A searing reflection on the re-emergence of black worker organisation and trade unions in South Africa after 1973.
I think the author is wrong in seeing the 1950's and before as embodying a tradition of workplace democracy - which was revived by the Food and Canning Workers Union in the 1980's and then white-anted in the 1990's. It think the democratic character of emergent unions was quite new - and extraordinarily important. Negotiations to end apartheid would have been an impossibly hard sell after 1990, had it not been for the experience of hundreds of thousands of black trade union members of the gains that could be achieved though negotiations with their racist bosses. The gains were both material and psychological. Wages increased. Assaults were challenged. Trade unions forced bosses to listen to and respect black workers, collectively and individually.
The book is very interesting on outsourcing , and how early it became an influence on workplace organisation in the 1980s. Why there is nothing of substance on the path-breaking FCWU medical benefit fund in the 'story' is not explained.
Hard-won successes were indeed tossed aside in the wake of the political transitions. But those successes showed what was - and what still could be - possible. It is ironic that many positive trends were undermined by democracy. Full time shop stewards are castigated - with strong reason. But I remember conducting training courses for full time shaft stewards in NUM on negotiation skills, legal rights and the need for report backs to workers, only to find the trained full time stewards being ejected by populist opportunists at the next election. It was what the workers voted for. ( )