I would also like to thank Vukile Khumalo for being available to bounce ideas off of while writing the thesis. I would like to thank my mother Mrs EN Bhengu for her support and prayers which have been a constant burning flame during the seven years of writing the thesis.
INTRODUCTION
Finally, how rural-urban ties and identities play out in everyday life, in the construction of workplace regimes, and in workplace struggles. Wage income remains the most important source of income in the reproduction of the African working class in post-apartheid South Africa.
D UNLOP D URBAN CASE STUDY
- History of Dunlop Tyres
- Dunlop and the history of migrant labour
Third, Dunlop workers are visible in the history of working class struggle and trade union formations in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). It is worth noting that the decline in employment at Dunlop began in the early 1990s.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE THESIS
- Workers, wages and livelihoods
- Beyond the rural-urban divide
- The sociology of everyday life
In the third chapter, the thesis asserts a methodological approach to the research of work in everyday life using an extended conception of the extended case method of Burawoy (1991). The thesis incorporates a relational approach to Burawoy's extended case study method in researching land, work and livelihoods, rural-urban linkages and factory regimes in everyday life.
THEORISING THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION IN S OUTH A FRICA
- Wolpe‟s articulation of modes of production
- A liberal critique of articulation of modes of production
- Alternative conceptions of capitalist accumulation in South Africa
- Articulation: workers, wages and livelihoods
- How do these concepts relate to the research topic?
Wolpe argues that the crisis of capitalism in South Africa was a consequence of contradictions in the accumulation system. Wolpe's articulation of modes of production explains systems of accumulation through cheap labor, as well as concrete class struggles and social formations in the construction of capitalist development in the 20th century.
SCOPE OF THE THESIS
The chapter begins by outlining the labor history of migrants, as well as the production and reproduction of the African working class. It is this construction of control, consent and resistance in everyday life that this chapter will elucidate into a theoretical concept.
INTRODUCTION
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF MIGRANT LABOUR AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CITY
By the turn of the twentieth century, migrant labor in the mines by African men was sporadic. She shows the growth of migrant labour, growth of urban settlements and struggle for urban space in the 20th century.
KEY DEBATES IN S OUTH A FRICAN LABOUR STUDIES
While the reforms had a profound effect on the despotic racial structure of workplace control, workplace relations continued to be structured by racial inequality, e.g. Reforms that were supposed to produce a new social structure of control in the workplace produced only an unstable structure.
INTERROGATING BURAWOY ’ S FACTORY REGIMES
The political apparatus of production is understood as institutions that regulate and shape struggles in the workplace. In the case of South Africa, the racial structuring of the workplace not only shaped the production apparatus, but also the labor process itself.
P OLANYI ’ S D OUBLE M OVEMENT
The dual movement involves the institutional and planned transformation of the market economy, which he sees as unsustainable because of its fatally destructive impact on human nature and the natural contexts in which it resides. Barchiesi (2011) also provides a brief look at Polanyi's double movement in relation to neoliberalism, its devastating impact on the working class in South Africa, and possible responses to what he calls precarious liberation (Barchiesi.
S OCIAL REPRODUCTION AND CRISIS THEORY
In this analysis, social reproduction theory shows how the production of goods and services and the production of life are part of one integrated process. She also looks specifically at key events that play out as focal points of the crisis of post-apartheid South Africa, starting with the Bredell occupation and violent police response to protests, the xenophobic rupture of 2008 and the Marikana massacre as three nodes of crisis.
P OVERTY , SOCIAL SECURITY AND LIVELIHOODS APPROACH
Pensions are both a poverty alleviation measure and a development tool that increases incomes as well as 'needs' private care for the elderly and other members of the households they live in. She also found that OAPs enable households to secure schooling expenses for children , especially in connection with the pressure of HIV/AIDS on household income.
REVIEW OF THE LIVELIHOODS APPROACH
De Haan and Zoomers (2005) provide a critique of the limitations of the livelihoods approach, which they seek to address in their research. The thesis further argues that the livelihoods approach ignores the inextricable articulation of poverty and inequality with capitalist accumulation in South Africa.
P OST - APARTHEID T RANSITION AND CONTRADICTIONS
The thesis builds a critique about the inadequacy of the approach to conceptualizing poverty and inequality in South Africa. Mosoetsa (2011) writes about the dynamics and struggle for survival in poor families in post-apartheid South Africa.
