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This book argues that we need to focus attention on the ways that workers themselves have invested subjectively in what it means to be a worker. By doing so, we gain an explanation that moves us beyond the economic decisions made by actors, the institutional constraints faced by trade unions, or the power of the state to interpellate subjects. These more common explanations make workers and their politics visible only as a symptom of external conditions, a response to deregulated markets or a product of state recognition. Instead - through a history of retailing as a site of nation and belonging, changing legal regimes, and articulations of race, class and gender in the constitution of political subjects from the 1930s to present-day Wal-Mart - this book presents the experiences and subjectivities of workers themselves to show that the collective political subject "workers" (abasebenzi) is both a durable and malleable political category. From white to black women's labour, the forms of precariousness have changed within retailing in South Africa. Workers' struggles in different times have in turn resolved some dilemmas and by other turn generated new categories and conditions of precariousness, all the while explaining enduring attachments to labour politics.

This book argues that we need to focus attention on the ways that workers themselves have invested subjectively in what it means to be a worker. By doing so, we gain an explanation that moves us beyond the economic decisions made by actors, the institutional constraints faced by trade unions, or the power of the state to interpellate subjects. These more common explanations make workers and their politics visible only as a symptom of external conditions, a response to deregulated markets or a product of state recognition. Instead - through a history of retailing as a site of nation and belonging, changing legal regimes, and articulations of race, class and gender in the constitution of political subjects from the 1930s to present-day Wal-Mart - this book presents the experiences and subjectivities of workers themselves to show that the collective political subject 'workers' (abasebenzi) is both a durable and malleable political category. From white to black women's labour, the forms of precariousness have changed within retailing in South Africa. Workers' struggles in different times have in turn resolved some dilemmas and by other turn generated new categories and conditions of precariousness, all the while explaining enduring attachments to labour politics.--

AbstractBased on media stories and union campaigns, this paper tracks the discourses from the 1930s to the 1970s around the 'shop girl' in Johannesburg. It argues that the shop girl was a figure of white femininity that complicates the now extensive literature on white women in South Africa through its reproduction of the enduring tension of class difference. Through archival research and interviews, the paper shows how the 'shop girl' contributed to an ideology of white nationalism, focused more traditionally around motherhood and domesticity. The embodied labor of white women workers in Johannesburg both relied on their femininity and ensured that the affective labor of service work was a site of contradiction and contestation with white middle class women consumers. Class difference could therefore be contained within the semiotics of white nationhood through the site of consumption and retailing.

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This is a historical piece that traces debates and struggles over store trading times (which determined working time) from the 1960s to the 1980s in Johannesburg, South Africa, to explore the connection of working time debates to the precarianisation of retail labour in South Africa over the ensuing decades. Debates about trading time and working time, and how unions engaged therein, were fundamentally linked with changes to the labour market of service workers over this period. This paper explores how the emergence of precarious labour in sectors like retail can be explained as conjunctural moments written from the global South. This research is based on extensive archival research which links regulatory changes, union politics, national debate and labour market changes to how shift systems in retailing changed between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Este artigo analisa o estado do movimento sindical sul-africano. Discute os sindicatos no contexto da dinâmica política nacional, incluindo a Aliança Tripartite e o neoliberalismo, bem como a crescente pré-arianização do trabalho na África do Sul. Ele examina as divisões dentro da grande federação e explora os debates em torno da renovação sindical e das novas organizações de traba-lhadores. Argumenta-se que o terreno político é fragmentado e instável, mas a política coletiva de trabalho dos trabalhadores permanece. ; This paper reviews the state of the South African labour movement. It discusses trade unions within the context of national political dynamics, including the Tripartite Alliance and neoliberalism, as well as growing precarianization of work within South Africa. It examines splits within the major federation and explores debates around union renewal and new worker organizations. It argues that the political terrain is fragmented and shifting, but workers' collective labour politics abides.

Abstract This paper reviews the state of the South African labour movement. It discusses trade unions within the context of national political dynamics, including the Tripartite Alliance and neoliberalism, as well as growing precarianization of work within South Africa. It examines splits within the major federation and explores debates around union renewal and new worker organizations. It argues that the political terrain is fragmented and shifting, but workers' collective labour politics abides.

AbstractThis article examines the history of precarious labor within the retail sector in South Africa since the early decades of the twentieth century. It argues that a "regime of contract" characterized through a bifurcated legal apparatus for black and white workers and skill segmentation naturalized by race and gender can be used to track the continuities as well as explain the changes within forms of precarious labor in the present. The history of struggle for regulation as well as employer efforts to refragment the employment contract have been a key part of this story. This article suggests that "regimes of contract" can be used to develop comparative and transnational study to explain precarious labor regimes globally.

In 2011 Walmart's bid to buy a controlling stake in South Africa's Massmart Holdings, Inc. went before the country's Competition Commission and Competition Tribunal, both of which would determine whether to grant the merger outright or to place conditions on it. Massmart Holdings comprises a number of branded subsidiaries in the South African market, including Walmart-style general merchandise dealers, electronics retailers, do-it-yourself building suppliers, and food wholesalers—Game, Dion, Builder's Warehouse, and Makro, respectively—as well as the more recently acquired food retailer, Cambridge Food. South African unions, most prominently the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu), with support from the Global Union Federation UNI Global and, in the United States, the United Food and Commercial Workers, fought the merger.

This article examines changing social meaning embodying legal categories of nonstandard employment within South African retailing between the 1950s and the postapartheid period. Using archival and interview material, the article shows how trade unions constructed part‐time and casual employment through gendered, class, and racial meanings to produce two very different legal categories. Black workers' rights claims in the 1980s developed within these changing socio‐legal parameters. The image of the full‐time permanent worker became political agent, and in the postapartheid period, increasing numbers of casual workers became marginalized from the union. The relationship between rights and regulation gives us a more complex way of understanding worker politics.

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