1944, p. 3). A counter-movement,
he argued, would rise against such forces of marketization and commod ification. Since
the 1990s we have seen increasing numbers of global protests, starting with Seattle
in 1999 and continuing through Genoa (2001) and the emergence in the latter year of
the World Social Forum to the recent Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab
Spring. Indeed, recent world events could be described as further examples of such
movements in the demands for political and economic democracy witnessed in
Argentina, Bolivia, Egypt, Greece, South Africa and the Syrian Arab Republic. The
question arises: what is the role of labour in the counter-movements for change?
Within this context, it is evident that global economic and political insecurity pose
enormous challenges, both new and old, for labour in the global South. It is therefore
not surprising that there has been renewed academic interest in exactly these questions
and many projects focusing on the challenges faced by labour (see e.g. Harrod and
O’Brian, 2002; Munck, 2002; Clawson, 2003; Phelan, 2006; Bronfenbrenner, 2007;
Bieler, Lindberg and Pillay, 2008; Chun, 2009; Taylor, 2009). Across the disciplinary
spectrum from economics to sociology, politics, history and development, and reaching
beyond the academy to include labour activists, researchers and practitioners, there has
been a turn towards seeking new ways of understanding labour’s challenges, identifying
creative responses, and suggesting possible future implications of these new realities
(Webster, Lambert and Bezuidenhout, 2008; Bieler and Lindberg, 2011). We have seen
different types of labour responses to the political challenges faced today: initiatives such
as corporate codes of conduct, international framework agreements, global unions and
international labour standards have all been proposed in an attempt to reclaim labour’s
lost power (Webster, 2011). In some countries, such as Argentina and Bolivia, social
movements have become rivals to traditional labour movements, while in others, such
as Brazil, India, the Republic of Korea and South Africa, labour has forged alliances with
political movements both in and out of government. Sometimes the alliances emerge
after political parties come to power, but more often they are formed before that point.
In yet other instances, such as Bangladesh and India’s Self Employed Women’s
Association (SEWA), labour movements have remained non-aligned and independent.
It is against this backdrop that the Global Labour University (GLU) hosted the
interdisciplinary conference on “The Politics of Labour and Development”, which
brought together over 150 labour scholars and activists from over 25 countries.1
The conference was held at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg,
South Africa, in September 2011. Themes highlighted included challenges faced by
labour, workplace issues, new forms of power and leverage, policy engagements, labour
alliances with political parties and social movements, and alternative forms of produc -
tion, consump tion and distribution. The location in South Africa gave the proceedings
a natural bias towards South Africa, but one of the notable features of the conference
Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
3
was the overwhelming number of labour scholars and activists from countries in the
global South.
The essays brought together in this volume arise out of this conference. Like the
conference itself, the volume has a natural bias towards South Africa, with three
chapters dealing with issues of labour in that country; but it also explores more widely
labour’s attempts to shift the balance of power away from capital and unelected
bureaucracies and in favour of labour and broader society. In other words, we look at
the ways in which labour has tried to reconfigure the multiple relations of power and
oppression, including their economic, political and cultural aspects, that reproduce
and sustain subor dinate classes. One of the strengths of this volume is that it includes
chapters by both labour scholars and practitioners, and thus contributes important
case studies from the global South to the field of global labour studies. The focus on
the global South may prompt reservations in some readers. We chose this focus quite
deliberately as the sister volume, Trade unions and the global crisis: Labour’s visions,
strategies and responses (Serrano, Xhafa and Fichter, 2011), largely focused on OECD
countries. This volume, therefore, presents an opportunity to examine research on the
global South and largely by scholars from the global South.
The term “global South” might itself be unfamiliar to some readers as, while
commonly used among scholars, it is less commonly understood outside academia. Its
genealogy is rooted in the vocabulary of the Brandt Commission in the 1980s, which
used the term “South” to refer to a North–South, rich–poor duality. With the collapse
of the Soviet Union, the old terminology of Eastern bloc and Western bloc, and the
concomitant idea of three worlds – First World, Second World and Third World –
lost meaning as the Second World, the countries of the former Eastern bloc, were now
being absorbed into the categories of First and Third Worlds, developed and
developing countries. As Hofmeyr and Williams explain: “In this context, the term
‘Global South’ came to stand in as a proxy for the term ‘Third World’” (Hofmeyr and
Williams, 2011, p. 17). But the concept denotes more than the residual hierarchical
category of the “Third World”. The idea of the global South is meant to identify
countries in similar economic and geopolitical positions in the global capitalist system
and to highlight their shared strategic objectives and interests. Reference to the “global
South” rather than simply the “South” highlights the political, rather than merely
geographical, coor dinates that unite the countries. Thus, countries in the global South
may be located in the geographical north, south, west or east, but they share basic
geopolitical and strategic interests. In the next section of this introduction we
summarize the challenges for and responses by labour, both of which are covered in
the chapters that follow. We then outline the structure of the volume. The first set of
chapters, Part I, look specifically at different chal lenges faced by labour in the global
South. The second set of chapters (Part II) explore the various linkages between
politics and labour. The chapters in Part III focus more specifically on responses that
labour has initiated.
