Class and identity in the context of labour market restructuring in Africa

 

by Marlea Clarke

 

Despite the so-called success of democratization projects in many African countries over the last decade or so, much of the continent continues to be characterized by high and growing socio-economic inequalities. Progressive transformation in Africa – economically, politically and socially – is necessary if African countries are to begin to challenge the continent’s insertion into the global capitalist system. But such a transformation will be difficult without the active involvement of workers, unions and other workers’ organizations. However the relative weakness of any African proletariat in many countries makes the growth of strong union movements difficult. Further, similar to global trends, deregulation and other processes of economic restructuring have facilitated significant shifts in employment patterns and related changes in the composition of the working class. Growing levels of informal, casual and other types of ‘atypical’ employment increase workers’ vulnerability while same time tend to fragment labor’s cohesiveness and stability (Moody, 1997). In South Africa and elsewhere, economic restructuring and related processes of employment change are undermining the trade union movement’s role in solidarity and emancipatory projects inside and outside the country.

This paper will begin to explore these issues. It aims to contribute to a broader discussion about challenges facing the continent and the role of workers and workers organizations in transformative projects in Africa. Although similar issues are emerging in many countries on the continent, specific reference will be drawn to South Africa where, as we shall see, despite the relative strength of the labour movement, the government’s pursuit of a neo-liberal, deracialised capitalism has left workers further divided with less effective leverage over socio-economic change. Economic changes have undermined unionized working-class constituencies, and have destabilized the role that waged labour and trade unionism played in shaping collective identities in South Africa (Barchiesi, 2003; Kenny, 2004). Rather than unions playing a lead role in challenging the government’s macro-economic policies, community based organizations have become increasingly prominent in the struggle against privatization, evictions and service cuts to communities. In addition, new, un-unionised groups of marginalized workers are beginning to organize and challenge the policies and practices of both the government and the union movement. The potential of these new groups should not be underestimated, but as Ashwin Desai has noted, the fragmentation of these various struggles raises serious questions about the extent to which they can form the core of a movement (as opposed to movements) for change in South Africa.

 

Reflections on labour market changes

 

Although there have not been many studies of labour market changes in developing countries, one of the central issues of globalisation has been the interaction between global economic restructuring, national labour market policies and shifting forms of employment. Labour market de-regulation is an essential aspect of economic restructuring programmes and governments in Africa have certainly been under pressure to implement policies of de-regulation. Whether as a result of externally imposed structural adjustment programmes or as a consequence of internally implemented economic restructuring initiatives, many countries have privatized service delivery, reduced state spending in social services and introduced a range of policies aimed at increasing labour market flexibility and attracting foreign investment. External pressure to adopt market-oriented social, economic and labour market policies cannot be underestimated. For example, the new labour market regulatory framework recently developed in an East African country was significantly influenced by interventions on the part of US AID. Generally under pressure from foreign donors, other countries have introduced legislation banning or restricting trade union activities in export-processessing zones, and developed new policies and legislation aimed at promoting small business development and export-oriented growth.

Facilitated by de-regulation and other policies promoting international competitiveness, labour markets have undergone significant changes in many parts part of the continent. Some countries, especially those in Southern and East Africa have witnessed a quantitative decline of stable waged employment, and parallel rise in unemployment and various forms of informal or nonstandard forms of work. For example, unemployment and informal and casual work have risen in Namibia[1], Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. Urban unemployment is a serious problem in other countries. For example, urban unemployment in Morocco increased from 12% in 1982, to 18% in 1996, to close to 24% in 2000, and the temporary help sector in Namibia is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. Similar to trends elsewhere, casual, temporary and informal sector work are generally unprotected or poorly protected by labour legislation, social policies and trade union organising. Therefore economic restructuring generally means that more workers are situated on the growing margins of the economy, without any meaningful access to collective bargaining structures, or employment and social security protection. 

 

South Africa

 

These processes are particularly evident in South Africa where the development of a new regulatory framework for the post-apartheid labour market has taken place alongside the de-regulation and re-segmentation of the labour market. The introduction of new labour laws under the African National Congress (ANC) government has ushered in a new system of industrial relations and labour market regulation, with the emerging regulatory framework aimed at addressing the extreme inequality and discrimination that characterised the apartheid labour market. The new regulatory regime has brought about some diversification of the labour market. For example, social security programmes and labour rights have been formally extended to most workers (and to a far more diverse constituency of workers), and employment equity and other pieces of new legislation have resulted in better representation of women and black workers in professional occupations and in management and supervisory positions.

