This thesis is an examination of the main tendencies in the trade union movement in South Africa during the currency of the Industrial Cenci 1 iation Act from 1924 to 1979, and of state labour policy of direct relevance to worker organisation. It considers in particular the reasons for the predominance of protectionist strategies, frequently amounting to racial monopolies and exclusion, among the unions catering for white artisan and production workers. Attention is given to the deployment of legislative and other policy instruments by the South African state intent on providing support for the prevailing protectionist demands and the exclusionary stance of large sections of the trade union movement. In analysing these developments, reference is made to the history of the trade union federations reflecting the divergent interests of different sections of the South African labour movement during this period. The evolution of trade unions for the workers occupying a subordinate role in the South African "racial order" is also traced. Consideration is given to the barriers to the full development of such trade unions, and to the incipient decline of the era of racial exclusion which the 1970s witnessed. / Sociology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)

M.A. (Manpower and Labour Relations Strategy) / composed of two or more interdent parets, components or subsystems, and delineated by identifiable boundaries from its environmental supra system." This circumscription forms the basis of the systems approach to which unions influence can be measured. The empirical results displayed that: (i) Union membership has not proved better and higher valued posts in comparison with non-union membership. There was found that unions could contribute in the upgrading and standardising of post levels. This upgrading and standardising is more pst specific indicated that post appreciation. (ii) Unions have a influence on compensation structures. (iii) As far as shareholder schemes for workers it was found that unions regard it as important if they negotiated with them. (iv) As far as social responsibility it was found that unions did not display a significant influence. (v) In spite of the fact that technological change influence enterprise as well as individuals, unions has not yet claimed in this regard. (vi) It was found that both labour-, capital-, and multi-factorial productivity showed a sharp decline. Reasons for this decline in some cases are because of union influence. (vii) The South African mining enterprise are no longer competitive with regard to international competition. The decrease in the mining sectors competitiveness is because of the increase in production costs since the 1970's...

In South Africa, labour has played a central role in shaping the transition to democracy. It remained an open question as to whether labour could sustain it’s involvement during the period of consolidation after the first democratic elections. As was evident in other emerging democracies, economic liberalization often led to stagnation and high costs being imposed on workers, while weakening the state. South African trade unions thus faced formidable problems as they had to respond to rapid economic and industrial change. While being stubborn, South African trade unions remain adaptable enough to survive and grow into the 21st Century. In this dissertation, the writer examines the relevance of trade unions in contemporary South Africa and how they are coming to terms with the deregulated labour market, and the question of globalisation. We look at the emergence of new forms of collective bargaining, the growth of trade unions as partners in a changing workplace and the different ways trade unions are modernising themselves to attract new members. Labour when used as a collective force is capable of shaping democratization through the strategic use of power. Labour has the potential , through participation in negotiated compromises, to ensure that the costs of adjustments are not borne by workers alone. To this end, the South African trade union movement has developed innovative strategies and institutions.

M.Comm. / Unemployment in South Africa is a growing concern. With unemployment reaching proportions, poverty and related crime levels are on the increase. Government, pressured by organised labour groups, is looking at all possible means of creating employment. COSATU, as a representative of organised labour, are calling for increased state participation in the economy in order to improve the "workers" plight. COSATU has identified retirement funds as a potential source of employment creation. Worth some R600 billion, retirement funds represent 35% or more of total savings in South Africa, and provide about 60% of local finance to companies. COSATU view these assets as belonging to their members, i.e. a large part of the funds consist of workers' deferred wages in the form of savings for retirement. COSATU believes that these funds should be invested in areas that promote their members' plight. At the end of October 2000, the Economic Empowerment Commission will have handed their formal empowerment proposals to the President. In an article, which appeared in the Financial Times on 14 September 2000, "Blueprint set out for black advancement", details were given of the Economic Empowerment Commission's expected proposals in this regard: "The black economic empowerment commission has proposed wide-ranging recommendations to reinvigorate black economic empowerment, stimulate fixed investment and accelerate economic growth. Commission Chairman Cyril Ramaphosa revealed an outline of the full package of the commission's proposals for the first time yesterday during a joint briefing of several parliamentary committees. The commission has called on business, labour and government to reach an "investment growth" accord and adopt a national black economic empowerment strategy.

