More than half a sample of 400 trade union leaders tracked by an academic research project have done ”extremely” well out of South Africa’s democratic transition.
The study, by the acting director of the University of Natal’s labour studies department, Ari Sitas, shows that a ”mobile” 51% of worker leaders have attained affluence beyond ”their wildest expectations”.
”In hardly four years they were members of the salariat, earned anything between seven and 15 times what they were earning before, drove their own cars, and 55% of them had moved to ‘better areas’.”
At the same time, the research shows that a quarter of the sample remains ”stuck” in the occupational milieu of the 1980s and early 1990s, while 22% have slid down the greasy pole, experiencing ”rapid deterioration of life-chances”.
Sitas notes some correlation between prior education and upward mobility. ”The higher one’s education, the more people seem to be mobile…”
Women’s mobility, however, seems independent of education. In addition, only women unionists have moved higher than middle-level management positions to top managerial positions.
Sitas observes that ”comrades in middle management” have experienced untold challenges once they occupied their new positions.
First they passed through a ”goodwill” phase, when they thought of themselves as ”the people’s people” who would realign their organisations with the new South Africa and make things happen.
This led to a phase of frustration and ”status incongruity”, when they bumped their heads against an invisible ceiling. ”However much their experience and prior education … the paltriness of their qualifications kept them within the bounds of middle or lower managerial functions,” Sitas writes.
The former unionists felt demeaned by interactions with white and Indian middle managers, who saw them as incompetent ”political” appointees, and thwarted by a new generation of more highly qualified black university graduates.
Their legitimacy challenged, they shifted to a final phase when they marshalled their own energies, making black economic empowerment and Africanisation their priority.
Sitas remarks on a ”nascent racial populism” gathering force among them, with Indians and whites perceived ”as enemies in a zero-sum game”. In 9% of the former unionists, this had crossed an emotive boundary into outright racism.
Nearly two-thirds still feel a social and cultural tug towards their old union comrades. ”Part of this has to do with self-definition: they still see themselves as part of the productive classes, as non-owners of the means of production.”
Race is less important for those who have stagnated in a worker milieu, Sitas says. Their overwhelming experience is of defending and protecting jobs.
Their recurring theme is that the ”voluntarism” of the old days was dying. They find it hard to devote themselves to good causes, but their fellow-workers are even more reluctant to do so.
They still see themselves as members of ”the productive classes” and the just recipients of redistribution. ”Their ‘line’ on every issue is one of class, which shifts from antagonism to cooperation,” Sitas writes.
Despite their lack of upward mobility, about a third of them have started attending classes and training programmes to improve their situation.
However, only 16 of the 400 former worker leaders are now involved in ”organising discontent”. A large minority — 36% — are now apathetic about politics.