3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/45
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item What is the relationship between state sponsored worker co-operatives, local markets and the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality?(2012-09-05) Nathan, OliverThis research report examines the relationship between state-sponsored worker co-operatives, local markets and the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM, on the East Rand, South Africa) in the 2000s, to examine how state support impacts upon democracy in worker co-operatives (“co-ops”) more generally. Worker co-ops are democratic and voluntary organisations, simultaneously owned and managed by their members (“co-operators”), have a substantial history in South Africa and elsewhere, and have often been seen as a potential alternative to capitalism. But are they? An extensive literature demonstrates market pressures erode co-op democracy (e.g. Philips): to survive, worker co-ops develop increasingly into capitalist enterprises, which fundamentally challenges notions that co-ops can challenge capitalism. Several commentators (e.g. Satgar) admit this problem, but see the solution in state support, which can purportedly shield worker co-ops from the market, so enabling their democratic content and socialist potential to be maintained. This pro-state approach is tested by examining actually-existing worker co-ops in the EMM, where a number of state-sponsored worker co-ops were established from the 2000s; the two most successful co-ops are the subject of this case study. It is shown that, on the contrary, state sponsorship fostered dependency and subtle (and less subtle) forms of state control over the co-ops. Most of the co-operatives failed to survive, as state control foisted upon them impractical goals (e.g. competition in poor community markets with overwhelming rivals,) while creating additional problems (e.g. failing to allocate marketing budgets) and also undermining co-op democracy (e.g. through imposing external priorities on the co-ops). The co-ops that survived remain trapped between state patronage and the capitalist market: unable to ensure accumulation, they remain dependent on the state, but as a result, are continually pushed by the state back into the market. It is not the South African state’s push to constitute the co-ops as black-run capitalist firms that is crucial to this story, but what this push reveals: state sponsorship was irredeemably linked to state control, and it was state control that enabled the state to force its agenda on iii the co-ops in the first place; an alternative state policy framework would simply change the goals imposed. The hierarchical and elitist class logic of the state is fundamentally incompatible with the popular, self-managed logic of worker co-ops. In short, the findings on the interaction of internal co-op dynamics with the state and open market pressures suggest that democratic worker co-ops are basically fundamentally incompatible with both markets and states. They are also fundamentally incapable of transcending either, as their survival requires either emulating capitalism or embracing the state. Lastly, this research report argues that the erosion of democracy in worker co-ops cannot simply be reduced to external forces (the state, the market), although these play a central role in such erosion. Of the two co-ops examined as case studies, one is characterised by authoritarian decision-making, the other by a fairly democratic practice. A key factor in such divergence were the co-operators’ own political and work cultures. Argued Bakunin: while worker co-ops can play a demonstrative role, challenging authoritarian politics by showing the possibility of workers’ self-management, they cannot provide a transformative role, overcoming capitalism or the state. A state-sponsored worker co-ops movement cannot form the heart of a radical, democratic and working class strategy for fundamental change. To answer the research question, the research asks which factors are important in determining the internal democratic or authoritarian form of the co-ops under study. Two state-sponsored worker co-ops are taken as case studies. The first co-op is characterised by authoritarian decision-making, while the other is characterised experiences democratic decision-making. The findings of the research agree with Philip’s (2006) argument that market factors are important in determining the internal form of a co-op. However, this research clearly shows that while market factors are important, they are by no means the sole determinant of the internal dynamics of a co-op. Non-market factors are equally important in determining the internal form of a co-op.Item Social citizenship and the transformations of wage labour in the making of Post-Apartheid South Africa, 1994-2001(2006-10-27T08:00:31Z) Barchiesi, FrancoThis work is an investigation of the relationships between waged labour and social citizenship during the first decade of post-apartheid democracy in South Africa. In particular, I look at the ways in which changing forms of work and employment have affected workers' access to social security, contributory benefits and non-contributory grants. The dissertation analyses two case studies (workers in the glass, paper and metal industry in the East Rand and Johannesburg municipal employees) by focusing on how rising unemployment, job losses, precariousness and casualisation impact on employees' social provisions. The research is connected to theoretical debates that, in the developed and the developing world, have emphasised the importance of the waged condition and of labour movements in expanding social security as part of the broader concept of social citizenship. In classical theorisations, from T.H. Marshall to G. Esping-Andersen, social citizenship defines a generation of rights premised on decommodification, or the provision of social goods (including pensions, unemployment benefits, housing, healthcare and municipal services) as entitlements aimed at minimising individual dependence on the labour market. The concept of decommodification underpins this dissertation. My analysis of the relationships between wage labour and social citizenship in South Africa is ultimately an inquiry of the ways in which wage labour and working class organisations have been able to deepen and widen the decommodification of workers’ livelihoods. This conceptual perspective is particularly relevant to the South African case, especially in consideration of the decisive role played by organised labour both in contributing to the downfall of apartheid and in spearheading post-apartheid democratic institutions and progressive social policies. The historical role of organised labour in the South African transition was not confined to workplace issues and unionised workers' concerns, but it also emphasised broader demands for social citizenship rights, decommodified provisions and a politics of community-based alliances. Influential scholarly works have often characterised these aspects under the heading of "social movement unionism". In a post-apartheid scenario, social movement unionism is increasingly embattled due to rising unemployment and "atypical" employment, and to the adoption of market-orientated socioeconomic policies by the post-1994 African National Congress government. Labour's ability to promote agendas for decommodification and social citizenship are concurrently facing uncomfortable realities and problematic questions. Has wage labour fulfilled its "promise" to be a vehicle to expand the social rights of the working class and the poor? In which ways are employment and labour market changes affecting organised labour's ability to expand areas of societal decommodification? Are alternative identities and social citizenship discourses emerging in response to the crisis of stable employment? I address these questions by looking at workers' responses to the crisis of wage labour as emerging in case studies “from below”, and at the ways in which such responses are framed and elaborated within the post-1994 social policy discourse. A second component of my research, therefore, is based on interviews with policy-makers and documentary analysis on the development of social policy from 1994 to 2001, which emphasise shifting policy discourses on the wage laboursocial citizenship interaction. In the final analysis, social citizenship emerges from this work not merely as a static construct, centred on programmes and institutions, but as a terrain of negotiations and a "contested field of signification", shaped by the encounter of institutional narratives and meanings defined by grassroots agency. The result of the research confirms that concepts of "social citizenship" and "wage labour" are profoundly shaped by contradictions determined by underlying social contestation. In fact, respondents in my case studies clearly perceive the crisis of stable, dignified employment as a structural reality that requires systemic policy interventions. On the other hand, no homogenous discourse is emerging in workers’ narratives to challenge deeply entrenched views of inclusion and the social order as based on waged employment. Decommodification discourses, as for example advanced by new social movements, remain therefore substantially limited. Conversely, the policy discourse of democratic South Africa responds to the crisis, when not the actual disappearance, of wage labour as a social reality with an aggressive reassertion of work ethic and wage discipline as vehicles of social insertion and moral virtue. The ANC government often combines these arguments with a clear rejecton of decommodification, often presented as "dependency" on welfare "handouts", which undermines individual incentives for productive jobseeking behaviours. The contradictions between the crisis of wage labour in social practices and modes of reproduction, and the reasserted centrality of wage labour in the policy discourse as the main modality of social citizenship and inclusion opens new directions for research and interrogates changing forms of social identities, contestation and political legitimacy in the South African transition.