M.A. (Human Resource Management) / This investigation was undertaken in order to determine as to whether a connection existed between political occurrences and strikes in South Africa during the period 1910 to 1990. The strike phenomenon was studied within the framework of the ten political phases that occurred from 1910 to 1990. These phases were allotted in terms of the respective white political governments and leaders. Accent was placed on the promulgation of labour laws and specifically, on the protective role thereof towards white workers, but also on the discriminatory effect thereof on black workers ...

A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Sociology to the Faculty of Humanities,School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 2019 / This study examines the responses of the South African trade union movement to the impacts of the Great Recession. The Great Recession is used to refer to the world economic crisis of 2008/9. Its impact on South Africa had enormous implications for the South African economy and its workers. The report reflects on and critiques how trade unions in South Africa responded to the impacts of the crisis on workers. The focus of the report is on the three trade union federations, COSATU, FEDUSA and NACTU, which were the main federations and ‘official’ representatives of organised labour at the time. The report studies and critically reflects on the theoretical perspectives of the trade unions and their policy and organisational responses to the impacts of the crisis. In its critical engagement with the trade unions’ perspectives and organisational responses, the report is theoretically grounded in a Marxist perspective. These perspectives and responses are studied against the historical background of the international and South African labour movement. The historical background is used to frame the purpose and role of the trade movement, which provides a basis to evaluate the trade union perspectives and responses to the Great Recession. The fundamental proposition of this report is that the trade unions are elementary organisations of labour whose purpose is to organise and defend interests of the workers and to regulate the terms of the relations of the producers with the employers. The historical context also allows comparative analysis of the trade union responses in the Great Recession with the reactions in the previous crises, and the changes that took place in the trade union politics. To understand the trade union politics and responses, the study focuses on the theoretical analysis, policy declarations, and political and organisational reports of the federations and, in some instances, those of their affiliates. Interviews, archival and participatory research also assisted in collecting data. The main conclusion of the report is that the trade union movement failed the workers. The workers have shown determination to fight, reflected in the number and militancy of their strikes. Unfortunately this will to fight was not matched by the political leadership of the trade union movement with political strategy, perspectives, and campaigns to harness this will to struggle and to unite various contingents of the working class into a mass movement that could defeat the neoliberal austerity measures and provide fighting and revolutionary alternatives, as workers have in previous crises internationally. / NG (2020)

M.A. (Historical Studies) / Since its inception in 1902 the aimof the Mine Workers' Union (MWU) was to protect the interests of the White worker. All the strikes organised by the MWU since 1907 had this mission in mind. The position of the skilled worker has always been at stake in the relationship between the government and the mine authorities due to the importance of the goldmine industry. This relationship has been complicated by the industry's dependence on more expensive skilled labour on the one hand and the availability of much cheaper unskilled Black labour on the other hand. White workers who exclusively represented the skilled labour force obtained guarantees for their position in 1911 when work reservation of certain positions wasgranted legal recognition. At the slightest threat to their security the White workers exhibited political power to the extent that this position was considered not negotiable. The MWU's unique relationship with the National Party since 1948 thus gave unequaled protection to a labour union. Socio-political changes in the RSA, especially in the late 1960's and early 1970's, required essential changes in labour relations. The mine industry has also been drawn into the new labour dispensation during the early eighties when jobs for coloured groups and Black people were brought in parity with jobs previously held by White mineworkers. The new labour dispensation proved to be unavoidable already in 1977. This caused resistance by the White mineworkers who considered the changes as treason by the National Party. They used political opportunities in an effort to maintain the status quo in the party's reforms in labour policy. The process which has been seen as politicising and even as militant petered out towards the end of 1981 when it was realised that the new labour dispensation was irreversible and the MWU in collaboration with the Herstige Nasionale Party were unable to obtain a mandate for amending the new labour policies. The MWU finally turned its back on the National Party when the Conservative Party was established in 1982. This party came into being in protest against the National Party's move away from apartheid. The Conservative Party made provision for white workers' right to self-determination as embodied in the old dispensation; it therefore obviously provided a home for the MWU. This merger between the Conservative party and the MWU which came into being after 1982 heralded a new dispensation for the MWU. It also provided the MWU with a new platform for political activities.

