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Divisions chez les militants , possibilités collectives : les leçons pour une mobilisation du mouvement ouvrier tirées du secteur des petits commerçants en Afrique du Sud
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Kenny, Cara |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | This paper examines the collective actions and organization of shop workers on the East Rand (South Africa) to engage with debates on the “revitalization” of labour globally. It contrasts writers who engage with ‘social movement unionism’ as a form of political unionism aimed at strengthening workers’ bargaining position at the workplace from those who find spaces outside of production relations as the most relevant to collective classbased mobilization. Based on fieldwork with workers in three branches of a major chain supermarket in South Africa between 1998 and 2002, the article argues that while the growth of contingent labour has re-segmented the labour market between three categories of employment, collective worker identification and labour activism have abided. Across categories, workers’ actions focused on justice issues of dignity, respect and recognition. However, workers’ collective mobilization also reproduced divisions of labour emerging out of restructuring of the labour market. Further, workers’ actions were localized to the individual branch. Finally, common concerns around declining capacity for social reproduction of all workers did not become an issue around which workers’ organized. The paper argues that the workplace remains an emotive site of collective worker identity for these service workers. However, it also finds that fighting exclusively for “industrial justice” may serve to deepen shop floor divisions of labour in these workplaces. It suggests instead the importance of combining the insights of the two approaches to labour revitalization by recognizing, in this instance, the strength of worker identity in the workplace, but also locating social reproduction in households and communities as integral to workers’ experiences of exploitation. University of the Witwatersrand; Email: KennyB@social.wits.ac.za LABOUR, Capital and Society 38:1&2 (2005) |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://lcs-tcs.com/PDFs/38_12/Kenny.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
