In this thesis, I examine the centrality of travel geographies – with a specific focus on urban commuter railway lines between Mamelodi and central Tshwane – and their influence upon political identities of South African workers. By adopting a historical approach to our understanding of the South African working class, the thesis brings into sharper focus the relationship between the social dynamics of apartheid and how workers perceived the concept of a train. These have permeated into the new era with the formation of the Mamelodi Train Sector (MTS), as an organisation dedicated to organising workers on the trains since 2001. The emergence of MTS in the era of the neoliberal labour regime and its associated assault upon labour movements present opportunities for labour revival strategies. Drawing on the data collected, I show that the train can be used as a strategic site of mobilising, particularly for those workers without workplace representation. By portraying the train as a site of worker power and political consciousness, I accord primacy to the train as a space of potential union revival. This is informed by educational sessions on labour rights and labour law that take place on the train en-route to and from work. Because during these educational sessions; workers ask workplace or problem specific questions, I suggest, such questions are informed by the need to seek out useful information that can be utilised to address specific workplace problems. The theme ‘labour movement revival’ has gained global traction as labour scholars from both the north and south grapple with the aftermath of globalisation on organised labour. This has seen an increase in poverty, unemployment and inequalities in countries such as South Africa. Labour revitalisation theme came about because, as Beverly Silver correctly observes: During the last two decades of the twentieth century, there was an almost complete consensus in the social sciences literature that labo[u]r movements were in a general and severe crisis. Declining strike activity and other overt expressions of labo[u]r militancy, failing union density and shrinking real wages and job insecurity were among the trends documented (Silver, 2003: 1). Reacting to the reality as described by Silver (2003), labour scholars, activists and likeminded individuals set about to rescue the once militant labour movement from its ii perpetual decline. Drawing on case studies from various countries, author after author sought to offer new ways in which the erstwhile flourishing trade unionism can be restored to its former glory. This ethnographic study hopes to make a contribution to this growing body of knowledge. By exploring the activities of the Mamelodi Train Sector (MTS), the study attempts to show that the train can become a strategic locus of worker social power. By historicising the role of the train, it is possible to trace various phases of the ‘making of the South Africa working class’ starting in 1652 (colonialism era). This was followed by the period of mineral discovery, segregation and lastly, apartheid. These historical epochs were characterised by an oppressive and racist capitalist industrialisation process, which sough, as a point of departure to turn into cheap migrants the indigenous populations of South Africa. This saw the advent of an elaborate proletarianisation process backed up a battery of oppressive legislative measures. Due to these conditions, a particular kind of trade unionism – social movement unionism (SMU) – emerged in this context as response to the abuse, exploitation and lack of industrial citizenship of the African majority both as workers and citizens of this country. As an expression of black anger, SMU was primarily concerned with liberating South African from the abuses of both the apartheid state and the racist capitalist system operational in South Africa at the time. This saw black Africans being accorded labour rights for the first time in 1979 and finally achieving democratic majority rule in 1994. A social partnership was put in place with the militant labour movement under COSATU entering into an alliance with the ruling ANC and SACP. Post-1994, the SMU of the 80s faced new challenges with the advent of the neoliberal labour regime as the ANC government adopted market friendly macro-economic policies. The corollary presented the weakening of the labour movements as capital put in place measure to counter labours organisational power. This led to a crisis of representation as South Africa’s largely industrial unionism struggled under the new work paradigm. Under the new work conditions, casualisation, externalisation and outsourcing were adopted by capital with a view to weaken labour’s traditional forms of power – associational and structural power. It is this shifting terrain that required innovative ways to theorise and understand labour’s attempts to ameliorate the juggernaut that became neoliberalism. Fracturing the workplace as traditionally understood severely raptured worker solidarities. It is within iii this context that this thesis seeks to understand MTS and its locus of operation – the train. The data collected shows that MTS plays a critical role in filling some of the gaps left by the weakened SMU. By organising on the train, MTS provides a space of articulation for the vulnerable sections of the workforce – those without workplace representation. Drawing from the power resource approach (PRA), the thesis makes a case for a need to expand our understading of workers’ assciational power. The case of MTS demonstrate that workers’ associational power need not be limited to the workplace. Based on this, the thesis suggests that at the conceptual level, the train, due to its strategic importance to workers’ daily travel, can substitute the meaning laden workplace. Drawing on Havery’s concept of spatial fix, the findings demonstrate that just like capital, labour is also capable of fixes. These are demonstrated by MTS’s ablity to: (a) provide workers with a space for friendships and political influence, (b) provide workers with a space of solidarity and belonging and, (c) act as a knowledge hub. Herod argues that, much like capital, workers also have vested interests in how the geographies of production are produced and configured. Therefore, workers can arguably draw strength from this coach and radiate such strength outwards in order to challenge capital’s spatial fixes. This, Anderson (2015) refers to as a resonant place. Observations clearly show that workers actively seek out information that can be useful in their lives. This is a form of agency that can be located at the level of the individual – scaled at the body. This form of agency, however, needs to be understood in its context – what Soja refers to as socio-spatial dialctic. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences / Sociology / DPhil / Unrestricted