Labour in the global South
4
Challenges for and responses by labour in the
twenty-first century
We begin by discussing the challenges for labour arising from the dual crises of the
economy and ecology. Neoliberal globalization, which includes the financial crisis that
erupted in 2008 and evolved into a full-blown economic crisis by 2010, has had far-
reaching effects on economies around the world and has a variety of dimensions that
must all be understood in order to appreciate its effects on labour. One of these is the
change in ownership patterns over the past 30 years as international capital investors –
who are not directly involved in running companies – have come to dominate corporate
life (Bieler and Lindberg, 2011, pp. 3–5). Thus, states and companies are increasingly
influenced by the global economy rather than by local and national conditions. This new
international ownership structure weakens local and national trade unions as decisions
about the company are often made in distant places (Hyman, 2011). One of the out -
comes of this new ownership pattern is to give transnational corporations a great deal
more structural power than labour, as unions’ regulatory capacity has been system-
atically undermined. Alongside this new ownership structure, outsourcing has led
to decentralization of production and fragmented industrial systems, with smaller
companies often unwilling to recognize collective bargaining structures (Hyman, 2011,
p. 17). As a result, unions are struggling to secure increases in wages and social benefits,
leading in turn to the loss of membership and status (Hyman, 2011, p. 16). Moreover,
with the penetration of the market has come not a retreat of the State, but rather a shift
in the State’s priorities. States no longer prioritize being responsive and accountable to
their populations, but rather increasingly look to protect and advance the interests of
corporations and economies at the expense of society. Thus their involvement has often
come at the expense of labour. For example, the Republic of Korea recently passed a
draconian law effectively making labour responsible to the company for profits lost
during a strike.
Neoliberal globalization has, moreover, not only intensified exploitation at the
workplace and extended exploitation to the sphere of social repro duction, in such
matters as health care and education; it has extended its own reach to the furthest
corners of the global South. The conditions for labour in the global South differ from
those prevailing in the global North, as labour in the global South was never
incorporated into the Keynesian welfare state system in which trade unions had
influence over decision-making (Bieler and Lindberg, 2011, p. 7). Instead of fostering
welfare state conditions, neoliberal globalization forced the global South to open up
to imports and foreign direct investment (FDI), which undermined national develop -
ment (Saad-Filho, 2005). By the late 1990s, developing countries were being battered
by draconian accords such as the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS) Agreement and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and
forced to dismantle tariff barriers. As a result of trade liberalization during the 1980s
Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
5
and 1990s, Africa and Latin America experienced “large-scale job losses, increasing
unemployment and declining wages” (Bieler and Lindberg, 2011, p. 8). One of the
most important outcomes of neoliberal globalization has been job losses across many
sectors and the concomitant loss of economic leverage by trade unions. Put simply, job
losses translate into fewer union members, which weaken unions’ positions with regard
to capital. Ultimately, for workers in the global South, the continuous drive to lower
costs and intensify exploitation has led to a crisis of legitimacy (Silver, 2003, p. 81).
There have also been long-term structural changes that have posed serious
challenges to labour. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, manu facturing was
responsible for the lion’s share of labour-absorbing economic growth. By the late
twentieth century, however, manufacturing was shrinking both in terms of its share
in the economy and in its capacity to sustain the working class and create increases in
well-being (Amsden, 2001; Evans, 2008, pp. 8–10). Manufacturing’s leading role in
job creation has diminished as advanced technology has increasingly replaced labour,
causing the sector to shed jobs at an alarming rate. As manufacturing has lost its
centrality, the strategic significance of the service sector has mushroomed. To take
one example, in South Africa services have taken a leading role in the economy: the
service sector grew from 51.1 per cent of GDP in 1983 to 63.7 per cent by 2002, while
the high labour absorbing sectors of mining and manufacturing dropped from
44.5 per cent of GDP in 1983 to 32.2 per cent of GDP in 2002 (World Bank, 2004).
Thus, services have become the engine of growth and the sector creating most jobs.
The service sector is especially conducive to the use of informal labour and the
employment of casual workers, a situation that capital has exploited to its advantage.
As Standing (2011) has shown, the process of neoliberal globalization has changed the
nature of work and ultimately weakened the standard employment relationship.
Employment is no longer characterized by full-time, secure contracts that maintain
social reproduction. With these changes, trade unions’ traditional forms of power –
workplace bargaining and regulatory capacity – have also been eroded.
These changes in the structure of the economy have had profound implications
for labour. Labour in the traditional manufacturing sectors has had to find new forms
of power and leverage in an effort to combat job losses and the diminishing signif -
icance of the sector in the economy and in response to the changing nature of work.
At the same time, the new importance of the service sector, in which trade unions
were formerly less interested in organizing, has forced labour to think about new
approaches to organizing and new tactics for mobilizing. Perhaps one of the most
serious challenges facing labour is how to organize the so-called “precariat”, from the
unemployed to casual workers, domestic workers, migrant workers and informal
workers. According to Standing (2011), this new precariat is part of a new global class
structure. Clearly, the various forms of labour have a crucial role to play in countering
the destructive logic of capitalism and championing Polanyi’s movement of society in
response to the perils of the market.
