Suchergebnisse

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Please check back later for the full article.South African trade unions had a decisive role in the political life of the territory that became the Union of South Africa and later the Republic of South Africa. Such a role was both formative and reactive; since their inception in the 1880s, trade unions attempted to shape the body politic, its legislation, its inclusions and exclusions, its bill of rights, and a whole range of social rights. They had a formative role to play in the construction and destruction of the country's racial order. They also reacted to policy and law in all periods, creating serious challenges that continue well into the Post-Apartheid period.

"Labour Beyond Cosatu is the fifth publication in the Taking Democracy Seriously project which started in 1994 and comprises of surveys of the opinions, attitudes and lifestyles of members of trade unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). This survey was conducted shortly before the elections in 2014, in a context in which government economic policy had not fundamentally shifted to the left and the massacre of 34 mineworkers at Marikana by the South African Police Service had fundamentally shaken the labour landscape, with mineworkers not only striking against their employers, but also their union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Cosatu leaders had started to openly criticise levels of corruption in the State, while a `tectonic shift' took place when the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) was expelled from Cosatu at the end of 2014. In its analysis of the survey, Labour Beyond Cosatu shows that Cosatu, fragmented and weakened through fi ssures in its alliance with the African National Congress, is no longer the only dominant force influencing South Africa's labour landscape. Contributors also examine aspects such as changing patterns of class; workers' incomes and their lifestyles; workers' relationship to civil society movements and service delivery protests; and the politics of male power and privilege in trade unions. The trenchant analysis in Labour Beyond Cosatu exhibits fiercely independent and critically engaged labour scholarship, in the face of shifting alliances currently shaping the contestation between authoritarianism and democracy."--Back cover