At the same time, the country’s re-insertion into a globally liberalized capitalism and the government’s adoption of neo-liberal macro-economic, and trade and industrial policies have significantly undermined both the content and effectiveness of new labour legislation and social policies. Facilitated by neo-liberal economic reforms, work and employment have been significantly restructured as employers have sought ways to reduce labour costs, evade new laws, or take advantage of flexibility provisions in new labour legislation in order to make their workplaces more “internationally competitive”. Linked to these restructuring processes, unemployment has increased and casual, temporary, informal and various other forms of precarious employment have grown significantly. Alongside new forms of unprotected employment and contractual arrangements has also been the re-emergence of ‘old’ forms of casual and contractual employment – some continuing along similar lines as those that characterised the apartheid labour market, while other forms of casual work have been re-shaped to conform to the modern, advanced capitalist (post-apartheid) economy.

 

The growth of unprotected work: processes of informalisation, casualisation and externalisation

 

Processes of casualisation, externalization and informalisation are facilitating the growth of unprotected work, and steady increase of unprotected workers in post-apartheid South Africa. Casualisation is taking place through the reduction of permanent, full-time staff and the increase in part-time and casual employees who are not entitled to the benefits of permanent, full-time employees. In addition, downward pressure on wages and working conditions, and the prevalence of jobs with irregular work schedules reveals that a process of casualisation is underway in South Africa. Scholars have used the term externalization to refer to business practices that make use of external sources of labour. Referred to as ‘distancing’ by some scholars, this process involves the transfer of labour beyond the direct employees of a firm to homeworkers, sub-contractors, or temporary workers supplied by temporary employment agencies (Anderson et al., 1994). Externalisation can also involves the legal restructuring of a work relationship – from a contract of employment to another legal relationship, usually a commercial contract that provides goods and services to a business.  The use of homeworkers to supply retailers or manufacturers with finished garments, and the use of consultants who work continuously on the employers’ premises but in a service contract rather than am employment relationship are two examples of externalization (Anderson et al., 1994).

Theron and Godfrey (2000) have applied this terminology to identify a range of legal contracts that shift work from an employment relationship to a commercial contract regulated by the rules of contract. According to their research, externalisation is taking place through sub-contracting or outsourcing work to a contractor rather than directly employing workers to carry out the work. In this case, the work is no longer carried out through an employment contract, rather work is contracted through a contract of service. Employers are also externalising work by using a third party, usually a labour broker or temporary employment agency, to employ staff for their workplace (Clarke et al., 2002). Provisions in new labour legislation deem the labour broker to be the employer, and hold the broker and client jointly and liable for non-compliance with certain minimum standards. However weakness and loopholes in new laws allow the client to effectively transfer both the cost and risk to the worker.

Regardless of how externalisation takes place, restructuring employment relationships through ‘distancing’ labour allows employers “to operate outside the legal constraints that have been developed to protect working conditions and to guarantee certain minimum levels of protection.” (Anderson et al., 1994: 497). In most cases, workers have the legal status of a self-employed person or contractor rather than the status of ‘an employee’ even though in practice they are as dependent on the business for their wages as any other worker in a direct employment relationship. 

The rapid growth of registered and unregistered temporary employment agencies over the last decade or so reveals the extent to which employers have externalized their workforce. Alongside well-established firms that recruit and supply skilled and semi-skilled workers (short-term and permanent) to companies, there has been an exponential growth in agencies that supply short-term or contingency staff. In many cases, these agencies recruit and supply staff on a regular basis to companies who have reduced their permanent workforce and draw extensively on the services of temporary help agencies to staff their workplaces. Many agencies do not hide the fact that contractual arrangements between agencies and temporary workers can help companies staff their workplaces outside regulation from labour legislation. Take, for example, this advert from an agency based in Cape Town:  

 

Guest House Temps., Marvellous Maids, Choose-a-char offer ‘WONDERFUL WORKERS’ available for your selection at a nominal fee: domestics, chars, housekeepers, kitchen hands, restaurant workers, cooks, childminders, nurse aids, clerks, receptionists, drivers, cashiers, labourers. Make one phone call to find staff to fit your requirements, one call can solve any staffing problem you might have.”[2]

 

The third process, informalisation, has received some attention by policy makers in recent years. Already high by international standards, the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in unemployment and informal work. While the ANC claims to have created about two million new jobs since coming to office, opposition parties, unions and labour market researchers fiercely disputed this figure, arguing that about a million jobs have actually been lost. Critiquing the government’s record on job creation, the Democratic Alliance recently described new positions created through public works programmes as “transient employment opportunities”, and countered the ANC’s election pledge to create a million new jobs through expanding existing programmes by promising to create one million "real jobs" in five years if the DA was elected. Alongside rising unemployment has been the steady growth of informal work. For example, informal employment increased from 1 840 000 people (24.4 per cent of total employment) in 1997 to 3 148 000 people (29.5 per cent) in 2001 (Clarke et al., 2002). This trend is particularly evident in the retail sector. Informal employment accounted for 60% of the sector’s overall growth in employment between 1997 and 2001.