Labour in the global South
6
Compounding the economic crisis is an ecological crisis that many analysts say
is quickly reaching the point of no return. Global temperatures are rising; storms are
becoming more violent and more frequent; some regions are suffer ing from extreme
flooding while others are subject to record-breaking droughts; clean water is becoming
a scarce resource in many areas (see Chapter 2 by Cock in this volume; Bellamy-
Foster, 2011)
.
Together, the economic and ecological crises have seen the dispossession of
the commons (including local resources as well as public goods such as health and
education), the informalization of labour, and increases in unem ployment and social
inequality at the national and global levels. As well as damaging impacts on the human
environment, with the rapid spread of urban areas without adequate access to housing,
water or electricity, and increases in pollutants that threaten livelihoods and endanger
public health, they have exacerbated processes in the natural environment that threaten
the very earth itself, including declining biodiversity and climate change. At the same
time, the extension of state and market control over daily life is narrowing electoral
choices and increasing restrictions on protest. These two intertwined crises of the
economy and nature are having profound impacts on subordinate classes around the
world, especially in the global South. The challenge for labour is how to forge new
solidarities in response to these trends.
Solidarity is always constructed. Trade union solidarity has traditionally been
based on the mutual interests of workers. In today’s conditions, however, there is a need
for broader forms of solidarity, requiring unions to look beyond their narrow
interests to issues of neoliberal development (Hyman, 2011). Perhaps what is required
is a return to the solidarities of social movement unionism prevalent in many places in
the global South in the 1980s and 1990s. Certainly, to face today’s challenges, new
solidarities need to be constructed that prioritize universal rather than particular interests.
Hyman suggests (2011, p. 26) that trade unions have to move beyond common
interests to solidarity built on interdependence (that is, mutuality despite difference).
Linked to the need for new forms of solidarity is the need to explore new forms of
power. Historically, trade unions primarily used their structural and associ ational forms
of power in pursuing workers’ interests. In social welfare states, unions also had political
power within their repertoire. In today’s conditions, however, these forms of power are
proving less efficacious than they once were, requiring labour to look for new sources
of power. Chun (2009) has shown the importance of symbolic power in struggles by
marginalized labour. Symbolic power builds legitimacy around the workers’ demands
by invoking moral and discursive stories that frame the struggles in such a way as to
resonate with the public (Chun, 2009, pp. 13–15). Thus symbolic power is forged
through classification struggles over legitimacy (p. 18). While labour laws can facilitate
this process, tapping into moral legitimacy is of paramount importance.
It is clear from this summary that labour faces many challenges arising from both
economic and ecological crises, but also that there are hopeful openings for resistance
Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
7
in forging broader forms of solidarity and exploring new forms of power. The chapters
that follow, outlined in the next sections of this introduction, all deal with these issues
to varying degrees.
Countering exploitation and marginalization
The first set of chapters (Part I) deal with the challenges posed by the intensification
of exploitation and marginalization. Jacklyn Cock; Akua Britwum, Karen Douglas and
Sue Ledwith; Babalwa Magoqwana and Sandra Matatu; and Zia Rahman and Tom
Langford all address various forms of intensified exploitation and marginalization.
Cock explicitly looks at new areas of exploitation emerging out of “green capitalism”,
in which the “effi ciency of the market [is brought] to bear on nature” (p. 20), and the
concomitant creation of “green jobs”. Cock shows that the idea of “green jobs” has
been formulated erroneously, pitting jobs against nature, with little attention to the
job losses that would result in the transition to a low-carbon economy. As a result,
organized labour has been ambivalent about measures to mitigate climate change.
Moreover, Cock argues, green jobs play into the capitalist growth paradigm and will
continue to exploit nature. Using South Africa as her case study, Cock argues that
there is an alternative that benefits both labour and nature, epitomized in the climate
justice movement, which brings together workers and their organizations into
transnational solidarity networks. Cock argues that the labour movement’s successful
insertion of the concept of “just transition” into the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010 marked an important shift
from the “green economy” discourse that “emphasizes growth, competitiveness and
efficiency” to a discourse that places some form of justice at its centre (pp. 30–31).
However, Cock also explains that the concept of “just transition” continues to be
attended by great ambiguity within and among global labour movements. Labour’s
efforts to address issues of ecology suggest an important step forward from the old
“green versus red” debate in which labour and ecology were pitted against each other
in a zero-sum game.
Another important challenge facing labour in the global South has to do with
the inadequacy of traditional forms of organizing in reaching women and
marginalized workers. Labour in the global South is strongly characterized by casual
labour contracts, informal work and marginalized workers, toiling away on the
fringes of the global economy. For example, women and girls carry out two-thirds of
the world’s labour; yet they receive only one-tenth of the income generated
(Mohanty, 2003), and trade unions have not dealt adequately with gender issues.
