SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNIONISM IN AN ERA OF RACIAL EXCLUSION by JEFFREY THOMAS LEVER submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY in the subject SOCIOLOGY at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA PROMOTER: PROFESSOR J I GROBBELAAR CO-PROMOTER: PROFESSOR S P CILLIERS NOVEMBER 1992 ************* i I declare that SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNIONISM IN AN ERA OF RACIAL EXCLUSION is my own work and that all the sources that I have used have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. JJ) . ~' ........ FGLEVER H:ln'2 -07_ f'l ~ ii : 331.880 968 LEVE t '.< •• , l-.-~··'·= lllll!IHllll 01491991 ii Acknowledgements To S P Cilliers, my deep appreciation for the example he has continued to set in the many years since I first met him when I began as a student in the field of social research, as well as for his encouragement and guidance with this work. My warm thanks to Janis Grobbelaar for her support and encouragement, and for her extraordinary abi 1 i ty to go out of her way on behalf of colleagues and friends. My gratitude to my colleagues in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Western Cape for creating a congenial working environment. iii ABSTRACT This thesis is an examination of the main tendencies in the trade union movement in South Africa during the currency of the Industrial Cenci 1 iation Act from 1924 to 1979, and of state labour policy of direct relevance to worker organisation. It considers in particular the reasons for the predominance of protectionist strategies, frequently amounting to racial monopolies and exclusion, among the unions catering for white artisan and production workers. Attention is given to the deployment of legislative and other policy instruments by the South African state intent on providing support for the prevailing protectionist demands and the exclusionary stance of large sections of the trade union movement. In analysing these developments, reference is made to the history of the trade union federations reflecting the divergent interests of different sections of the South African labour movement during this period. The evolution of trade unions for the workers occupying a subordinate role in the South African "racial order" is also traced. Consideration is given to the barriers to the full development of such trade unions, and to the incipient decline of the era of racial exclusion which the 1970s witnessed. iv SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNIONISM IN AN ERA OF RACIAL EXCLUSION CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction ......•......•..•.............. p. 1 Chapter 2: Central Themes in White Labour's Response to the Conditions of a Heterogeneous Labour Market ............................. p. 2 3 Chapter 3: Creating the Institutional Order: The Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924 ....... p.57 Chapter 4: The National Party, Trade Unionism and the Industrial Order ...................... p.90 Chapter 5: The Failure of a Unified Labour Movement: The South African Trades and Labour Council, 1930-1954 ....••..........•..•... p.134 Chapter 6: The Registered Trade Unions under Apartheid ..•.........•••........•..•..••. p. 183 Chapter 7: The Trade Unionism of Legal Exclusion: African Trade Unions and the Poli tics of Domination ................... p. 227 Chapter 8: Conclusion ....•.••.....•.............•..• p. 264 Bibliography ..•.......................... p. 273 v Chapter 1: Introduction Patterns of inclusion and exclusion among human aggregates remain one of the most significant, if least understood, of social phenomena. Having arisen at the heart of large-scale societies, classical sociology for the most part ignored, or at least marginalised, the issues of societal membership and the drawing of boundaries against non-members. Max Weber's penetrating remarks on the constitution of status and ethnic groups are perhaps the foremost exception to the foregoing observation. 1 Taking membership largely for grahted and dwelling but little on the issues of boundaries and systematic exclusion, sociology directed its attention rather to the patterns of interaction among secondary groups constituted on functional grounds. There is thus perhaps little to wonder about in the spectacle displayed in South African social science over the past two decades, where the so-called "Race-class" debate has raged with no conclusive outcome. 2 A sociology in which boundary problems could largely be ignored was imported to a "society" (the very concept as used in sociology betrays the bias of its own social origin) in which boundary problems for central historical reasons were altogether salient. In the process arose an often very sterile argumentation over the "real" nature of South African society and its fundamental dynamic. "Race" and "class" were counterposed and contrasted to one another, instead of analysing the mutual interdependence and existential unity of the phenomena to which these terms refer. This thesis examines one aspect of the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in South Africa in the recent past: the extended period of 20th century labour history during which the sectionalism inherent in one prominent type of functional grouping in an industrial society - the trade union - was compounded by the radical segregationism and subordination already existing among the inhabitants of the Southern African region. As is hopefully clear from the previous remarks, this study does not take one or l other side in the long-standing theoretical debate over the Race­ class issue. In the face of an intractable scientific problem which presents at the same time the most pressing of political and social dilemmas, it ill fits the social scientist to claim definitive knowledge. The fact of the matter is that we do not yet properly understand on a theoretical or practical plane matters which are referrred to as "ethnic", "racial" and so on. The recent vogue for the "Social Construction of Ethnicity and Race 11 would be laughable were it not taken so seriously, purporting as it does to provide an adequate explanation for the rise and prevalence of "ethnic" identities. 3 In this thesis the main focus falls on the social or (to use what is in many ways a more accurate term which has been out of fashion in social science for several decades) "ecological 11 factors in which ethnic sectionalism and racist domination came to characterise the foundations of trade union activity. In so doing it is implied that further consideration of a topic such as this from other perspectives such as the psychological or sociobiological is not rejected but only bracketed as beyond the conscious scope of this study of South African trade unionism from a sociological perspective. The focus of this study - the "explanandum" - is the myriad of exclusionary rules, laws, legi timations and practices which characterised South African trade unionism for most of the present century. While such exclusionary phenomena arose almost from the inception of formal trade unions at the end of the nineteenth century, they achieved their most pervasive effects with the first adoption of a nation-wide industrial relations system given a legal basis by the state in the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924. From this date all trade union activity was confronted by a fundamental legal and political division of potential union members in the industrial and urban working classes, a division which was at bottom one of "racial" exclusion of large numbers of wage earners concentrated at the lowest end of the occupational and wage hierarchy. Such an exclusion of a large segment of the South African labour force from the benefits 2 of formally recognised and legally privileged trade unions was palatable to some of the main union actors involved, but was also vehemently contested by others. The consequence was a continuing tension between those forces supporting the status quo of exclusion - and even seeking to extend it - and those others who stood for a variety of reasons for inclusive trade unionism in a unitary system of industrial relations. This tension was only resolved (at one level at least) in 1979 with the major revision of the Industrial Conciliation Act in that year which embodied the basic principles of an integrated industrial relations system. The years from 1924 to 1979 can thus be argued to constitute a clear period in the history of South African industrial relations and trade unionism, an era of racial exclusion formalised in terms of the major relevant rule-making instrument, namely the statute itself. It is this period which forms the object of study for the present work. A Theoretical Perspective Trade unions are not quite as old as the Industrial Revolution which began in the eighteenth century, and are clearly a reaction to it. Aside from its technical achievements, the Industrial Revolution was the culmination of a process of drastic social change, and brought in its train a restructuring of the class composition of society. Small farmers in particular found it impossible to maintain their position - or at least that of their children - on the land and were forced to the cities and hence to the factories of the new order. Trends in factory production and mechanisation displaced handicraft workers and the traditional journeyman. Increasingly, working for oneself and one's family in relative independence ceased to be an option for entrants to the labour market, compelling acceptance of subordination to others in the factory system and the expanding urban areas. That was not all. Industrialisation brought with it both the ubiquity of the labour market and the business cycle. The first meant that people had to sell their ability to work to someone able to set them to work; the second meant that 3 employment was not a lifelong guarantee. Similarly wages, which for long periods of history had been a matter of custom and regulation as much as a product of market forces, now became subject to the pressure of a competitive economy. The net result was uncertainty, both as regards job tenure and as regards what constituted a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.