South Africa has so many public holidays that sometimes their meaning is lost and we treat them as just another day off work. But Workers’ Day on 1st May is when those of us who have jobs should be thankful for the laws that protect our rights as employees. Yet the history of workers’ rights is long and bloody – and nowhere near complete.
South Africa has only been commemorating Workers’ Day since our first democratic elections in 1994, joining about 80 countries around the world in highlighting the need for fair labour practices. Its history dates back to Chicago in 1886, when police tried to disperse more than a million striking workers who were demonstrating to demand a shorter working day of eight hours. When a bomb was thrown at the police, they retaliated by firing live ammunition.South Africa has long been good at exploiting workers, with Apartheid thriving on cheap labour and quashing workers’ rights under the migrant labour system, the pass system, job reservation and poverty-level pay. Trade unions became an important source of resistance to Apartheid by organising mass strikes against such laws.
Since 1994, Parliament has passed new labour laws and introduced a Constitution that protects workers by specifying that everyone has the right to fair labour practices, the right to join a union, the right to strike, and the right to engage in collective bargaining. Our laws limit the hours that may be worked in a week, regulate meal breaks and rest periods, and regulate annual leave, sick leave, and maternity leave, as well as prohibit unfair dismissal.
Throughout history and around the world the working class has been a powerful force for change, often in retaliation for changes being forced upon it.
England’s turbulent Industrial Revolution began in the late 1700s, when small-scale manufacturing using hand tools was overturned by the introduction of purpose-built machinery which allowed for mass production. The iron, textile, farming, and transportation industries benefitted enormously from developments which included the steam engine. Suddenly goods could be produced more quickly in factories and then transported across the country. But it left many people unemployed and created grim working and living conditions for many more.
As an example, the weaving that used to take place in individual farming cottages – creating the term cottage industry – was killed off by factories using power looms.
Industrialisation raised the standard of living for the middle and upper classes who could buy these factory-produced items. But the factory workers received low pay and often faced dangerous conditions. By the 1860s about a fifth of Britain’s textile workers were under 15, with children forced into hazardous tasks like cleaning the machinery. As craftsmen were replaced by machines, people migrated to find jobs, and urban living conditions became overcrowded and unsanitary.
The backlash came in the form of trade unions, which originated in Britain in the 18th century when the lack of skill needed for most jobs made individual workers very expendable. The unions began to bargain with the bosses to negotiate higher pay and better working conditions.
In 1799 Britain passed a law banning trade unions and collective bargaining, but the workers were defiant. In 1818 the first union to represent several different sectors was formed, cunningly calling itself the Philanthropic Society to hide its real purpose. Sympathy for the plight of workers saw the ban repealed in 1824.
Now the world is so technology driven that it’s hard to imagine life before machines. Yet in many respects, working conditions in South Africa still face much upheaval. This is no longer the industrial age, it is the knowledge age, and workers need new skills to survive. Computers and intelligent machines are eliminating jobs in many sectors, just as steam-powered machines did centuries ago.
South Africa is a long way off seeing a computer-driven industrial revolution, but in time it will be unthinkable that men ever descended 2 km underground to mine for diamonds. In Australia, miners are being consigned to history as machines take their place. That eliminates the dangers and diseases facing miners, but it also eliminates their jobs.
Companies in developed nations are introducing robotic technology to replace men in various economic sectors, arguing that labour costs make manual processes too expensive to be competitive.
Locally, AngloGold has developed drilling machines that can extract gold-bearing ore from a reef and replace it with cement to stabilise the shaft. The machines can operate 24 hours a day, don’t need salaries, and never go on strike.
This gradual shift to automation will increase South Africa’s already dire unemployment level. To counteract that, workers need to learn new skills relevant to the knowledge economy.
Increased automation should make South Africa more competitive, as we currently rank quite badly in terms of productivity. Without that shift we will remain uncompetitive, and people will lose their jobs anyway if products can be bought more cheaply abroad.
Yet trade unions will object if automation negatively affects their members, pitching the bosses and the workers on opposing sides. Which means that the industrial revolution is still far from over.
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