Membership-Leadership Conflict within a Trade Union on a South African Gold Mine: A Worker Perspective and Reflection on Marikana

Sizwe Timothy Phakathi

Worker agency – the idea that workers are active, creative and resilient reactors to capitalist and managerially defined work structures – is a fundamental part of the sociology of work and organisational psychology. Labour process studies have shown the significance of individual and collective human agency in capitalist production systems. The ability of workers to socially organise work in ways that make sense to them long manifested itself during the scientific management movement despite Taylorism’s failure to recognise the worker as a significant social actor within the workplace – the notion that was reasserted by the human relations movement theory.

Worker agency proved instrumental for workers in fighting racially repressive labour practices in colonial and apartheid mining workplace regimes. The agency of underground workers to resist the despotic management system was a boon to the formation of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in the 1980s. In reflecting on the views of the NUM rank-and-file members solicited in a South African gold mine long before the eruption of the Marikana tragedy, this article seeks to pose a question: if workers can exercise their agency to restrict or expand output at the point of production, can they use their agency to withdraw or extend their union membership? The article seeks to highlight that membership-leadership conflict within the NUM was brewing in the gold mines long before the Marikana tragedy in the Rustenburg platinum belt.

The Troika and Multi-Employer Bargaining

Thorsten Schulten

How European pressure is destroying national collective bargaining systems
Collective agreements that extend beyond the immediate workplace or company level are rightly seen as one of the unique institutional features of the European social model. No other world region has any comparably well-developed system of multi-employer collective bargaining in which agreements cover not only entire industries but in some cases apply even nationally. The existence of collective agreements with such extensive coverage is one of the reasons why a clear majority of employees continue to be covered by collective bargaining in Europe. By contrast, in countries and regions in which the predominant level of bargaining is at the workplace or company, only a minority of employees have their employment conditions secured by collective agreement.

Although the past two decades have seen a shift to a greater decentralisation of collective bargaining in Europe, the core features of multi-employer collective agreements have remained remarkably stable in most European countries. In Western Europe, only the UK, beginning in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, has undergone a fundamental change from a system in which industry level bargaining played a major part to one that is overwhelmingly characterised by workplace bargaining. After 1990, the UK was joined by a number of Eastern European countries in which it has not been possible to construct a system of industry or national level bargaining. However, aside from these cases, multi-employer collective agreements, embracing a number of workplaces or even sectors, have remained the dominant constitutive feature of collective bargaining in Europe.

Gender and TU database – a Basis for Change?

Carol Jess

The Gender and Trade Unions Research Group (RG) was established in 2009 as a grassroots-driven alliance between trade unionists, practitioners in the broader labour movement, and academics. The focus of this RG is to broaden academic contributions relating to the positioning of women in trade unions. Its unique strength lies in the depth of experiences member researchers bring to its academic endeavours. As argued elsewhere “...the researchers are both ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’... [and] ...are actively engaged in labour movements... This unique combination of seemingly contradictory positions provides...a uniquely valuable vantage point as participant observers.” (Britwum, Douglas and Ledwith, 2012: 42)

The group is interested in the positioning of women in trade unions for a number of reasons. Of particular importance to the RG is the fact that, although increasing numbers of women are joining trade unions around the globe, this membership increase is not reflected in trade union leadership positions. The group has conceived, developed, and is implementing a database that is specifically designed to track the positioning of women in trade union leadership and other positions of authority within the labour movement. A driving force is to develop trade union consciousness about gender democracy deficits and to consider further action to close the gender gap.

The ECB’s Misleading Visualisation of the Euro-Crisis

Carlo D’Ippoliti

Two recent articles on the Global Labour Column deal with the European crisis (one specifically with the Italian case). Economists are still divided over the identification of the ultimate causes of the euro-crisis, but a mix of the two leading theses seems to be the most plausible explanation. On the one hand, the Eurozone is a failing attempt at sharing a common currency (the euro) without having a common governance of the economy. Thus, several economists note that the European Union (EU) “federal” budget is tiny in comparison to the task of managing aggregate demand, while common bonds and mutualisation of public debts is off the table; others question the strictly monetarist mandate of the European Central Bank (ECB), whose Statute (or better the mainstream interpretation of it) prevents the ECB from buying European sovereign bonds and mandates to only focus on the growth of consumer prices. On the other hand, a second explanation looks at the growing divergence of the European economies, in particular the sustained Balance-of-Payments imbalances that produced the accumulation of excessive foreign debt in the deficit countries (derogatorily called GIPSIs after the initials of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy) and huge, possibly nonperforming loans vis-à-vis the GIPSIs in the ‘core’ European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland).

A Marshall Plan for Europe

Michael Sommer

Proposal by the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) for an economic stimulus, investment and development programme for Europe 

For historical reasons Germany has to be careful with giving advice to other countries. Even more so at the moment considering Germany’s dominant position within the European Union (EU). A ‘know-it-all’ manner is particularly problematic when the advice given is bad - the German government’s insistence on austerity measures as a response to the European crisis is not only unsuccessful in economic terms but socially unfair to a level that endangers democracy and the European integration process as a whole. This is a process for which Germany has a special historic responsibility. Despite some anti-European tendencies that have also evolved here and the media portraying the German population as being tired of rescue packages, the vast majority of the German population is in fact supportive of the Euro. This is a development that is remarkable but cannot be taken for granted. As German trade unionists we know from painful experience of the fascist destruction of the German trade union movement 80 years ago that an economic crisis that does not receive an adequate response has incalculable risks including political dislocations through to fascist dictatorship and war.