Akua Britwum, Karen Douglas and Sue Ledwith show that the increase in women
trade union members around the world has not translated into representation in
leadership structures. They suggest that marginalized workers such as women,
migrants and other disadvantaged groups are increasingly challenging unions to
Labour in the global South
8
become agents of social change. They argue that “to be effective agents of change it
is vital that unions themselves disrupt their own traditional male hegemony” and
“that women continue to use their agency” (p. 41). Britwum, Douglas and Ledwith
draw on bargaining agendas for gender from Canada, the Philippines and Turkey to
show that many challenges continue to exist, but also that there is a great deal of
variation between countries.
Addressing more explicit and traditional understandings of exploitation,
Magoqwana and Matatu argue that new forms of structuring work come with the
intensification of exploitation and increased vulnerability. Looking at South African
local Government’s recourse to call centres, Magoqwana and Matatu explore the way
in which the labour process has changed through the out sourcing of work formerly
done by government employees to call centres. Now employing over 80,000 workers,
call centres have grown 8 per cent per year since 2006, yet the labour movement has
not made serious inroads into this growing workforce as it is a difficult sector to
organize. Magoqwana and Matatu show how the work environment has become more
routinized and individualized, and is characterized by extreme forms of surveillance
and manage ment oversight. For example, workers face tough performance targets and
computer-based monitoring that further depersonalize the job. Despite the perilous
conditions of work, South African unions have not organized this sector adequately,
and as a result of their “disregard of this new customer-centred workplace” (p. 78) only
25 per cent of South African call centres are unionized compared to the international
average of 40 per cent (p. 65).
Taking the issue of union neglect of marginalized workers across the Indian
Ocean, Zia Rahman and Tom Langford explore the difficult relationship between
marginalized workers and trade unions in the context of Bangladesh’s garment workers.
Rahman and Langford show that the 3.6 million Bangladeshi garment workers have been
largely ignored by trade unions since the 1980s. Despite the importance to the national
economy of the manufacture of ready-made garments (RMG) – Bangladesh is the fourth
largest producer of RMG in the world after China, the European Union and Turkey –
its workers continue to operate under precarious conditions. Unionization “remained
stagnant into the 2000s, despite the fact that employ ment in the industry grew by an
astounding 500 per cent between 1990–91 and 2006–07” (p. 90). Rahman and
Langford argue that the failure of unions to organize garment workers stems partly from
the fact that the “major labour unions ... represent the interests of political parties rather
than those of workers” (p. 97). However, they argue that the massive protests in the sector
in 2006 not only won partial victories, but also began to raise both the status and the
capacity of labour unions in the garment sector.
The intensified exploitation of both nature and marginalized workers has created
serious challenges for labour, but has also provided opportunities to develop new forms
of solidarity and symbolic power. The chapters in this section demonstrate that while
global economic forces are crucial in determining the conditions for labour, these forces
Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
9
are still mediated through local and national processes, offering labour important avenues
for organizing resistance.
Political movements and trade unions
Trade unions have a long history of political engagement. In the years after the Second
World War, labour in the global North was incorporated into welfare state systems,
providing labour with important avenues through which to shape industrial relations
and social benefits (Bieler and Lindberg, 2011, p. 7). In the global South, however,
the relations between trade unions and political movements have often been mediated
through struggles for independence from colonial rule (in, for example, India, Kenya,
Mexico and South Africa) or against authoritarian governments (as in Brazil, the
Republic of Korea and Uruguay). Thus, unions in the global South have often helped
to build political movements that later won places in government. Sadly, the story all
too often took the same form: once in government, political movements tended to
sideline their union partners as the demands of the global economy limited their
capacities to act.
The chapters in this section of the volume look at the various relation ships
between unions and political movements in government in Brazil, Germany, South
Africa and Uruguay. Exploring the challenges emerging from States’ ambivalent
attitudes towards unions, Ruy Braga, Jana Silverman, and Christoph Scherrer and
Luciana Hachmann highlight the difficult conditions labour faces even when labour-
friendly governments take power.
Braga focuses our gaze on telemarketers in Brazil, a sector which grew by 20 per
cent per year between 2003 and 2009 to employ an estimated 1.4 million workers by
2011 – most of them young, Afro-Brazilian women and lesbians, gays, bisexuals,
transvestites, transsexuals and transgendered people (LGBTs). Like their counterparts
in South African call centres, the Brazilian telemarketers’ conditions of work are
characterized by precarious employment, extreme automated surveillance, physical
fatigue, psychological harassment and numerous forms of sickness. Rather than just
focusing on the conditions of labour that Magoqwana and Matatu highlight, Braga
shows how this highly exploited “sub-proletarian” class has both looked to “Lulaism”
and the State for ways to reduce social inequality and also slowly found its own voice
in organizing against conditions of work. Braga argues that the extraordinary
popularity of President Lula, as well as the very real connections between the State and
unions that the Lula Government created, translated into shifts in the way workers saw
the State and the ways in which they conducted their own struggle. In addition, he
notes, telemarketers were largely apolitical and unfa miliar with trade union traditions,
making it even more difficult for unions to organize them. This context, together with
Lula’s election victory in 2002, Braga argues, led unions to shift to “‘citizen unionism’,
by which the union offers its associates a variety of services formerly provided by the
Labour in the global South
10
State, such as health-care plans and vocational training, in addition to supporting
employ ment agencies funded by the Workers Relief Fund” (p. 116). However, in
2006 the situation began to change, with workers going on strike, developing a class
consciousness and becoming more politicized. Braga suggests that the future is open
to many new forms of organizing and building solidarity, largely created by the
extreme forms of exploitation and increasingly fragmented workforce that have come
to characterize the working environment in this sector.
