Conclusion

Introduction 8 Introduction 8

5.9 Conclusion

The above discussion illustrates how organised labour in South Africa has helped shape the socio-economic conditions of labour in South Africa, through the formation of key social partnerships with stakeholders. COSATU used the forum of Nedlac to push through legislation to address equity and skills development in the South African labour market as a means of redressing labour market inequalities created and maintained by Apartheid. The legislation that COSATU helped enable has allowed unions more agency in the servicing and organising of its membership, by legislating representative union Involvement on a number of labour market institutions. This chapter has investigated examples of SATAWU's role on IWO such labour market institutions in the maritime industry. the TETA and SAMSA. This investigation makes clear that SATAWU has a critical awareness of how the local intersects with the global in servicing the needs of its

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ratings membership, This is demonstrated by its TETA initiated training simulator plan that involves the union drawing on both local and global resources to help achieve equity and employment of its membership, Further SAT A WU recognises that the formation of local partnerships must be used in conjunction with global social partnerships with employers outside South Africa to achieve its goals of national training as opposed to South African based company training. Hence there is not a jumping of discrete local/global scales but rather recognition of the complex: interplay of the unique characteristics of local place (South Africa) with the unique characteristics of the global labour market for ratings and officers. In its role on the SAMSA board, the union has focused on another aspect of the local, the transformation and equity of local maritime institutions such as SAlv1SA itself Hence Dlamini as chairperson of the transformation committee of SAMSA, played a key role in drawing up an equity programme for Black maritime surveyors for SAMSA. These surveyors, will be trained locally, selVe their seatime with a global shipping company and be employed locally at SAMSA itself South Africa for the first time in its maritime history will have Black maritime surveyors. This project is all the more interesting because it does not involve SAT A WU servicing the needs of its existing membership, but rather drawing human resources outside its membership to achieve the aim of equity and employment. It further points to the union being cognisant of the plurality of the local as opposed to a homogenous idea of the local.

Hence for SATAWU there is a need to service its local ratings membership. but at the same time the union is increasingly becoming concerned with equity programmes so that more Black officers can enter the local and global labour markets for seafaring members.

On the one hand is the recognition that many of these newly trained officers will be exported abroad to work on foreign owned ships, but at the same time SATAWU wants to achieve transformation in the locally based maritime institutions like SAMSA.

The unlon's plans are not unproblematic though. In particular the its role in securing a generalis scholarship of R I SO 000 per annum to attract Black cadets for officer/maritime surveyor training has opened it up to critiques of window dressing by employers. In addition. the union by not consulting local industry at the inception of the SAt\l1.SA project has reinforced traditional adversarial relations between management and the

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union. More importantly however, the above examples also demonstrate that despite critiques of social partnerships diluting the power of labour in servicing its membership by forcing consensus SAT AWU nonetheless articulates its agency at a local leveL This complements and intersects with the union's global strategy of international labour solidarity in servicing the needs of South African ratings and officers.

This chapter then helps me in my task of assessing claims of labour being 'agent-less' in a globalising world, by demonstrating that along with agency articulated on a global scale, SATAWU articulates agency on a local level as well. This is not to imply that these are discrete articulations of agency in areal places but rather complex intersections of agency at various scales simultaneously_

Conclusion 146

I

ⁿ^t~eorisin~^.globalisation, capital is presen~ed as all encompassing and powerful due to ItS mobility. Labour on the other hand IS presented as 'agentless' and passive in shaplIlg the processes of global is at ion. As mentioned in the Introduction, the aim of this dissertation is to assess these arguments by investigating the strategies used by SAT A WU to service South African seafarers. The findings of this dissertation suggest that the agency of labour in countering capitals' mobility and servicing a transnational, flexible

labour force is understated and under-theorised in the dominant discourse of globalisation. Further, the case study presented points to labour having a more sophisticated understanding and practice of space. scale and class than has conventionally being theorised. At the same time however, whilst agency of labour exists, my study points to this agency being informed and fractured by differing material spatial interests.

Material spatial interests as argued in Chapter Four are according 10 this investigation, being prioritised over class interests. I contend that it is only when an agency of labour recognises that spatial interests intersect and complicate those of class interests can the agency of labour be transfonnatory as opposed to merely accommodatory (see Chapter Four).

I have argued in Chapter One that the prevailing discourse of globalisation is of a particular type - that is a transnational neo·liberal discourse of globalisation. This globalisation discourse has constructed labour as a powerless, unsophisticated actor.

unable to significantly shape the processes of globalisation. Capital on the other hand is theorised as the exclusive agent influencing the processes of globalisation. Further I contend Ihat whilst capital has become increasingly more mobile and multi·locational due to the development of new technologies and the dictates oftransnational neo·liberalism.

the scope and ramifications of this mobility are overstated. It is not useful to speak ofa monolithic organised capital that is alJ pervasive and powerfuL Rather it is more useful to distinguish amongst the different kinds of capital. It is in doing this that labour organisations can plan appropriate responses 10 different factions of capital. For example

Dalam dokumen Articulating agency : a case study of the strategies used by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union in servicing South African seafarer. (Halaman 152-156)