<p>This thesis is about some Swedish organizations that are connected to the labour movement and their actions to cope with the new hegemony around market liberalism. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90-ties, the liberal order, meaning market economy and democracy reduced to the election of elites, has become totally domineering both in the western and in the former communist world. Even left wing oriented organizations have adopted their operations and activities accordingly, especially in their internal governing structure. The organizations that I have studied, mainly the Swedish Tenants organization at its local level of Stockholm, developed during the 70-ties and the 80-ties a participatorier member structure. The “Swedish model” of consensus/corporative decision-making and agreement, used by them on the national level for decades, was during that period introduced also on local and regional levels. In the 90-ties these organizations, according to earlier studies, have instead adapted a more costumer-oriented and elite-democratic way of operating and governing. These later changes could be seen as contradicting both the development of the 80-ties and the basic values of those organizations. My questions are therefore how these changes became possible and my aim is to study how the active members have contributed to this development. Using a constructionist theoretical perspective and discourse analysis, I am showing how this potential conflict between a participatory and an elite-democratic model can be reconciled by a discursive construction. The active members have in fact been able see these changes just as a modernization of their organization. From their point-of-view their organization still works in a participatory democratic way. My analysis shows how this ambiguousness and potential paradox became possible thru internal discourses and under influence from the liberal hegemony.</p>

Since the collapse of the New Order regime in 1998, democratisation and economic liberalisation have combined to create both opportunities and constraints for the revival of organised labour in Indonesia. The picture of post-authoritarian labour movements painted by various scholars is almost universally bleak, portraying helpless trade unions in the face of economic impasse and the undemocratic remnants of the old forces. Being overtly cautious of the new democracy, this line of analysis has not done justice to Indonesian labour movements. It overestimates the ghost of the old dictatorship and underestimates the power of budding organised labour. Using trade union as the unit of analysis, this dissertation seeks to offer a different view of Indonesian labour movements. It looks at shifting political opportunities in the regions and the agency of trade unions which constitute a political force that is far from being consolidated but has certainly made a significant contribution to the broadening of democratic politics. In negotiating pressures that originate from an increasingly liberalised economy, trade unions have adopted a strategy which is called „playing politics‟ in this dissertation. The term means that in the absence of significant market power, trade unions enter into the realm of power politics primarily by organising labour as social movements and attempt to ally with political elites, exploit the conflicts that emerge within state institutions and between the state and business, and try to join the ruling classes. In developing this argument, this dissertation makes two contributions to the study of labour politics in Indonesia: its reassessment of the historiography of the first ten years of post-authoritarianism and its offer of insights into possible future directions of labour politics.

This thesis is about some Swedish organizations that are connected to the labour movement and their actions to cope with the new hegemony around market liberalism. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90-ties, the liberal order, meaning market economy and democracy reduced to the election of elites, has become totally domineering both in the western and in the former communist world. Even left wing oriented organizations have adopted their operations and activities accordingly, especially in their internal governing structure. The organizations that I have studied, mainly the Swedish Tenants organization at its local level of Stockholm, developed during the 70-ties and the 80-ties a participatorier member structure. The “Swedish model” of consensus/corporative decision-making and agreement, used by them on the national level for decades, was during that period introduced also on local and regional levels. In the 90-ties these organizations, according to earlier studies, have instead adapted a more costumer-oriented and elite-democratic way of operating and governing. These later changes could be seen as contradicting both the development of the 80-ties and the basic values of those organizations. My questions are therefore how these changes became possible and my aim is to study how the active members have contributed to this development. Using a constructionist theoretical perspective and discourse analysis, I am showing how this potential conflict between a participatory and an elite-democratic model can be reconciled by a discursive construction. The active members have in fact been able see these changes just as a modernization of their organization. From their point-of-view their organization still works in a participatory democratic way. My analysis shows how this ambiguousness and potential paradox became possible thru internal discourses and under influence from the liberal hegemony.

