Support or control: The children of the Garment Workers' Union, 1939-1948
Date
1985-03
Authors
Witz, Leslie
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Abstract
Various historians have pointed out that during the first three
decades of the twentieth century both capital and the state incorporated
white wage earners in South Africa into institutionalised structures (1).
The white workers lost all their militancy, developed a racist
hierarchical division of labour, became entrapped in the hegemony of
bourgeois politics and their trade unions slipped into the morass of
bureaucracy. White workers, however, were not simply trapped by the
state and capital. Incorporation was a process which took over twenty
years or more to accomplish and was determined by specific conditions
facing white workers and trade unions, in particular on the Witwatersrand,
during this period. White workers rather eased themselves into a
trap, lowered the gate, bolted it and threw away the key (2). There is one group of white workers which, it is maintained, managed
to resist this incorporation: the clothing workers on the Witwatersrand
in the 1930s and 40s. These workers were Afrikaner women who were
active members of the Garment Workers' Union (GWU), a trade union
which, it is claimed, under the leadership of Solly Sachs (its general
secretary from 1928 to 1952), displayed a high degree of militancy,
established internal democratic structures, assumed an independent
political role and firmly committed itself to non-racialism (3). Perhaps
the most important claim made on behalf of the union is the last for it
has been used to justify many a theoretical position in the South
African political arena. Solly Sachs himself used it to criticise the
Communist Party's almost exclusive concern with black workers (4). Basil
Davidson, writing in the New Statesman in 1950, wrote that the nonracialism
in the Garment Workers' Union represented the hope that
Afrikaners would forego their racialism and that black and white could
co-operate in a future free South Africa (5). More recently Fine, de Clercq and Innes used the GWU's commitment to non-racialism as an example
of how workers need not simply become incorporated into racial
structures if trade unions registered under government sponsored
legislation (6). All these assertions are based on an unquestioning acceptance of the
Garment Workers' Union's official version of its stance towards black
workers in the industry. The GWU always maintained that it welcomed
blacks into its organisation, supported their struggles and through
this assistance black workers acquired substantial benefits such as
higher wages and shorter working hours (7). This paper will attempt to
examine this rendition critically, looking particularly at the period
1939 to 1948, a time when black workers started entering the clothing
industry on the Witwatersrand in significant numbers. However, we must
first briefly survey the period 1929 to 1938 for in those years the
roots of the GWU's policies towards black workers in the clothing industry
were implanted (8).
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 1985
Keywords
Garment Workers Union (South Africa). History, Clothing workers. South Africa. Labor unions