Of course informalisation, externalisation and casualisation are not distinct processes. In many cases these processes are happening simultaneously and intersect with each other. For example, since independent contractors are not considered to be employees of temporary employment agencies, research suggests that agencies utilize this loophole in legislation and hire temporary workers as independent contractors. Temporary workers also tend to be hired on fixed-term contracts with labour brokers and temporary employment agencies – usually corresponding to the duration of the contract the broker has signed with the client. In both cases temporary employment agencies are able arrange their contractual agreements with temporary workers in such as way as to bypass legislation, thus placing workers outside the protective embrace of labour legislation.

 

Race, gender and workers’ collective identity

 

One overall results of restructuring has been the re-segmentation of the labour market built around the divisions between a shrinking group of permanent (largely unionised workers with full-time jobs in core sectors of the economy) and a growing number of workers (especially black and women workers) in precarious work (Kenny and Webster, 1999). For the most part, workers in casual and other ‘atypical’ employment relationships fall outside coverage from labour laws, social security legislation and collective bargaining agreements. Not only are workers in these new employment relationships unprotected and vulnerable, there is abundant evidence of growing employment insecurity even among permanent workers.

Of course the growth in unprotected work and growing divisions between workers are neither race nor gender neutral. Indeed, given the prevalence of women and black workers in casual and other forms of atypical employment, employment changes have undermine the effectiveness of employment equity legislation and substantive equality for women and black workers in particular. Although the racialized and gendered character of dualism carried over from the apartheid era is changing, the labour market remains highly segmented. White workers no longer have privileged access to permanent jobs with protected by labour legislation, collective bargaining provisions and extensive social benefits; however women and black workers continue to dominate informal work, unorganized work in the service sector and jobs at the bottom end of the labour market. In addition, black workers and women also disproportionately found in job categories in which casualisation and externalisation are prevalent. For example, recent research suggests that 85.3% of white workers are in full-time employment and only 5.8% are in casual and part-time employment. In comparison, only 32.7% of African workers are in full-time employment while 47.3% of the African population are unemployed and 20.1% are in causal and part-time employment (NEDLAC 2000). 

Atypical forms of employment have grown most rapidly in labour-intensive sectors (such as retail and clothing) and in the small business sector where black women are concentrated. For example, black workers in the service sectors account for the majority of employees in low-skilled occupational categories and women workers (especially black women) are generally employed in jobs (such as service, shop and market sales workers) that have been converted into casual or temporary positions. According to the Wholesale and Retail Trade SETA, Africans accounted for 57% of those employed as service, shop and market sales workers in retail trade (W&RSETA, 2001). Of these, 31% were women and 26% were men. In contrast 45% of the managerial staff in retail trade were white, with men made up 29% of those in this occupational group. Research shows that employment changes to date have had little impact on employment patterns at the managerial level.

Hence, just at the moment when legislative reforms eradicated wage differentials between men and women, and between different ‘racial’ groups of workers, processes of externalisation and informalisation have placed growing numbers of workers outside the protective embrace of legislation. Consequently, formal equality between the sexes, and between white and black workers under the new regulatory framework has gone hand in hand with the rise of unprotected and precarious work. Overall, employment norms have deteriorated and segmentation has deepened as more workers are now hired in casual, informal and other forms of non-standard employment with inferior wages and working conditions. Economic restructuring and shifting patterns of employment have meant that inequality in the labour market has grown alongside the institutionalization of legal norms of substantive equality for women and black workers. Thus, economic restructuring entails the ‘restating’ of the old, highly unequal racial and gender order. 

 

Employment trends and changing worker strategies

 

These processes raise several important challenges for the labour movement. First, COSATU’s ongoing alliance with the ANC has resulted in the labour federation accepting significant concessions in new labour legislation and compromises over economic, trade and other policies. Despite not obtaining some of its central demands during negotiations over new labour legislation, the union federation accepted the new laws as “the best that they could get.” However reluctantly, the union movement has acknowledged that the political influence they once had within the ANC has been consistently reduced since the 1994 election. Throughout negotiations over labour legislation, unions’ reduced power vis-à-vis business often resulted in the union movement fighting to defend permanent, full-time workers’ existing rights. In response to an early draft of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), COSATU stated, “there are a number of challenges we have faced in the negotiations. Most critically has been the overall policy shift in government at a macro level, which is reducing the space for winning new rights for our members, and in fact has forced us to at times, take a defensive position, seeking to protect the rights we have in the current law”. (COSATU, 1996) Not surprisingly, despite the fact that legislation provides protection to a shrinking core of the workforce, the union federation has continued to defend new laws and focus on addressing weaknesses in the regulatory framework through legal and technical changes to legislation.

