Читать книгу New South African Review 4 - Devan Pillay - Страница 19

Until the end of apartheid in 1994 (and since long before its start), South Africa had been characterised by institutionalised racism in the labour market. The large migrant, badly-paid and tightly controlled black workforce was a central feature of the mining economy (Moodie 1994). Whites benefited from institutionalised racism, for instance in the form of job reservations or of the rule that they should always be in a hierarchically superior position. Black trade unions, which developed from the 1970s, first focused on eliminating the most humiliating practices of daily racism in the workplace, such as the blurring between racial and technical lines of hierarchy.⁷ Their success later provided an essential foundation for the mounting economic and social contestation which would lead to the fall of the apartheid regime. The largest confederation that emerged from this movement, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has become a member of the Tripartite Alliance which has ruled South Africa since 1994. Since tense (to use a euphemism) labour relations were a key feature of apartheid, a progressive workplace regime was a crucial expectation associated with the democratic transition.

The legislative framework of industrial relations adopted by the new government was based on the Northern European model which entails, firstly, strong social partners including trade unions deeply rooted in workplaces and, secondly, high levels of collaboration between capital and labour. Such a progressive regime has, however, not materialised in South Africa out of the potential contained in the new legislation. The belief that unions would grow stronger in workplaces in the post-apartheid period turned out to be unfounded in most cases. It was expected that social ‘partners’ would collaborate at the national, sectoral and firm levels to agree on policies and pay levels whereas class struggle has proved more visible than class collaboration at all levels, in particular in workplaces.

The cornerstone of the new labour market structure is the Labour Relations Act (LRA) adopted in 1995, which encouraged (or relied on) what Todd (2004) calls ‘process voluntarism’ – effectively leaving most of the regulation of labour relations in the hands of unions and employers. Bargaining councils (BCs, formerly industrial councils) were retained as the primary forum for collective bargaining, and bargaining at sectoral level was preferred. The Act also provided a mechanism whereby unions (or employers’ associations) which were not sufficiently representative to form a BC could seek to establish a statutory council, with limited powers to bargain. There was also provision for a plant-level structure, the workplace forum, influenced by the German work councils.

The number of BCs has declined, after a peak at ninety-nine in 1996.There were forty-seven bargaining councils in 2009. This can be attributed to councils collapsing in some industries, or mergers of regional councils into national councils in others. Councils can have their collective agreement extended to all employers and employees within the scope of the council and not only the members of the party organisations. Companies can (and often do) apply to the BC for an exemption from some or all provisions in the agreement(s); about 80 per cent of applications for exemptions are granted – confirming that the system does not lack ‘flexibility’ (Bhorat and Cheadle 2007).

This seemingly progressive legal regime, however, has been constantly degraded in the past twenty years (Pons-Vignon and Anseeuw 2009). First, the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) is hardly the forum for democratic policy consultation which it was intended to be, largely because government has not taken it seriously in many important instances, in particular not when the landmark Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme was adopted in 1996. Beyond Nedlac, and in spite of its continuing participation in the Alliance, Cosatu has been consistently frustrated with the policy options chosen by the ANC and, crucially, the latter’s refusal to have an open debate on decisive policy choices (Cosatu 2002).

In practice, the new architecture has not produced the intended dense web of negotiated conditions. BCs have not extended their scope to any significant extent in the post-1994 period – and in some sectors have declined. The tendency has been away from centralised bargaining (which is typically associated with the best outcomes for workers) to more local, fragmented bargaining. Coleman (forthcoming) thus argues that:

While centralised bargaining is critical for the labour movement … it is not in its current voluntaristic form able to drive the transformation demanded by the South African situation. Indeed the fragility of collective bargaining institutions can be used by employers to attack wage levels.

This is particularly visible in wage agreements, with low wages inherited from apartheid being perpetuated in many cases. The implication is that wages vary greatly across sectors, reflecting the strength (or weakness) of unions: in 2005, the minimum wage for unskilled electrical workers was R185 per week, whereas it was R647 for the same category of workers in metals and engineering (Budlender 2009). Ironically, some of the most favourable wages and conditions have been achieved by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) without a bargaining council! (In the auto assembly sector, a national bargaining forum, governed by rules agreed upon between employers and the union, has thus allowed for flexible and effective bargaining.)

Other institutional forms supposed to promote collective bargaining have had even less success. Workplace forums were supposed to be consulted about the restructuring and reorganisation of production, training, pay schemes and disciplinary procedures – but only a handful have been established. Employers were reluctant about co-determination and joint problem solving, while unions ‘feared that (workplace forums) could serve to co-opt workers and reduce their willingness to oppose employer proposals’ (Budlender 2009: 10). Similarly, very few statutory councils have been established – meaning that workers not covered by a BC have to hope for a sectoral determination.

The main driving force behind this hollowing-out of the collective bargaining framework has been the organisational restructuring to which many companies have resorted. The increase in the contracting-out of core and non-core activities in many sectors has resulted in the growing casualisation of jobs discussed in Section 1. The resulting precariousness in which many workers find themselves has negatively affected their ability to join unions and engage employers in the many forums established by the LRA. Crucially, it has allowed employers to replace ‘extra-economic’ coercion with economic coercion (Pons-Vignon, forthcoming); this is a stark reminder that relations between labour and capital are more often characterised by conflict than by collaboration.

One of the more surprising outcomes of the failure of collective bargaining to protect workers in post-apartheid South Africa has been its inefficiency in promoting employment equity. Given that most low-skilled workers are black, the increase in within-wage earners inequality has been associated with increasing racial inequality. There have been exceptions, however, not least in the one sector which, according to Budlender (2009), corresponds, to some extent, to the intent of the post-apartheid labour law: the public service. Improved representation (trade unions were hardly tolerated before 1994 in the state) and the hiring and promotion of black professionals (Von Holdt 2010) have allowed state employment to play a classic role of class formation. As a result, the state seems to be the only ‘sector’ where the objectives of employment equity of the broad-based black economic empowerment (BB-BEE) policy have been met. Elsewhere in the labour market, BB-BEE has been primarily geared towards the creation of a black bourgeoisie, rather than towards undoing the racialised (and racist) wage structure prevalent in South Africa. This is reflected in the division of tasks between the ECC and the Commission on Employment Equity (CEE); while the latter is in charge of monitoring progress in terms of (racial) employment equity, the former is supposed to monitor wage differentials. But because the ECC has been absorbed by its advisory work related to sectoral determinations (see below), while the CEE has ‘focused primarily on advancement into the top levels of the hierarchy’ there has been ‘serious neglect of monitoring of wage differentials’ (Budlender 2009).