scholarly journals Organising Against Precarity: The Life of a South African Labour Broker Worker

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110150
Author(s):  
Carin Runciman ◽  
Khongelani Hlungwani
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Labour Rights ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
African Context ◽  
Permanent Workers ◽  
Insight Into

This article presents Khongelani Hlungwani’s experiences of working as a labour broker worker and his struggle to become a permanent worker in Gauteng, South Africa. His account provides a lens through which to understand the shopfloor divisions between permanent and labour broker workers. These divisions are, as Hlungwani’s account demonstrates, compounded by a trade union movement that largely sidelines the interests of precarious workers in favour of permanent workers. This has led many workers, like Hlungwani, to be distrustful of trade unions. Thus, when new labour rights were introduced in 2015, which provided an impetus for labour broker workers to organise, many, like Hlungwani, chose to do so outside of trade unions. The article demonstrates how it was possible, in the South African context, to utilise the institutional power of new labour rights to build associational power outside of trade unions. The article provides insight into both the strength and the fragility of these forms of organising through an account of the strike that Hlungwani participated in in solidarity with unionised workers at his workplace.

scholarly journals The Challenges Facing the South African Labour Movement

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Wood ◽  
Pauline Dibben
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Nationwide Survey ◽  
The South ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Union Policy ◽  
Worker Democracy

There is a growing body of literature on the role and impact of unions in the developing world, and on their ability to mobilize members against a background of neo-liberal reforms. The South African trade union movement represents a source of inspiration to organized labour worldwide, but has faced many challenges over the years. This article engages with debates on union solidarity and worker democracy, and draws on the findings of a nationwide survey of members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to explore the extent of fragmentation according to gender, age, skill level and ethnicity. The survey reveals regular participation in union affairs, democratic accountability, participation in collective action, and a strong commitment to the labour movement, but variation in levels of engagement between categories of union members indicates significant implications for union policy and practice.

South African Black Trade Unions as an Emerging Working-Class Movement

1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony W. Marx
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Industrial Manufacturing ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
African Black ◽  
New Phase

The Recent resumption of popular protest signals a new phase in South Africa's internal opposition, characterised notably by the rising political engagement of black labour unions and their federations. Membership in these unions has reached over a million workers, reflecting the dramatic expansion of South Africa's industrial manufacturing sector in the last 20 years. With severe restrictions placed on the leading national and local political organisations since 1985, the unions have developed beyond their initially narrow concerns for their members into the forefront of opposition to established economic and political order. As a result, class consciousness and working-class organisation have increasingly been combined with, and taken precedence over, previous conceptions of opposition based on racial and national identity. This development has exacerbated both remaining ideological divisions and pressures for united action within the union movement.

scholarly journals Manufacturing Consensus? New Zealand Press Attitudes Toward the Labour Movement in 1890

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
James Keating
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
National Significance ◽  
Transformative Impact

<p>This thesis investigates the attitudes of New Zealand newspapers to the social and economic tensions exacerbated by the emergence of a newly assertive labour movement in 1890, culminating in the August-November Maritime Strike, and the 5 December General Election. Through detailed analysis of labour reporting in six newspapers (Evening Post, Grey River Argus, Lyttelton Times, New Zealand Herald, Otago Daily Times, Press) this thesis examines contemporary conceptions of New Zealand society and editors’ expectations of trade unions in a colony that emphasised its egalitarian mythology. Although the establishment of a national press agency in 1880 homogenised the distribution of national and international news, this study focuses on local news and editorial columns, which generally reflected proprietors’ political leanings. Through these sites of ideological contest, conflicting representations of the ascendant trade union movement became apparent. While New Zealand newspapers sympathised with the striking London dockers in 1889, the advent of domestic industrial tensions provoked a wider range of reactions in the press. Strikes assumed a national significance, and the divisions between liberal and conservative newspapers narrowed. To varying degrees both considered militant action by organised labour a threat to the colony’s peace and prosperity – sentiments that pervaded their reporting. The New Zealand Maritime Strike confirmed these prejudices and calcified the perception of organised labour’s malevolence. Despite the year’s upheavals, this thesis contends that the press struggled to comprehend labour’s political ambitions, ignoring the unprecedented mobilisation of thousands of new voters, shifting public opinion, and the transformative impact of electoral reform. Distracted by the mainstream political obsession with land reform and convinced that public prejudices, stoked by their own reporting, would obviate a labour presence in the new parliament, the victory of the Liberal-labour coalition confounded the publishing establishment.</p>

Globalisation and the dilemmas of international trade unionism

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Economic Developments

This article presents the author's reflections on the possibilities of a restructuring of the international trade union movement, on the basis of a collective research project to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) which seeks to open a debate within the movement over the lessons to be learned from its history as a guide for its future action. The most important question facing the trade union movement today is what is generally called 'globalisation', a phenomenon that goes back many years, both in terms of economic developments and labour struggles. From this perspective, the paper examines the basis for the existing divisions of the international labour movement, before going over the work of the ICFTU and of the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs) to achieve the regulation of the multinational corporations and of the international economy, and concluding on the prospects for unity of action in the unions' work around the global economy.