Silverman offers a historical analysis of the Uruguayan labour movement,
showing that the redemocratization of the country after 1985 “did not lead to a full
restoration of the political and organizational capacity of the unions” (p. 125) because
the adoption of neoliberal policies curtailed the role of the State in promoting labour-
friendly policies and collective bargaining. Instead, the State created a “voluntary”
system of bilateral labour relations that “did not take into account the inherent
power inequalities between workers and employers” (pp. 125–26). Despite widespread
expectations that the return to democracy would usher in an era of decent jobs,
increased purchas ing power and democratic unions, the era was marked by state
control of labour through, for example, new restrictions on the right to strike and the
introduction of neoliberal economic policies. Silverman shows that as a result real
salaries declined between 1998 and 2003, massive job losses were experienced in the
industrial sector and private sector unions haemorrhaged members. The situation
changed in 2004 with the Frente Amplio party’s election victory, which won it the
majority position in government and allowed it to regulate labour relations, pass laws
protecting workers and implement labour-friendly policies. As a result, social dialogue
and labour rights were strengthened and the role of the state has slowly been redefined
as “neocorporativist”.
The next chapter shifts the focus to other forms of linkage between trade unions
and parties. Brazil, Germany and South Africa raise interesting questions about rela -
tionships between trade unions and labour-friendly parties. The nature of political
alliances and forms of mobilizing are vital issues, and experiments in these areas are
under way in various regions of the world (for example, in many parts of Latin
America). Christoph Scherrer and Luciana Hachmann investigate whether labour-
friendly governments actually represent the interests of labour. They posit a degree of
similarity between the cases of Brazil, Germany and South Africa, in all three of which
political power passed to labour-friendly parties with long-standing relationships with
progressive and relatively strong labour movements. However, while Brazil and South
Africa share the experience of overcoming authoritarian regimes through popular
struggles in recent times, they differ in respect of the rela tion ship between the left-of-
centre political party and the trade unions. In Brazil the trade union federation (CUT)
actually provided the top leadership of the Workers’ Party (PT), while in South Africa
the trade union federation (COSATU) is a formal ally of the African National
Congress (ANC). Germany is different again: here, the current leadership of the Social
Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
11
Democrats and the trade unions do not share such decisive experiences, being
separated by a generation from the common opposition to Nazism. Scherrer and
Hachmann show that despite the linkages between parties and trade unions, in
all three cases the left-leaning parties in government disappointed their labour
constituencies in terms of macroeconomic policies in the early years of the twenty-first
century. They further show that the reasons for this lie partly in economic constraints,
but also, and very importantly, in issues of politics and power.
Finding alternatives: New forms of power
While the chapters in the first two parts of the volume highlight various challenges
faced by workers – exploitation, informalization, marginalization, state power – they
also indicate opportunities for renewal in labour organizing emerging out of these
challenges. The next set of chapters, in Part III, turn more explicitly to emerging
responses by labour in the global South. Growth in precarious work, including
informalization, often undermines the strength and interests of organized labour; but
it also holds the potential of reviving labour strategies and challenging the broader
economic and political balance of power (Munck, 2002; Tait, 2005). To what extent,
then, has labour in the global South embraced this possibility? While labour move -
ments always attempt to extract as much as possible of the social surplus created
through mobilization for higher wages and better working conditions, as can be seen
in the recent waves of strikes around the world, many other responses are becoming
evident. These are especially important in conditions of rising inequality and its
devastating effects on society, with more and more people being pushed into the
margins of production and consumption patterns. In these circumstances, workers
both within and outside trade unions have responded in a range of creative and
unexpected ways.
Among the most interesting responses are attempts by labour to find new forms
of power and leverage. With rising unemployment and increasing numbers of workers
pushed into precarious forms of work, new forms of power are being explored, often
by the most marginalized workers and those in sectors traditionally ignored by labour
movements. Labour’s links to other social forces are crucial here. The quest for new
forms of power also raises questions about who constitutes the working class, with
wider understandings of labour increasingly finding salience in innovative movements
around the world. Trade unions have a contribution to make to both debate and
action in this area (e.g. innovative organizing methods, reaching out to marginalized
workers, etc.), given their history as catalysts for social change and their continued role
in the economic and political landscape throughout the world. It is plausible to argue
that trade unionism will not “decline to the point of insignificance any time soon”
(Phelan, 2006, p. 33), but it will have to build and sustain new local and global
strategies.
