3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Protecting and promoting livelihoods of the excluded through the community work programme: a comparative case study of Munsieville and Bekkersdal(2018) Masondo, ThembaThe idea of the government acting as an Employer of Last Resort (ELR), commonly known as ‘public works’, has become a prominent feature of the ‘impulse for social protection’ in the global South. The dissertation focuses on a long-term ELR programme in South Africa called the Community Work Programme (CWP) – a distinctively and innovatively designed component of the orthodox Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP). Based on field research involving the triangulation of a survey questionnaire, in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic non-participant observation – this study adopts the comparative case study approach, imbued in the extended case method, to investigate the CWP’s potentialities in protecting and promoting livelihoods of the excluded in Munsieville and Bekkersdal—located in the West Rand region of the Gauteng Province, South Africa The central question posed in this dissertation is whether the CWP has other transformative potentialities beyond its ameliorative role. The dissertation advances three connected arguments. First, the dissertation argues that in addition to protecting livelihoods, the CWP possesses transformative potential in fostering development from below. The CWP participants in Munsieville tended to possess greater autonomous capabilities in adapting the CWP to respond to a myriad of local social challenges. Secondly, the dissertation argues that the mainstream theoretical approaches to livelihood promotion through the ELR tend to ignore cooperative development as a potential vector for promoting livelihoods of the excluded. In this respect, the dissertation presents the case of three nascent CWP-linked cooperatives in Munsieville to illustrate this argument. Lastly, the dissertation argues that the operationalisation of the Organisation Workshop (OW) methodology in Munsieville helps clarify the significant variance in the outcomes of the CWP in the two townships. Key words: community work programme, employer of last resort, organisation workshop, protecting livelihoods and promoting livelihoods.Item Worker participation in workplace restructuring in the automotive industry : a comparative study of German and South African Volkswagen plants, 1970-2009.(2010-08-11) Masondo, ThembaThis research report comparatively investigates labour‘s responses to work restructuring at the Volkswagen (VW) plants in Germany (Kassel) and South Africa (Uitenhage). Since the advent of industrial revolution, the automotive industry has experienced rapid changes in work organisation and production systems. This report discusses work restructuring in the industry from the 1970s to 2009, and examines labour‘s engagement with it at the two Volkswagen plants. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with Works Council members at the Kassel plant and shop stewards at the Uitenhage plant. The report concludes that VW workers at the Kassel plant are more proactive and effective in their engagement with workplace restructuring than their counterparts at the Uitenhage plant. The report proposes two factors to explain this variation. Firstly, the report argues that the German industrial relations system enables workers at the Kassel plant to influence and shape work restructuring through institutionalised participation. Secondly, the inability of workers at the Uitenhage plant to influence restructuring of work is worsened by the fact that their plant is controlled by VW headquarters in Germany. The concept of imperial restructuring is developed to highlight difficulties faced by labour at the Uitenhage plant to influence work restructuring processes. It is further argued that Marxist literature on worker participation ignores that workers are sometimes interested in participating in decision making when confronted by uncertainty about their jobs, just as employers are interested in worker participation when their authority and legitimacy is threatened.