British Trade Unions and European Union Integration in the 1990s: Politics versus Political Economy

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Strange
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
British Trade ◽  
Careful Assessment

This article evaluates the changing assessments within the British trade union movement of the efficacy of European Union integration from the viewpoint of labour interests. It argues that there has been a marked further ‘Europeanisation’ of British trade unionism during the 1990s, consolidating an on-going process which previous research shows began in earnest in the mid 1980s. A shift in trade union economic policy assessments has seen the decisive abandonment of the previously dominant ‘naive’ or national Keynesianism. While there remain important differences in economic perspective between unions, these are not such as would create significant divisions over the question of European integration per se, the net benefits of which are now generally, though perhaps not universally, accepted. The absence of fundamental divisions is evident from a careful assessment of the debates about economic and monetary union at TUC Congress. The Europeanisation of British trade unionism needs to be seen within the context of an emergent regionalism, in Europe and elsewhere. It can best be understood as a rational response by an important corporate actor (albeit one whose national influence has been considerably diminished in recent decades) to globalisation and a significantly changing political economy environment.

scholarly journals The International Trade-Union Movement and the Founding of the International Labour Organization

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reiner Tosstorff
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
International Labour Organization ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Union Movement

Accounts of the founding of the International Labour Organization (ILO) usually emphasize the role of social-reformist intellectuals and politicians. Despite the indisputable role of these actors, however, the international labour movement was the actual initiator of this process. Over the course of World War I, the international labour movement proposed a comprehensive programme of protection for the working classes, which, conceived as compensation for its support of the war, was supposed to become an international agreement after the war. In 1919, politicians took up this programme in order to give social stability to the postwar order. However, the way in which the programme was instituted disappointed the high expectations of trade unions regarding the fulfilment of their demands. Instead, politicians offered them an institution that could be used, at best, to realize trade-union demands. Despite open disappointment and sharp critique, however, the revived International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) very quickly adapted itself to this mechanism. The IFTU now increasingly oriented its international activities around the lobby work of the ILO.

Civil Strife and the Growth of Trade Union Unity: The Case of Ireland

1973 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-431
Author(s):  
Charles McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Shop Floor ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Difficult Time

A MAJOR CLAIM OF THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN THIS DIFFICULT time in Northern Ireland is that they have ‘prevented the spread of riot and disturbance into the workplace’. The claim has been consistently made and with growing emphasis since the troubles began, and Norman Kennedy at last year's annual conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions called it the one beacon of hope, this ‘maintaining unity of the workers, Catholic and Protestant, on the shop floor’ in what he described as largely a conflict of worker against worker, of a working-class community divided along sectarian lines. This is associated with a related claim that trade union recommendations on social and political change have a special legitimacy because the leadership is close to the people who are involved in the conflict. This political role, essentially non-party, is seen to be more significant and extensive than the traditional political activity of the trade union movement.

Palestinian Trade Unions

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 66-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Sovich
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Palestinian Authority ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Union Movement

In 1994, the Palestinian labor movement, crippled by years of factionalism and Israeli oppression, expected that the arrival of the Palestinian Authority would enable it to reorient its priorities from national politics to workers' rights. This article examines the trajectory of the trade union movement since Oslo and particularly the reasons for its ongoing factionalism and failure to meet its objectives.

scholarly journals Flexland in wording.

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-146
Author(s):  
Rosa Kösters ◽  
Loran Van Diepen ◽  
Moira Van Dijk ◽  
Matthias Van Rossum
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
Social Movement Organization ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Movement Organization

Internationally, the 1980s marked a shift in economic policy. In the Netherlands, it was the decade of the supposedly moderate neoliberal turn and of the first round of flexibilization. Nowadays, the degree of flexibility of the Dutch labour market is exceptionally high compared to neighbouring countries. This article examines how the trade union movement in the 1980s responded to increasing flexibilization, which strategy was used, and how this contributed to early Dutch flexibilization. In contrast to the literature with an institutional perspective, this article analyzes the trade union movement from a social-historical perspective and as a social movement organization. As a result, it argues that the effects of rising flexibilization were signalled very early on within the trade unions. Be that as it may, both the priorities that followed from the agreements with employer organizations and the internal dynamics, were decisive for the trade union movement’s relatively late and unassertive responses towards the flexibilization of labour in the 1980s.

scholarly journals The depletion of narrative resources in the Kenyan trade union movement.

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 704-713
Author(s):  
Collins Ogutu Miruka
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
Union Leaders ◽  
Labour Legislation ◽  
Depth Interviews

We discuss in this study the problems of mobilization and effectiveness faced by Kenyan trade unions. In a country with high levels of unemployment and weak labour legislation, it is imperative that the labour movement devise ways of remaining relevant and effective. We combine in-depth interviews with a qualitative assessment of secondary documents on trade unions in Kenya. We do this by looking at topics addressed, characterizations of unions as well as major actors such as union leaders, workers, and political leaders. We argue that labour leaders need to enrich their vocabularies of persuasion in order to neutralize the current discourses around trade unionism in Kenya. Such an approach would enable the union leadership to acquire new repertoires of action to enhance their capacity to mobilize.

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