Labour in the global South
12
The development of transnational linkages and networks is an important
dimension of the search for new forms of power and leverage to “empower workers”
(Stevis and Boswell, 2008). This endeavour includes building a sustainable global
union movement and network, forging new transnational union alliances, and organiz -
ing transnational and cross-border campaigns (Harrod and O’Brien, 2002;
Bronfenbrenner, 2007; Webster, Lambert and Bezuidenhout, 2008). Perhaps one of
the most exciting responses to the new conditions has been the replacement of
industrial production and consump tion by alternative forms of production and
consump tion. For example, there has been an upsurge in worker cooperatives,
microcredit/micro finance projects (though these pose their own challenges for
informal sector workers), and local agricultural production around the world.
Bruno Dobrusin and Sarbeswara Sahoo examine examples of creative responses
by workers in Argentina and India respectively. Dobrusin explores the recovered
factories movement in Argentina and the links to Peronism that permeate the broader
Argentine political culture. He argues that changes in labour politics, trade unions and
the Peronist movement help to explain the historical roots and current characteristics
of the recovered factories move ment that emerged in the first decade of the new
millennium. To understand the factory takeovers, he says, we must also understand
their relation to the union movement: “In some cases the CTA played a substantial role
in promoting and consolidating the struggle of the newly created cooperatives, while
the CGT was a dominant player on the opposite side, its bureaucratized union leaders
participating actively in boycotting the processes of retaking the factories” (p. 169). As
Dobrusin demonstrates, the unions’ role in these processes is complex and historically
rooted, and important to under standing these creative responses by workers.
Turning from Argentina to India, and from recovered factories to new forms of
“green livelihood”, Sahoo looks at the attempts of the Self Employed Women’s
Association (SEWA) to fight climate change while also creating livelihoods. Whereas
Cock in Chapter 2 of this volume challenged the “green economy”, Sahoo takes a less
critical stance, showing how SEWA has taken on the dual task of providing livelihoods
for informal women workers and protecting the environment in both rural and urban
areas. Sahoo explores four of SEWA’s projects – smokeless cooking stoves and solar
pumps; waste-pickers’ cooperatives; eco-tourism; and saltpan workers’ cooperatives –
in arguing that informal workers have responded creatively to opportunities created by
climate change. Both the Argentine recovered factories movement and SEWA’s
experiences suggest that workers are confronting real and multiple challenges with
imagination and experimentation, responding in creative and unexpected ways.
Conclusion
The twenty-first century has brought serious structural challenges to workers and the
poor, but it has also brought renewed vitality in response, with creative and innovative
Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
13
responses from labour evident around the world. While we have focused in this volume
on struggles in the global South, many similar issues and responses are to be seen in the
global North. For example, the Occupy Movement’s stark framing of the 1 per cent
elites versus the 99 per cent have-nots, the Arab Spring’s demands for democratic
transformation, and the Greek and Spanish protests against EU austerity measures all
emphasize the same points. States and corporations have become disconnected from
society and from the vast populations of working people around the world. The struggles
we see are a response to this. Labour, which forms a significant part of the 99 per cent,
is a fundamental part of the solution. In all these struggles there is an ideational
component: a vision of an alternative future, one centred not on profits and exploitation,
but on the well-being of humans and the natural world.
Note
1The GLU offers an international masters programme for trade unionists at the University of Kassel and Berlin School of
Economics in Germany, the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, the University of Campinas in Brazil and the Tata
Institute in India. The GLU programme is itself part of the growing field of global labour studies and attempts to bridge the
divide between academia and trade union activism.
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Challenges and alternatives for workers in the global South
15
COUNTERING EXPLOITATION
AND MARGINALIZATION
PART I
Introduction
The ecological crisis is deepening. Despite 17 years of multinational negotiations, there
is no binding global agreement on the reduction of carbon emissions. In fact, carbon
emissions are rising, which means climate change will intensify and have devastating
impacts – particularly on the working class – in the form of rising food prices, water
shortages, crop failures and so on. Southern Africa will be the worst affected region in
the world. Shifting towards a low-carbon or “green” economy will be particularly
challenging for South Africa given the carbon-intensive nature of its current economy.
Very recently the South African labour movement has expressed its commitment
to a “just transition”. However, the phrase is contentious, used with very different
understandings of the scale and nature of the changes involved. A just transition to a
low-carbon economy could be defensive, involving demands for shallow change focused
on protecting vulnerable workers; alternatively, it could require deep, transformative
change to dramatically different forms of production and consumption. In this sense
the ecological crisis represents an opportunity to demand the redistribution of power
and resources; to challenge the conventional understanding of economic growth; and
to create an alternative development path.
The crisis could also generate a new kind of transnational solidarity, wider,
deeper and more powerful than anything yet seen. Moving beyond solidarities based
on interests or identities, Hyman advocates a solidarity involving “mutuality despite
difference”, based on a sense of interdependence (Hyman, 2011, p. 26). He concludes
that “the challenge is to reconceptualise solidarity in ways which encompass the local,
the national … and the global. For unions to survive and thrive, the principle of
solidarity must not only be redefined and reinvented: workers on the ground must be
active participants in this redefinition and reinvention” (Hyman, 2011, p. 27).
SOUTH AFRICAN LABOUR’S RESPONSE
TO CLIMATE CHANGE: THE THREAT OF
GREEN NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM
Jacklyn Cock
2
19
This chapter suggests that the discourse of climate change – most clearly in its
warnings of the threat to human survival – could be contributing to such a process.
