Regression of workers’ unity in South Africa: Divisions postpone greater progress and ultimate victory

Alex Mashilo

In their classical work on the incessant class struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed, Marx and Engels (1848) discuss the necessity of workers’ organisation and their political unity as a class. This unity, they found, was sometimes upset by competition between workers. While there has been much attention on the recent fracturing in South Africa’s labour movement, I argue in this column that divisions have a long history in the country’s trade unions. Trade unions were introduced exclusively for white workers. This racial divide and rule became part of capital’s profit maximisation strategy, making black workers a cheap labour reserve for super-exploitation. They united and fought for the right to unionise. Recent divisions reflect the fragmentation of that unity because of competition.

The old fault lines
Workers’ unity is fragmented not only in South Africa but in many parts of the world. Trade union divisions in South Africa date back to the colonial establishment of capitalism in the country, to start with, as stated above, on the grounds of race. There is a massive literature about the problem. But studies examining its impact on the workplace in the context of South Africa’s transition to democracy, particularly those employing the useful concept of the ‘apartheid workplace regime’, emerged only recently. The concept is useful in locating old labour divisions in production relations and distinguishing between old and new grounds of divisions. New divisions are occurring in a terrain of democratic workplace and national transformation. 

COSATU still at the frontlines and championing workers’ rights

Bheki Ntshalintshali

COSATU (the Congress of South African Trade Unions) was born in 1985 at the height of the struggle against apartheid. It inherited the legacy of the 1973 Durban strikes, which generated new traditions of effective worker control, coupled with militancy on the ground. This signalled a renewed form of worker movement, driven by workers’ deep desire to own and control their organisations democratically. This type of worker movement effectively raised workers’ issues at the workplace and in communities, to unite different strands and movements of the working class into a broad struggle against apartheid.

The traditions and organisation of the various unions that merged into COSATU were differently shaped by history. Some were products of FOSATU (Federation of South African Trade Unions), which revived unionism in the belly of the beast, inside the country against racist employers and their racist state; others of SACTU (South African Congress of Trade Unions) from the Congress movement, which primarily aimed at the apartheid state and all its racist institutions. These were the primary orientations of the different unions that formed COSATU.

COSATU was formed to bring all workers together under one umbrella. A protracted negotiations process, lasting no less than four years, resulted in 500 000 workers coming together under the new giant’s umbrella in December 1985. However unity has often been elusive. Some unions, for political or organisational reasons, chose to remain outside the new umbrella.

The 2017 French elections and labour: Interview with Bernard Thibault

Bernard Thibault

An interview by Nicolas Pons-Vignon, co-editor of the Global Labour Column (Translated from French by Clara Dallaire-Fortier).

The Socialist Party, in power since 2012, has forced the adoption of a new labour law (Loi Travail) in spite of resistance from some unions (especially from the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), France’s largest union), and implemented austerity budgets that are unprecedented since the Second World War. What are the stakes, in the 2017 legislative and presidential elections, for the union movement and more broadly for the working class?

Bernard Thibault: The President of the Republic and his government, like many before them, only recognise that they have failed workers during election time. They have disappointed not only by failing to keep their promises, but by implementing reforms that contradict the principles historically defended by the left, for instance in the case of the so-called labour law. The challenge of these elections – which does not get much attention in a political context dominated by scandals about elected officials and candidates – is to ensure that there is a focus on social issues.

Macron, the leading candidate according to survey results, presents a programme that is reminiscent of Tony Blair’s New Left: a mix of economic neoliberalism with progressive views on social issues. What does this idea of ‘going beyond the left-right divide’ inspire in you?

The Return of Commercial Prison Labour

Anil Shah

Christoph Scherrer

Prisons are seldom mentioned under the rubric of labour market institutions such as temporary work contracts or collective bargaining agreements. Yet, prisons not only employ labour but also cast a shadow on the labour force in or out of work. The early labour movement considered the then prevalent use of prison labour for commercial purposes as unfair competition. By the 1930s, the US labour movement was strong enough to have work for commercial purposes prohibited in prisons. In the decades following, the number of prisoners decreased to a historic minimum. But with cutbacks in the welfare state, the prison population exploded from about 200 000 in 1975 to 2 300 000 in 2013 (Scherrer and Shah, 2017: 37) and prison labour for commercial purposes became legal again. Today, about 15% of the inmates in federal and state prisons perform work for companies such as Boeing, Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret. Migrants detained for violating immigration laws are one of the fastest growing segments of prison labour. Under the Trump administration, their numbers are most likely to increase.

Using the example of the US, we will discuss drivers of the return of commercial prison labour.

Capital, Labour and the Politics of Inequality in Global Public Health

Bridget O'Laughlin

The impasse: what to do about global health inequalities?
Inequalities of health are recognised as one of the most problematic aspects of the sharpening global divide between rich and poor (Deaton, 2013). There are, however, major differences as to what the causes of health inequalities are and hence on what can and should be done to address them. Some argue for the expansion of commercial healthcare and a greater role for private capital in public health provisioning as a direct investor, as a partner of the state and non-governmental organisations or as a philanthropic funder of business-like interventions. Others argue that redressing global health inequalities is a redistributive project incompatible with commercial logic and private profit. They privilege the role of the state as regulator of public health, as provider of health services and as taxer of wealth.

The expanded role for capital in global public health
In the World Development Report of 1993, Investing in Health, the World Bank both legitimised increased development assistance for international health and extended its critique of the intrusive developmental state to the area of health. This move was significant since even in neo-classical terms, health has long been recognised as a domain of imperfect markets. Institutionalist economists have argued that capitalist enterprises typically do not cover the social costs of their production, either the health of their labour force or the non-commodified environmental resources they consumed unless they were forced to do so through aggressive state regulation.