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The promise and the possibility: South Africa's contested industrial relations path

Literature › Works

Edward Webster (2013). The promise and the possibility: South Africa's contested industrial relations path. Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 81/82. Transformation (Project MUSE).
Type journal article
Scope Post-1994 South African economy
Method synthesis review
Period studied 1960–2012
Regions South Africa, Durban, Marikana (North West)
Themes unions strikes, labour markets wages, transition post apartheid, business and state, inequality poverty unemployment, comparative theory, politics ideology elections
Citation key webster2013

Argument

Webster argues that the 1990s industrial relations regime, a product of the militant labour movement of the 1970s-80s, unconsciously borrowed features of a Coordinated Market Economy (CME). It was a fragile compromise contested by labour, employers and government from the outset. Its implementation was hampered by apartheid legacies: migrant labour, the racial division of labour, structural unemployment and a segmented labour market. These tensions are illustrated by rising strike violence, ambivalence toward NEDLAC and bargaining councils, and union fragmentation, culminating in the Marikana massacre of 2012. He draws on North's path dependence and on varieties-of-capitalism and developmental-state literatures to assess the prospects for a new social pact.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature and published statistics: StatsSA labour force surveys, CCMA case numbers, strike days lost (Southall 2012), bargaining council coverage (Godfrey et al 2010), a 2004 COSATU member survey, a FEDUSA comparative table of employment ratios, Alexander's protest data, plus quoted interviews and policy documents (NEDLAC, NGP, Labour Relations Act).

Findings

  • The 1973 Durban strikes broke the decade of 'industrial peace' and exposed the dualistic industrial relations system. (p. 6)

    an estimated 100,000 workers broke the decade-old ‘industrial peace’ and took to the streets to demand wage increases.

  • The Wiehahn reforms aimed to control black unions but ended up politicising them. (p. 6)

    The intention was to control the emerging unions by drawing them into the established industrial relations structures, in particular the industrial councils.

  • The new labour regime was a hybrid, combining CME elements with an LME base defined historically by race, and its implementation was contested. (p. 4)

    From the beginning the new labour regime was a hybrid, caught between some of the characteristics of the CME approach in-planted on a LME approach defined historically in racial terms.

  • Elite pacting in the transition conserved the Minerals Energy Complex, ensuring continuity of the apartheid developmental path. (p. 10)

    essentially conserved the pillars of the apartheid economy, the Minerals Energy Complex (MEC), a set of interlocking institutions that ensured continuity of the apartheid developmental path

  • Employment in South Africa is very low relative to comparable countries, reflecting structural unemployment and dispossession. (p. 12)

    The table below illustrates the very low proportion (43 per cent) of the working age population in employment in South Africa

  • The labour market has fragmented into three asymmetrically interdependent zones. (p. 13)

    a core of six million workers in a standard employment relationship with contracts and benefits, a non-core of casual and informal workers and a periphery of long-term unemployed.

  • Strike activity fell after the CCMA was established but has since risen sharply, with greater violence. (p. 14)

    strike action dropped from a high point of 9 million work days lost in 1987 to 1.6 million in 1995, with a downward trend reaching 650,000 in 1997.

  • Registered union density has fallen sharply despite high absolute membership, leaving a representational gap. (p. 17)

    registered trade union membership declined from a high point in 1997 of 45.2 per cent to 23.3 per cent in 2010

  • Bargaining council coverage grew mainly through the public sector, while the number of councils fell and most eligible workers remain uncovered. (p. 16)

    Councils only cover 32.6 per cent of workers in occupational categories that would normally be covered by collective bargaining

  • The government bypassed NEDLAC over GEAR in 1996, marking a policy reversal toward fiscal austerity. (p. 15)

    The ambiguity of the government was clearest when it by-passed NEDLAC over GEAR in 1996 and declared it ‘non-negotiable’.

  • Large corporations have shown little 'patient capital' and have moved money abroad, hindering a developmental pact. (p. 22)

    Instead the large corporations have responded to risk in post-apartheid South Africa ‘by moving their money abroad’ and government’s policies have made this capital flight easier