CONCLUSION
Barchiesi asks, "does wage employment fulfill the promise of social emancipation in post-apartheid South Africa?" He also asks, "how has this promise been reconfigured in workers' experiences and narratives of the employment crisis?" In his response, he argues that the post-apartheid crisis of majority African wage employment cannot be reduced to rising unemployment and exclusion from the labor market, but has to do with worsening insecurity, vulnerability and poverty within formal employment. The discussion of the role of wage income in the mobilization of household livelihoods in chapter four, as well as a discussion of the crisis of social reproduction in post-apartheid South Africa in conclusion engages with some of the reviewed literature on the crisis of reproduction in post-apartheid South Africa.
INTRODUCTION
On the contrary, the research process cannot be separated from the philosophical, ethical and political debates of the time.
QUESTIONS ON ONTOLOGY , EPISTEMOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY
Looking back at the research question for this dissertation, there are three sets of evidence that this research was intended to provide. Firstly, the research had to determine the role of migrant workers and migration among African employees at Dunlop.
RESEARCHING LABOUR STUDIES IN POST - APARTHEID S OUTH A FRICA
You can imagine how many dissertations and research project reports are titled "impact of..." or "role of...". Through social relations, it can be imagined (imagined), perceived (understood) and lived (experienced) in everyday life (Merrifield.
CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY
While grounded theory looks at the social situation as an example, the extended case method looks at a social situation as an anomaly. Hart's relational approach to critical ethnography is a significant and useful extension of Burawoy's extended case method.
C HOOSING THE R ESEARCH T OPIC AND R ESEARCH S ITE
Initially, the researcher became interested in the literature on political economy and the connection of wage labor to livelihoods, beyond the rural-urban divide (Bhengu, 2006). The researcher was first introduced to the chairman and secretary of the trade supervisor's committee, who were obviously interested in his research proposal.
F IELDWORK P ROCESS : C OLLECTING P RIMARY D ATA
- Archival, documentary and statistical data
- Participant observation
- In-depth interviews
- Questionnaire survey
Some of the interviews took the form of unstructured conversations with groups of workers and worker leaders that were conducted concurrently with participant observation. 65 I interviewed all the workers' leaders who were still alive from the group of first shop stewards at Dunlop.
P ROBLEMS AND L IMITATIONS OF THE R ESEARCH
R ESEARCH E THICS
I NTRODUCTION
D ESCRIPTIVE P ICTURE OF D UNLOP F ACTORY AND W ORKERS
Younger workers who live in the municipality live in their family home or live with relatives. Workers who live in a hostel or work settlement usually live with brothers, sons or friends.
P RELIMINARY F INDINGS ON M IGRANT L ABOUR AND R URAL - URBAN L INKAGES
68% of the respondents stated that they have either very close or close relationships with the "secondary household". 73 Almost two-thirds (65.7%) of these workers said they have extra-extended family networks (beyond the "secondary household") spanning the rural-urban divide.
W AGE I NCOME , L IVELIHOODS AND R URAL - URBAN L INKAGES
More than 70% (Figure 4.9) of them are either the only or only one other payer contributes to the household income80. While Figures 4.10 and 4.11 show that unionized workers earn significantly more on average than non-unionized (atypical, occasional) workers, they also show that unionized workers contribute significantly more cash and in-kind transfers to their secondary households, both in terms of percentage and in the indicated amounts.
R URAL - URBAN L INKAGES : A GENERATIONAL ANALYSIS
In the rural homestead his wife lives with some of their elders (unemployed children). There are workers who rent a room in the city and build a house in the countryside.
LIVELIHOODS AND HOUSEHOLD COMPLEXITIES AND CONTRADICTIONS
Other men remained with their wives in the countryside and also took another common-law spouse in the city (without an official marriage). As a result, the older wives do not have official marriage certificates, whereas the city wives do.
R EVISITING ORGANISED LABOUR AND PRIVILEGE IN P OST - APARTHEID SA
Barchiesi (2011) published a study of the work and lives of workers (and the working class) in the East Rand area of Gauteng in post-apartheid South Africa. Social benefits also play an important role in NIDS, as do remittances (which are money transfers sent by members who are not registered with the same household).
