Andries Bezuidenhout

Union Solidarity under Stress: The Case of the National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa

The advent of democracy in South Africa has brought a number of benefits and opened spaces for union mobilization. It has also set in motion processes that undermine union solidarity. This article takes the most influential trade union in South Africas history, the National Union of Mineworkers, as a case study to explore this paradox. On the basis of data generated by a range of research methods, the authors explore three themes: the occupational mobility of black mineworkers, attempts at authoritarian restoration through subcontracting, and the employment of women in a predominantly male occupation.

Global labour studies: the crises and an emerging research agenda

Bieler makes this assessment of Grounding Globalization (GG): the book ‘constitutes a significant contribution to our understanding of neo-liberal globalization, its impact on workers and the possible ways of resisting’. Our rejoinder to the four interventions reflects on these three core issues to advance debate on the unfolding crises of neo-liberalism and the prospects this might herald for effective resistance. In the course of this, we identify priority research areas in the new field of global labour studies (GLS). In our view, a core aim of GLS is clarification of the underlying cause of the crises and envisaging alternatives to the free market logic. These questions foreground the strategic question: what kind of movement is needed to successfully mobilize against neo-liberalism? Our book was published before the recent financial crisis and its fallout, which, in our view, underscore some of the issues we raised in the book, but also require a fresh look at opportunities for global countermovement. Analysing the role of finance capital and the ongoing global financial crisis (GFC) is the starting point of this endeavour.

Centralisation through decentralisation: The use of subcontracted labour in the light of the intensification of managerial control

Abstract The aim of this article is to shed more light on some of the ways in which subcontracted labour is organised by proposing four typologies as possible descriptive models. It is argued that the use of subcontracted labour is largely a form of managerial control, but that it inherently has certain ‘limits’ the system has been abolished in some cases for other modes of managerial control. It is also argued that the introduction of sophisticated information technology (IT) can address these ‘limits’ to a certain extent, and can be seen as a contributing factor that might account for the increase of subcontracted labour used in tandem with other forms of managerial control. The article provides a short overview of relevant South African debates. A discussion of different case studies, both from local and international authors, follows to illustrate the four typologies developed. Recent developments in some of the debates on managerial control in the labour process are discussed, especially arguments de...

Corporate power, society and the environment: A case study of ArcelorMittal South Africa

An analysis of the privatised steel monopoly ArcelorMittal’s operations in South Africa is used to raise questions about the power of multinational corporations in relation to the state. The article focuses on the steel manufacturer’s externalisation of environmental, social and economic costs onto communities and upstream consumers of steel. The analysis is grounded in two places where steel production networks ‘touch down’: Vanderbijlpark in the south of Gauteng, where ArelorMittal manufactures steel, and Ezakheni in KwaZulu-Natal, where a household appliance manufacturer uses steel as a major input. The article points to the limitations of competition policy (directed at the prevention of ‘import-party pricing’) in the absence of an effective industrial policy. The classification of the post-apartheid South African state as a ‘developmental state’ is questioned in the context of this minimalist approach to economic and social transformation.

Enclave Rustenburg: platinum mining and the post-apartheid social order

In the absence of a levelling out of income and resources, as well as arbitrary violence in everyday life, the post-apartheid social order is characterised by the formation of various enclaves. In the platinum mining town of Rustenburg, these enclaves are constructed on the foundations of the apartheid categories ‘suburb’, ‘compound’, ‘township’ and ‘homeland’. Such enclaves include security villages, converted compounds with access control, and informal settlements with distinctive gender, linguistic and class formations. The article draws on David Harveys formulation of absolute, relative and relational space and the case of Rustenburg to elaborate the concept of enclave further.