M.A. / During the 1930's industrial expansion which marked the rise of industrial trade unions also precipitated the process of urbanization and proletarianization of large numbers of rural Afrikaans-speaking migrants, resulting into acute poverty and unemployment. The Labour Party, dominating the established trade union movement during this period, drew its support from the craft unions in the Trades and Labour Council-structure which strongly opposed the new rural migrants clustering around the least skilled and lowest paid occupations in the rising industrial unions. At the same time foreign and communistic influences also prevailed in the existing trade unions. National-minded leaders who became increasingly concerned with the serious effects of proletarianization set out to smash the ideology of class which threatened national unity. Thus their endeavour to capture working class support for Afrikaner na- tionalism by means of organizing the Afrikaans-speaking workers in right wing inclined trade unions which they labelled 'Christian National'. As control over trade union funds also proved to be a valuable source of income, the mobilization of the Afrikaner worker provided both the means of developing Afrikaner capital and gaining political power. In October 1936 the Nasionale Raad van Trustees (NRT) was formed to provide the financial backing for Afrikaner trade unions and to act as liaison body with the Afrikaner nation. It's aim to break the power which the Labour Party had gained in South African politics led to the organization of Afrikaans speaking mine workers in the Trades and Labour Councils' largest non-craft affiliate, the Mine Workers Union (MWU). This resulted in the formation of the Afrikanerbond van Myn- werkers (ABM) as a alternative union to the MWU during November 1936.

This report is concerned with unpacking the influential yet misunderstood “workerist” phenomenon that dominated the major independent (mostly black) trade unions born in the wake of the 1973 Durban strikes. “Workerism” is widely recognized as being concentrated in the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu). Workerism remains a source of much controversy in labour and left circles; this is due to the massive influence it commanded within the with black working class in its brief heyday, and the formidable challenge it presents to the legitimacy of nationalist movements and narratives attempting (then and now) to stake claims on the leadership of the liberation struggle. This controversy has yet to be resolved: both popular and scholarly attempts to theorise its politics are marked by demonstrable inconsistencies and inaccuracies, often reproducing existing polemical narratives that conceal more than they reveal. This paper contributes to that debate by deepening our understanding of the core politics of the important workerist phenomenon – through an examination of primary documents and interviews with key workerist leaders. I argue that workerism was a distinctive, mass-based and coherent multiracial current, hegemonic in the black trade unions but spilling into the broader anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s. It stressed class struggle, non-racialism, anti-capitalism, worker selfactivity and union democracy, and was fundamentally concerned with the national liberation of the oppressed black majority. However, it distanced itself from the established traditions of mainstream Marxism and Congress nationalism – coming to a quasi-syndicalist1 position on many crucial questions, although this ran alongside a far more cautious “stream”, akin to social democracy. It fashioned a radical approach to national liberation that combined anticapitalism with anti-nationalism on a programme that placed trade unions (not parties) centrestage – a notable characteristic that made it the object of much suspicion and hostility. In the longer term, workerists developed a two-pronged strategy. This centred on, first, “building up a huge, strong movement in the factories” – strategically positioned at key loci of power in the economy (key sectors, plants and regions), with a view to “pushing back the frontiers of control”; second, it incorporated an extensive programme of popular education to ignite the growth of a “counter-hegemonic” working class politics, consciousness, identity and culture, thereby “ring-fencing workers from the broader nationalist history of our country” and continent. Right at the epicentre of this radical project was the creation of a conscious, accountable and active (in workplaces and communities) layer of worker leaders or “organic intellectuals”. I contend that a simple conflation of workerism with a form of Marxism, although prevalent in the literature, is misleading and inaccurate. Rather, workerism cannot be understood unless in relation to the far more eclectic and varied international New Left – through which it drew influence (direct and indirect) from a variety of sources, including revolutionary libertarian currents like anarchism, syndicalism and council communism, as well as others such as social democracy, and dissident forms of Marxism. But the unhappy co-existence of these contradictory tendencies (quasi-syndicalism and social democracy) interacted with a New Left-inspired, at times anti-theoretical, pragmatism to leave workerism weakened - hampered by inconsistencies and contradictions, expressed in ambivalent actions that were at once libertarian and more statist, revolutionary and reformist, spontaneous and premeditated, “boycottist” and “engagist”. This left a vacuum in the liberation struggle, paving a way for the resurgence of nationalism under ANC leadership. 1 Here I refer to the historical tradition of anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism, not the so-called “Leninist critique”.

Research report for the degree of Master of Arts in Industrial Sociology, submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg / This research paper studied the recent labour unrest in the East Rand as there has been a rise in the number of marches and demonstrations led by the precarious workers to several workplaces. [No abstract provided. Information taken from introduction] / 2017