But it also cautions that the transition to a low-carbon or “green” economy could
mean shallow change and incorporation into “green capitalism”.
Green neoliberal capitalism
Capital’s response to the ecological crisis generally and climate change specifically is
that the system can continue to expand by creating a new “green capitalism”, bringing
the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. In effect, the
climate crisis has been appropriated by capitalism as another site of accumulation:
what Bond calls “climate-crisis capitalism”, namely “turning a medium/long-term,
system-threatening prospect into a short-term source of commodification, specu-
lation and profit” (Bond, 2011, p. 2). Underlying all capital’s strategies is the broad
process of commod ification: the transformation of nature and all social relations into
economic relations, subordinated to the logic of the market and the imperatives
of profit.
Green capitalism rests on the twin pillars of technological innovation and
expanding markets, while seeking to keep the existing institutions of capitalism intact.
More specifically, green capitalism involves:
•the carbon trading regime enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which involves
measures such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) that allow developed
countries to profit from the climate crisis while avoiding the reduction of their own
carbon emissions;
•appeals to nature (and even the ecological crisis) as a marketing tool;
•developing new, largely untested technologies such as “climate-smart agriculture”
and “clean coal” technology in the form of carbon capture and storage, which
involves installing equipment that captures carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases (GHGs) and then pumping the gas underground;
•the development of new sources of energy such as solar, nuclear and wind,
thereby creating new markets;
•the massive development of biofuels, which diverts land from food production;
•manipulative advertising in the form of “greenwash”; and
•triumphalist accounts of the potential of “green jobs” which are unsupported by
empirical evidence and fail to pay sufficient attention to working conditions.
Labour in the global South
20
“Green jobs”
Historically, the labour movement in South Africa has neglected environ mental issues.
This is largely because of a widespread belief that environmental protection threatened
jobs (Cock, 2007). Conversely, what is now driving trade unions into an engagement
with climate change is the indirect threat posed to existing energy-intensive jobs and
the possibility of new “green” jobs.
The emphasis on the creation of “green” jobs challenges the false dichotomy which
portrays the relationship between labour and environment as a trade-off between jobs
and environmental protection. Green jobs are at the centre of global debates on the
transition to what is variously termed a “low-carbon” or “green” economy. The common
element is the need for a transition to a new energy regime. However, there is ambiguity
on the meaning of these terms.
The simplest definition of green jobs is those in existing and new sectors
which “contribute substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality”
(UNEP/ILO/IOE/ITUC, 2008, p. 3). However, there are several problems in the
current formulations of green jobs. First, many aspirational claims are made which seem
inflated and are not supported by empirical evidence. As Annabella Rosenberg of the
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has pointed out, “the impacts of
climate change on employment remain mostly unexplored by research” (Rosenberg,
2011). Insufficient attention has been paid to job losses. Some employment will be
substituted, as in shifting waste handling from landfill and incineration to recycling.
Certain jobs will be eliminated, as in the production of elaborate packaging materials,
and many workers in existing jobs, for example electricians, or metal and construction
workers, will have to be retrained. A transition to clean energy could create far more jobs
than it would eliminate. However, the fact that some people could get new jobs is little
comfort for the people and communities who could lose theirs – jobs in coal-fired power
plants, for example.
Second, in the debate on creating a green economy, insufficient attention has
been paid to the quality of green jobs (in terms of labour standards and wage levels).
“Decent work” means jobs that pay at least a living wage, and offer training opportu -
nities and some measure of economic and social security. At present, the creation of
green jobs is driven more by the interests of the market than by social needs: and, as
the President of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has
pointed out in relation to the renewable energy sector, “green jobs can be as indecent
as blue or brown jobs … [They] can use cheap labour, exploit women and children,
use labour brokers and be dangerous in terms of occupational health and safety”
(Gina, 2011).
Green jobs are at the centre of the South African Government’s concep tion of
the transition to a low-carbon or green economy.
South African labour’s response to climate change
21
The South African Government’s response to climate
change
The dominant government policy strategy is termed the New Growth Path (NGP).
The document enshrining this strategy, which was released in October 2010, promised
a move away from the stranglehold of the carbon-intensive minerals–energy complex
towards a “green economy” marked by renewable energy and green jobs. It set targets
of 300,000 additional direct jobs by 2020, with 80,000 in manufacturing and the
rest in construction, operation and maintenance of new environmentally friendly
infrastructure. “The potential for job creation,” it asserts, “rises to well over 400,000
by 2030” (EDD, 2010, p. 13). While the NGP Framework identifies the “green
economy” as important, it does not define it or specify what constitutes it.
In November 2011 the labour movement, in the form of the South African
trade union federation, indicated its support for this policy thrust by signing NGP
Accord 4, the “Green Economy Accord”, which launched a “green partnership” and
binds Government, business and labour to creating thousands of jobs by building a
green industrial base. On the launch of the Accord, COSATU affirmed: “We have
made a commitment through the NGP to create 5 million jobs in the next ten years.