This dissertation explores the dynamics of workers’ collective political engagement through organized labour in an authoritarian environment and a regime in transition. While the literature on social movements and organized labour in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has captured the characteristics and impact of repression and corporatist systems on a union structure and elite strategies, this research contributes to a body of work that position the activities, networks and calculations of unionized workers at the centre of analysis. Using the Tunisian General Labour Union as an in-depth case-study, it will show that to fully comprehend the important role of a labour union as a vehicle for political engagement, one must pay close attention to the networks, strategies, and tactics of its militant base. By adopting a conceptual framework that gives attention to interactions of structures and agents, and therefore not privileging one over the other, it shows how in a region in which unions were conventionally labelled as “inconsequential” and “empty shells,” unionized workers, particularly those belonging to more militant sectors, have repeatedly seized on their personal networks and relationships, while drawing on systems of meaning making and shared collective memory to engage in various forms of activism. By doing so, it underscores the limitations of cooptation as a political strategy for ensuring obedience and compliance. Moreover, to better understand workers’ activism and political engagement in MENA, this dissertation calls for a change in how “successful mobilization” is measured and assessed. In particular, it draws attention to the objectives and goals of workers’ collective action, aims that cannot always be equated with the pursuit of a standardized path to democracy developed largely by institutions located in the West.

Garment sector trade unions have proved largely powerless to combat hypermobile transnational capital’s systematic extraction of surplus value from the newly industrialized Global South. Optimized conditions for accumulation coupled with the 2005 phase-out of the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) have meant a radical geographic reconfiguration of the globalised garment industry heavily in favour of capital over labour. The thesis approaches the global garment sector from multiple vantage points across the world with the goal of uncovering the obstacles to workers' organisation, examine workers' strategies of resistance, and analyse the changing composition of labour and capital within the clothing commodity chain. The thesis highlights five distinct but interconnected case studies including a transnational workers campaign from a garment factory in Honduras; a history and present-day feasibility of establishing a transnational collective bargaining from El Salvador to Turkey to Cambodia; the prospects for a countermovement in the organizing strategies at the bottom of the clothing commodity and supply chain in Bangalore; the growth of a 'full package' denim manufacturer in changing the relationship between 'buyers' and 'suppliers' on the outskirts of Bangalore; and finally a continuation of this analysis the case of a strike at a monopoly footwear supplier in China. The central research question is: How do workers build power and establish workers' rights in the globally hypermobile garment sector? Ultimately, what is demonstrated within this thesis is that the actions of garment workers shaped and circumscribed the actions of capital in the sector, and as capital transformed new landscapes for accumulation new vistas for opposition begin to emerge.

This dissertation examines collaborations between the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and non-union elements of global civil society (GCS). GCS is presented as a crucial emergent site of transnational class formation, and ITUC collaborations within this field are treated as potentially important moments in transnational class formation. The goal of the dissertation is threefold. It seeks to 1) address the lacuna in GCS studies around the involvement of organized labour; 2) provide an analysis of what ITUC GCS collaborations mean for the remit and repertoire of action of the ITUC; and 3) provide an analysis of the impact of ITUC collaborations on transnational class formation. What the findings show is that the ITUC is heavily engaged in GCS through numerous collaborations with non-union organizations concerned with environmental degradation, human rights, global economic inequality, and women workers. Most significantly, collaboration within GCS has provided the ITUC an avenue to incorporate the needs of marginalized women workers whose work does not “fit” into the traditional model of trade union organizing. These findings lead to the conclusion that these collaborations have allowed the ITUC to expand the remit of its activities beyond “bread-and-butter” unionism, and expand its repertoire of action beyond interstate diplomacy. However, the findings do not support the idea that the ITUC has adopted a social movement framework, although it is clear that the ethos of social movement unionism has had an impact on the organization. Nonetheless, the dissertation concludes that the incorporation of marginalized women workers, and the active engagement of the ITUC in global environmental policy debates, signifies a new moment in transnational class formation. / Graduate / 0629 / 0703 / davidbhuxtable@gmail.com