Second, COSATU fought for labour market reforms and defends new legislation, and newly established tripartite labour market institutions vigorously. As a result, the labour movement’s focus has remained on its traditional constituency in large, formal businesses in core sectors of the economy and on particular political processes aimed at ‘reforming’ the labour market. Growing numbers of workers in non-standard employment remain outside trade union activities and newly created tripartite structures.[3] Labour’s preoccupation with institutional structures and formal negotiation processes has created new dynamics and tensions between workers, often intensifying and facilitating processes of socio-economic restructuring.

Third, employment changes have led to increased fragmentation of the working class, declining levels of unionization in some sectors, and weakened bargaining power for labour. Growing distinctions between different groups of workers (i.e. permanent versus temporary, or full-time versus causal or part-time) are reinforced by employer’s hiring and employment practices, often challenging some of the collective identities that formed the foundation of the black trade union movement when it was revived in the 1970s. For example, in 2000 full-time occupations employed only 42.6% of the economically active population in Gauteng, the country’s industrial heartland (Statistics South Africa, 2001). As Kenny (2003) argues with reference to the retail sector, employment shifts and related changes in levels of unionization have changed the character of workers’ collective claims and have contributed to the erosion of unionized workers’ militancy. Her work demonstrates how restructuring has led to fragmented wildcat actions on the part of different groups of casual workers, and how these actions both reflect and reinforce growing divisions between permanent, versus non-permanent workers.

The bitter wage dispute and 3 ½ week strike at one of the country’s largest retailers in 1994 revealed some of these growing divisions between workers. Striking permanent worker criticized casual workers for defying the call for industrial action and accused them of not showing ‘worker solidarity’, while casual workers questioned the solidarity permanent workers had ever shown to them, point to the fact permanent workers had never “lifted a finger to help them in their struggle for permanent status” despite the fact that many casuals had been working at the store for as long as eight years.

Responding to the country’s new political and economic context is of course no easy task for the country’s trade union federation – a movement that is already stretched in terms of resources and leadership. Certainly atypical forms of employment (such as homework, causal and temporary work) tend to be more difficult to organize and growing divisions between workers makes creating and representing collective and comprehensive workers’ demands increasingly difficult. However, rather than drawing on older methods of organizing and reaching workers through broad based community organizing (rather than just industrial and workplace based activities) and instead of developing new forms of organizing and representing workers, unions have tended to reply on traditional messages and forms of mobilizing workers in a desperate attempt to merely ‘organise the un-organised’. Indeed, in contrast to COSATU’s history of mass organizing and community-based protests in the 1970s and 1980s, that last decade has seen the union movement increasingly rely on political linkages with the ANC and their participation in formal processes with government and business to advance workers’ demands for labour market transformation.

To be sure, participatory democratic structures and mass-based organising that shaped the black union movement in the decades following its re-emergence in the late 1970s have radically declined over the last ten years. COSATU’s activities and political engagement has become increasingly concentrated on legal and technical policy negotiations with business and government, thus concentrating power and decision-making in the hands of a few leaders and national officials. The trade union federation has continued to rely on tripartite institutions, policy processes and alliance structures to challenge ANC policies and defend the rights of their members. As Bassett notes, this strategy has resulted “in a politics concentrated in the interventions of leaders rather than in developing the capacities of the membership.” (Bassett 2004:14).

Given the negative impact of employment shifts and many of the government’s policies on poor and working class communities, it is not surprising that the last 5-7 years has seen a rise in protest politics in the country. However, although COSATU has led anti-GEAR and anti-privatization strikes, social movements have really taking the lead in challenging government policies. As Basset argues in her paper and elsewhere, the late 1990s saw a rejuvenation of community struggles, precisely at a time when COSATU was hamstrung by Alliance politics. Residents’ groups such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Anti-Eviction Campaign are now at the forefront of community struggles challenging the policies of the ANC. In addition, organisations of non-standard workers have begun to emerge and play an important role in challenging labour market policies and institutions. These un-unionised or precariously employed workers are also beginning to organise themselves as part of broader community struggles against poverty, evictions, cut-offs and deepening economic marginalisation of many groups in society.

