The sleek maroon PT Cruiser parked outside DaimlerChrysler in East London is the antithesis of the battered minibus taxis used to cart South Africa’s labour force.
The owner of the car, a tall, straight-backed woman with a quiet dignity, emerges from the building.
“I shouldn’t be touching you,” Grace Brown says as she takes my hands. “My son is being circumcised.”
Her son, Lionel, is in a remote Transkei village taking part in the age-old Xhosa tradition.
Inside the building the shells of many Mitsubushi Colt bakkies are creeping along an assembly line: machines drone monotonously, bolts, screws and wires are loosened and tightened; gearboxes are dropped into place; and chassis are aligned by wholesome women and men in blue overalls and safety boots.
Once just another unemployment statistic — Brown used to buy and sell reject chocolates to make ends meet —she is now the production team manager on this Colt assembly line at South Africa’s most successful car manufacturer.
One woman in charge of 57 workers (54 men and three women) — she is the symbol of South Africa’s 2014 formal labour force.
Brown was one of 59 women employed at DaimlerChrysler in 1994 as part of a recruitment campaign launched by the company to dilute the 100% male stronghold — until then the company had never employed women workers.
“We realised that certain jobs required finesse,” says Niels Andersen, the plant production manager. “Like touching up paint defects and seam-sealing bodies.”
The women are a force unto themselves. They have defied the traditional perception of rural, black women as subservient and mendicant.
“We’re not just nippers and tuckers. We’ve made a name for ourselves and these men know we are not walkovers,” says Lindilwa Tafeni. Her quick tongue and gimlet eyes contend with remarks such as “what does she know”, which one man jeers as we walk past.
Although these women are a modicum of the total labour force — this year they made up 13% of the total of 3 000 workers, only an 8% increase since 1994 — their guts and pervasive energy have left a firm imprint since they kick-started their careers on this assembly line 10 years ago.
“This is the first time in my working career that I’ve been supervised by two women,” says Michael Lalapi with effusive charm. “At home it is my wife and at work it is Grace. Yes sure, I am proud of these ladies!”
The hubbub of workers banging and welding cars into shape every day has made this company the darling of the global automobile giant. During the past year Colt production has increased at DaimlerChrysler by more than 40%. About 7 000 of these vehicles are churned out a year for the domestic market (they are not manufactured for export), plus about 45 000 W203 Mercedes, commonly known as the C-Class. About 45% of the latter are exported to Britain, 11% to Japan, 11% to Australia and 25% are sold to the domestic market.
The successor model, the W204 Mercedes, a titillating sedan that will be seen on South Africa’s roads in the near future, has caused a flurry among international DaimlerChrysler plants, mainly in Germany, for contracts to manufacture the car. DaimlerChrysler East London is hoping to grow its share of the global production of this new model.
Most walls at DaimlerChrysler are festooned with bold posters announcing the “Race for 204”. The workers wear caps and shirts with the same slogan emblazoned across the front.
Despite the shift from regarding workers as machines, as was the case in the Eighties, modern economic analysis has moved from seeing capital accumulation only in physical terms to viewing it as a process involving human capability through skills training and education, some workers at this factory still see themselves as a means of production and not the end of the process.
They nod lumpishly at instructions to improve “takt time” — the total available time during a shift (eight hours) divided by the customer demand rate — and are under increasing pressure to churn out higher volumes. The onsite doctor, Bulelwa Mnyanda, says: “Although the workers generally enjoy their work, the fear of missing targets and the pressure to deliver is driving more and more workers to breaking point.”
This problem is not unique to DaimlerChrysler. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa recently settled a protracted dispute with Delta Motor Company in Port Elizabeth about absenteeism, workload, fatigue and stress among workers because of structural changes in the company that had caused them to flout sick leave policy.
The current takt time at DaimlerChrysler (it varies with seasonality) is 4,54 minutes. This is the total time workers have to complete a specific task at each “station”.
The increased demand in this sector is buttressed by the hardening rand, recent interest rate cuts and a slow down in vehicle price hikes. Last month the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa predicted that vehicle sales could soar 10% or more next year. Over the past year car sales have increased by 9,8%. The market demand for the C-Class has increased by 1 000 units for next year.
Mnyanda says that she has seen a steady increase in stress among workers, which manifests itself in alcohol abuse. “Behind those muscular guys is a two-month-old baby whimpering,” she says.
However the company does have a “functioning psychosocial service for such workers”, she says.
But in the context of what President Thabo Mbeki calls the two economies — the first self-generating and globally competitive and the second poor and unsustainable — DaimlerChrysler is making the transition from an industrialised economy to a globalising economy less destructive for its workers in terms of employment. For smoothing the process of this transition, there also have to be opportunities for retraining and skilling people who would otherwise be displaced, in addition to providing social safety nets in the form of social security or other supportive arrangements.
DaimlerChrysler prides itself on its skills programme — its “flexi pool” has become the company’s public relations coup. The genesis of this pool, known informally as “the training island”, is that retrenchments are kept to a minimum. Rather than booting workers during “low seasons”, they are filtered into the flexi pools where they participate in skills training, for example wiring repair, information technology and business relations. The flexi pools are also a catchment area for women returning from maternity leave or for ill workers.
The company supports the Rhodes University East London programme for industrial leadership training, which was Brown’s portal into her current management position. The “class of 1994”, as the women at the plant are affectionately known, are bright nodes on a landscape of robots and some cavalier men who believe that Brown’s and other female promotions were secured by pedigree rather than performance.
“There are some old toppies who resisted my appointment. They said they cannot and will never report to a black female,” says Brown. “I explained to them that this is a changing world and that if they want to act like children I will treat them like children. If they act like adults I will treat them so.”
It’s 3pm and the end of the first shift of the day. Knots of women and men, now wearing a variety of hats, tweed jackets and suede shoes, shuffle out of the factory with lackadaisical haste.
The maroon PT cruiser vanishes with a cough. In a country where many people have lost hope, this is a momentary glimpse of power to the people (and their humming tyres in 2014).