Eddie Webster and Glenn Adler
A Second Look
There is an increasingly widespread view in business circles and among conservative columnists in the press that trade unions are the main obstacle to job creation, foreign investment and a new growth path. Some even evoke the labour-repressive Chilean or South Korean options to clear the way for the unilateral imposition of economic policy. There is little new in this attack: blaming labour for the country’s economic woes is old wine in new bottles.
But South Africa’s dilemma is more complex than this: how are we to develop a labour- absorbing growth path in a highly unequal society while consolidating democracy? In our new book, Trade Unions and Democratisation in South Africa, 1985-1997, we argue that a labour-repressive strategy will jeopardise economic growth and put at risk the new democracy. Labour – and other organisations in civil society – have a central role to play in resolving this dilemma by participating in a compromise in which the social costs of economic adjustment are not borne by one party alone. The terms of the compromise ought to be derived through a democratic process of give and take that yields new norms and institutions to govern economic and political life. Far from being a threat to democracy, labour has been constitutive of the new democratic order.
In South Africa labour has played a central role in shaping democratisation. It was the best-organised and the single most powerful constituency in the internal anti-apartheid resistance. Indeed, South Africa is one of the few countries in the world where trade unions grew over the past two decades. Through its protest, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) contributed to the chronic crisis that precipitated the transition. In the transition itself, Cosatu used its mass base to mobilise workers in support of the African National Congress’s positions in the negotiations and to bolster the ANC’s campaign during the 1994 elections.
But labour contributed more than collective muscle. Its economic and social policies supplied the many core ideas for the ANC’s electoral agenda, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, and led to innovative multipartite institutions such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council that give a wide range of citizens and organisations a direct voice in policy- making.
It remains an open question whether labour can sustain this involvement during the period of consolidating democracy in a liberalising world. As elsewhere, economic liberalisation can lead to stagnation and imposes high costs on working people, while reducing the role of the state. In our book we assess labour’s capacity to assert such influence in the future and argue that labour’s marginalisation would put at risk the consolidation of democracy.
While democracy has led to significant gains for organised labour – the right to join trade unions, bargain collectively and strike are enshrined in the Constitution – the transition has revealed significant problems in the labour movement itself.
Firstly, organised labour has lost significant layers of leadership to the government, political office and the corporate sector. While an asset to the movement’s influence, it leaves labour with a shortage of strategic thinkers at all levels at a time when their input is more necessary than ever before.
Secondly, there has been a marked decline in the quality of service provided to members. Our research suggests that cases frequently go unattended, collective negotiations are often conducted shabbily or not all, and the quality of mandates and report backs has deteriorated.
Thirdly, a growing gap has developed between leadership and base. Historically, union power derived from the close interaction between leaders, shop stewards, and the rank and file. This relationship, we argue, is being diluted by the emergence of an alternative set of associations, between union leaders and the new economic and political elite.
Fourthly, the opening of the economy to global competition is eroding labour’s hard- won gains, threatening to marginalise large sections of the workforce through lay-offs, the casualisation of work and subcontracting. The effect of these pressures is to fragment and segment labour, creating an increasingly polarised labour market.
This places labour in a quandary: is restructuring to take place in a way that increases divisions within the working class, laying the basis for a new labour elite? Or can the labour movement influence decision-making to improve the living conditions of the working poor and the growing numbers of unemployed?
Fifthly, the tripartite alliance between Cosatu, the ANC and the South African Communist Party has been reconfigured by virtue of the transition. During the late Eighties, Cosatu was de facto leader of the internal anti-apartheid movement. Instead of Cosatu and the SACP drawing the ANC into a joint project, the reverse has happened.
Increasingly the ANC has been drawn into the orthodox economic polices of business, which have been declared “non-negotiable”. Along the way Cosatu and the SACP have been marginalised. This marginalisation has increased since the ANC’s assumption to power which provides it with the vast resources and capabilities provided by a modern state bureaucracy.
As a consequence of these five developments, labour’s influence over public policy has declined significantly since 1994. But labour will not be shunted off the historical stage. It retains the power to render any unilateral restructuring of the economy ineffective not necessarily through protest action but through lack of co- operation. Labour-repressive options are even less likely to succeed today than under apartheid, given a union-friendly labour relations system and an entrenched Bill of Rights in a democratic Constitution. If, at the same time, socialist solutions are unfeasible, the conclusion we reach in our book is the need for a historic compromise between the social partners on an appropriate growth path.
Such a historic compromise will not be easy. Labour has demonstrated great ability to use collective action to open doors, but has difficulty walking through them. Even where it has the will it may lack the capacity to make effective use of the institutions it helped create.
Moreover, both the government and business increasingly seem to believe they can go it alone. Our findings suggest that if this were to happen it would put at risk both the consolidation of democracy and economic growth.
A better solution for South Africa’s dilemma is not a limitation on democracy, but increasing the incentives for discontent to be processed through our hard-won democratic institutions.
A society that prevents such contestation would have a questionable claim to democratic status and, at a practical level, little goodwill to draw upon should policies that have been forcibly imposed on citizens go awry. The notion that popular contestation should be avoided and movements demobilised is bad democratic theory and even worse democratic politics.
Glenn Adler and Eddie Webster teach in the sociology department at Wits University. Their new book, Trade Unions and Democratisation in South Africa, 1985-1997, has recently been published by Macmillan