And this agreement on green jobs will make a very critical contribution to the
realization of that target” (Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of COSATU, cited in
EDD, 2011, p. 5). While the labour movement emphasized job creation, Government
ministers have emphasized the transition to a green or low-carbon economy as both a
challenge and an opportunity. For example, in an interview the Economic
Development minister, Ebrahim Patel, said that South Africa had to move towards a
green economy as quickly as possible: “As a considerable emitter of greenhouse gases,
South Africa faces the challenge of transitioning to a less carbon-intensive growth
trajectory without delay.”1
Several questions must be confronted. Are green jobs one component of a new
green capitalism which is trying to avoid fundamental change through an emphasis on
expanding markets and new technologies? Is the notion of a “green economy” another
“false solution” which is using climate change as a new site for capital accumulation?
Or are green jobs part of a “green economy” which – “based on rights, sustainability
principles and decent work – can meet the challenge of a just transition”
(Sustainlabour, 2011, p. 2)?
Overall, the South African Government’s climate change policy is rooted in
green neoliberal capitalism. This is evident in the priority it accords to profit
generation, its reliance on market mechanisms (especially the promotion of carbon
trading through measures such as the CDM) and its emphasis on technological
innovation in expensive, high-risk schemes such as carbon capture and storage and
nuclear energy. The latter is low carbon only at the point of generation: the rest of the
production chain is both energy and carbon intensive, costs are excessive, safety cannot
Labour in the global South
22
be guaranteed and nowhere has a safe storage option for high-level nuclear waste
been identified.
Official policy documents lack coherence, with aspirations to reduce carbon
emissions contradicted by existing government practices which involve massively
expanded provision of coal-fired and nuclear energy. These practices reflect the
continuing power of the minerals–energy complex, the alliance of the mining and
energy sectors which have dominated South Africa’s indus trial development. For
example, the parastatal Eskom is committed to building more coal-fired power
stations, Medupi and Kusile. The World Bank’s US$3.75 billion loan to Eskom to
enable it to do this will increase the price of electricity for domestic consumers, worsen
the country’s contribution to carbon emissions and climate change, and allow
continued subsidized supply of the world’s cheapest electricity to large corporations,
such as BHP Billiton, and the export of their profits abroad.
While another government policy document, the second Integrated Resource
Plan (IRP2, 2010), introduced some energy from renewable sources into the supply
mix, beyond Medupi and Kusile the IRP plans on two or three major new coal-fired
plants between 2014 and 2030, and a “fleet” of six new nuclear power plants to be
built by 2030. Trollop and Tyler conclude that “the IRP does not support the
transition to a low energy intensive economy as is required by mitigation policy”
(Trollop and Tyler, 2011, p. 18).
At the same time, South Africa has as yet no legislation requiring a reduction in
carbon emissions, though the Government seems aware of the seriousness of the threat
of climate change. For example, the 2011 National Climate Change Response White
Paper warns that if international action does not limit the average global temperature
increase to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, “the potential
impacts on South Africa in the medium to long-term are significant and potentially
catastrophic”. It goes on to warn that “after 2050 warming is projected to reach around
3–4 degrees C along the coast, and 6–7 degrees C in the interior. With these kinds of
temper ature increases, life as we know it will change completely” (Government of the
Republic of South Africa, 2011, p. 9).
In 2010 South Africa’s carbon emissions were about 400 million tonnes, which
amounts to about 1.5 per cent of the global total. In 2009 at the multinational
negotiations at the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-15) in
Copenhagen, the Pretoria Government made voluntary commitments to a “peak,
plateau and decline” trajectory. The “decline” means that “South Africa … will take
nationally appropriate mitigation action to enable a 34 per cent deviation below
the ‘Business as Usual’ emissions growth trajectory by 2020 and a 42 per cent devi -
ation below … by 2025” (DEA, 2010, p. 2). Much publicity has been given to this
commitment, but less attention to how these reductions will be made, or to the
condition stipulated: that an international agreement is reached and that the financing
and technology necessary to achieve this reduction are provided by the international
South African labour’s response to climate change
23
community. Two economists have concluded that “the post 2025 plateau and decline
is at least economically infeasible if not impossible within the current economic
structure” (Trollop and Tyler, 2011, p. 28). Furthermore, the policy document, the
NGP, does not mention the Copenhagen pledge, focusing instead on the new “green
economy”.
Many triumphalist claims are made about the green economy as a “major new
thrust for the South African economy which presents multiple opportunities to create
jobs and value-adding industries” (DTI, 2011, p. 17). It is also acknowledged that
“increasing energy costs pose a major threat to manufacturing, rendering our histor -
ical, resource-intensive, processing-based industrial path unviable in the future” (DTI,
2011, p. 97). However, these claims are weakened by the compartmentalization of
the green economy as distinct from the “real economy”; as “something separate and
therefore different or additional to a mainstream future South African economy”
(Trollop and Tyler, 2011, p. 12).
The “real economy” remains carbon intensive and environmentally destructive.
As Kumi Naidoo points out, “while the NGP’s (and the broader state’s) commitment
to ‘greening the economy’ focuses on the potential of environ mental concerns to
meet the needs of the market (through