C ONCLUSION
I NTRODUCTION
92 In this chapter and in chapter six, the thesis develops two conceptual definitions, re-theorizing social relations in production and everyday working life at Dunlop. Racial order and male hegemony are terms I use in the thesis to re-theorize a complex set of relationships and play out the politics of production at Dunlop in post-apartheid South Africa.
W ORKER M ILITANCY , R ACIAL O RDERING AND P OPULAR M EMORY
At one of the meetings, they discussed the issue of the lack of transformation in the factory. The actual construction of shop militancy and how it plays out in everyday shop life is another interesting observation I made at Dunlop.
S HOP FLOOR M ILITANCY AND T RADE U NION S TRENGTH
Initially, training and mobilization taught workers and union members that the union was based on the work floor, not in the office. Third, high worker retention at Dunlop also contributes to the current strength of workers and unions on the shop floor.
T RADE U NION S TRUGGLES , C ONTESTATIONS AND C ONTRADICTIONS
The November 2007 shop stewards election also featured an interesting battle, first among shop floor workers as well as between Dunlop workers and NUMSA. Workers had threatened that at the congress they would mobilize for the replacement of the regional executive (especially the regional secretary).
CONCLUSION
There have been varying levels of cohesion in attempts to make these connections between refinery workers and communities in the south of Durban in the recent past. The Dunlop case – seen in conjunction with current developments and realignments within the trade unions in South Africa – provides a basis for an interesting dynamic in trade union politics.
INTRODUCTION
R EIMAGINING B URAWOY ’ S F ACTORY R EGIMES
Ching Kwan Lee engages with Burawoy's notion of factory regimes in her research of garment factories in Hong Kong and Shenzhen (China). She critiques Burawoy's notion of despotic regimes, arguing that an analysis of factory regimes must look at the agency of the dominated to accede to dominance and how women workers shape the conditions of managerial control and how they can sometimes backfire. social constructions of gender. in a strategy of survival versus management (1993:532).
C ONTESTING W ORKPLACE O RDER AND C ONTROL / H EGEMONY
The workers were aware that management was bringing in temporary labor to cover lost production for the duration of the strike. On one of the early days of the strike action, some of the younger workers made a proposal to enter the factory floor in one of the early morning shifts to hunt and remove amagundan from their machines and production floors.
IDENTITY AND WORKPLACE REGIMES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
I also want to revisit Lee's research on factory regimes in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in articulating the cultural formations approach to theorizing factory regimes. The thesis argues that, while institutional industrial relations at Dunlop constitute what I call racial ordering, characterized by white management and black workers, factory regimes in everyday life on the shop floor are organized by a male hegemony.
MIGRANT IDENTITY AND WORKING CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN LITERATURE
Ubudoda128 is a discourse used in building relationships on the floor, first among workers and also between workers and management. Bonnin (2007) argues that the construction of masculinity and masculinity was central to political struggle and political violence in Natal in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
MASCULINE DISCOURSES AND THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF WORKERS ON THE SHOP FLOOR
Shop stewards even brought in clinic nurse Dunlop to talk to workers about the clinic's counseling and testing programs during one of the shop stewards' meetings that reported back after the strikes ended137. One of the store stewards was holding a Daily Sun newspaper, which had a picture of a young half-nude model.
CONCLUSION
In a factory with more than 85% male workforce, both workers and managers use masculine discourses to produce agreement and dissent. This male hegemony is a fluid regime in which both workers and management continually negotiate and renegotiate the ordering of work life in everyday life.
- I NTRODUCTION
- W AGES – LIVELIHOODS AND R URAL – URBAN L INKAGES IN P OST - APARTHEID S OUTH A FRICA
- R E - THEORISING F ACTORY R EGIMES IN E VERYDAY LIFE
- T HE C RISIS OF R EPRODUCTION IN P OST - APARTHEID S OUTH A FRICA
- G APS , L IMITATIONS AND A REAS FOR F URTHER R ESEARCH
- C ONCLUSION
Chapter four presents the research findings, which show the centrality of wage income in the mobilization of household livelihoods and the social reproduction of the working class across the rural-urban divide. This is why most labor studies literature shows that South Africa's broader macroeconomic framework and consequent industrial restructuring and flexibility, together with downsizing and layoffs as well as wage inequality, present vulnerabilities, pressures and instabilities in the reproduction of the working class (Barchiesi.