These organisations of non-standard workers and alternative organising efforts by casual workers in some sectors suggest that new forms of mobilising, and new strategies and tactics are beginning to emerge. Still, while the potential of these new groups should not be underestimated, there are some clear limitations to their activities. For example, since they generally are organized around single issues or based in small geographic communities. Further, new organization have generally remained quite disjointed from each other and remain isolated from other political struggles waged by women’s organization and the trade union movement. At the same time, opportunities for COSATU to cement a relationship with this emerging civil society protest movement and help coordinate a new, broadly-based, national working-class movement seemed to have slipped away, however, as a result of the federation’s focus on Alliance politics (Bassett and Clarke, 2003).

 

Conclusion

 

Changing forms of employment, specifically the proliferation of unprotected work raises serious questions about the appropriateness of current forms of regulation, employment protection and traditional forms of organizing. Collective bargaining and many traditional forms of union representation are beset by employment, economic and political challenges which undermine union’s collective power to improve the lives of their members and advance a more progressive form of democratization in South Africa. For the most part, the union movement has failed to address changes in the nature of employment and shifts in the structure of the black working class. Despite resolutions and campaigns adopted by COSATU’s to address the growth of atypical employment, the federation has failed to make any real inroads into ‘emerging’ unprotected occupations and jobs. Rather than develop new strategies to reach and organize new groups of workers, most unions continue to rely on traditional messages and forms of mobilizing and representing workers.

New employment arrangement and the slow pace at which the union movement is understanding and addressing these changes have contributed declining strength of the federation, and to growing divisions among workers. As Bramble and Barchiesi argue, labour market changes and organized labour’s neglect of these issues “has endangered unions’ representivity and responsiveness to increasingly marginalized and voiceless subjects” (Bramble and Barchiesi, 2003: 5). Unless the union movement begins to address employment changes and develop new and innovative organizing and mobilizing strategies, South African unions will face an irrevocable crisis. Still, despite claims to the contrary, unions are still relevant in South Africa and throughout the continent. Challenges to capitalist globalisation and the building of transformative projects in Africa require the active involvement of workers, unions and other workers’ organizations. However, employment shifts and the increased fragmentation of the working class require new ways of thinking about class and class struggle and of rebuilding the union movement’s power base.

 

 

References:

 

Anderson, G., Brosnan, P., & Walsh, P. (1994). ‘Flexibility, Casualisation and Externalization in the New Zealand Workforce’. The Journal of Industrial Relations, 36(4).

 

Bassett, C., (2004) South Africa’s Trade Unions and Counter-Hegemony

      A Great Idea Whose Time Came … and Passed. Paper presented at the Canadian

      Political Science Association Annual Conference, Winnipeg, June 2004.

 

Bassett, C., and M. Clarke (2004). Fool me twice? Labour Politics in South Africa. Canadian Dimension. Upcoming.

 

Bramble, T., and F. Barchiesi. (2003). Rethinking the Labour Movement in the ‘New’ South Africa. Burlington: Ashgate.

 

Clarke, M. & Kenny, B. 2001 ‘Falling out of the loop: Protecting Casual Workers in South Africa’s Retail Sector’. In LRS Report, Bargaining Indicators, LRS, Cape Town, South Africa.

 

Clarke, M, Godfrey, S & Theron, J. (2002). ‘Globalisation, Production and Poverty: Macro, Meso and Micro Levels Globalisation, Democratisation and Regulation of the South African Labour Market’. Commissioned research paper.

 

COSATU. (1996). Supplementary Secretariat Report on the Employment Standards Act Negotiations. Cape Town: COSATU Parlimentary Office.

 

Kenny, B. (2004). Upcoming PhD Thesis.

 

Kenny, B. & Webster, E. (1999). ‘Eroding the Core: Flexibility and the Re-segmentation of the South African Labour Market’, Critical Sociology, 24 (3), 216-243.

 

Moody, K. (1997) Workers in a Lean World: Unions in an International Economy. Verso: London.

 

NEDLAC (2000). Infrastructure Delivery Report. Johannesburg: NEDLAC.

 

Statistics South Africa (2001), Labour Force Survey. February 2001. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.

 

Theron, J. and S. Godfrey. (2000).“Protecting Workers on the Periphery”. Development and Labour Monograph 1/2000. Cape Town: Institute of Development and Labour Law.

 

W&RSETA. (2001). Wholesale and Retail Sector Skills Plan. Johannesburg: Wholesale and Retail Sector SETA.