Corporate-backed private school chains for the poor: The South African experience

Sonia Languille

Since the 2000s, there has been an impressive growth in basic education enrolment in the global South. However, the quality of education has remained low for the majority of learners. Against this undisputed diagnosis, advocates of education privatisation argue that access to quality education in developing and emerging countries calls for an expansion of private provision through so-called ‘low-cost’ or ‘low-fee private schools for the poor’ (Tooley and Dixon 2005). While private education has been reserved for a wealthy elite for decades, low-fee private schools would purportedly serve the educational needs of the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. This article provides critical insights into emerging ‘affordable’ private-school chains in South Africa.

Commodification of education: a global trend

Over the past decade, private schooling has been on the rise in low and middle income countries. However, the actual scope of the low-fee schools phenomenon remains difficult to assess: education censuses cover private institutions imperfectly, and some low-fee schools remain unregistered. Notwithstanding this statistical uncertainty, the spread of low-fee, for-profit private schools epitomises a global trend: over the past three decades, worldwide, profit-oriented investment in the field of education has increased, although the intensity of education privatisation, in its various forms, has differed according to national contexts.

‘Carwasheros’ unionise in New York City: community-labour partnerships and the challenges of organising a runaway industry

Carwasheros on strike in Park Slope, Brooklyn
(Photo Credit: Center for Popular Democracy)

New York City carwashes harbour some of the most exploitative labour practices in the city. State law sets carwash workers’ hourly minimum wage at nearly three dollars below the state minimum – US$7.25 per hour in 2012, when carwash workers began organising. Employers are expected to pay workers the difference in tips, but minimum wage violations are rampant in this cash-run and largely unregulated industry. A 2008 New York Department of Labour report found 78% of investigated carwash operators violated minimum-wage laws, depriving workers of more than US$6.5 million (Smith, 2008). Compounding already precarious working conditions, many carwasheros, as some workers call themselves, are undocumented immigrants, a vulnerability employers prey upon by threatening to call immigration when workers begin to organise (Center for Popular Democracy, 2013).

ILO is the sole shield for millions of workers: Interview with Bernard Thibault

Bernard Thibault

This is a shortened version of an interview by David Eloy that first appeared in the French magazine Altermondes.

On 25 February 2015, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) emerged from a crisis that had blocked it from functioning properly for three years. The cause of that crisis was that the employers’ organisations called into question the right to strike. Could you talk us through that dispute?

Bernard Thibault: The ILO was born in the aftermath of the First World War, in response to the simple observation that the origins of war are to be found in social precarity and poverty. So the nations agreed to create a body of worldwide labour law, including basic texts on freedom of association and the right to strike. Established a little later, the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations is tasked with examining how states implement these standards and with issuing opinions. So in case of violations, states can find themselves in the hot seat. But from 2012 onwards, the employers’ organisations contested the fact that these experts could recognise a right to strike in countries where this right is not provided for in the constitution.