Crossing the Divide: Precarious Work and the Future of Labour
Edward
Webster, Akua O. Britwum, Sharit Bhowmik (Eds)
Durban:
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2017, R. 315, pbk, (ISBN: 9781869143534)
pp.280
A
key strength of this edited book, is its reflection of that rich, historical
tradition of activist-scholars applying rigorous intellectual coherence to the
on-going re-shaping of labour within the context of capitalist politically
economy, and assessing its implications for the future of workers’
organisations.
Similarly,
this empiricist insight borne of activist experience, ensures that this book,
opposed to others on a similar theme, is predicated on a degree of
practicability and relevance to those engaged in organising and educational
activity in the context of precarious, poor work. Thus, the focus in the
introductory chapter on the sources of power open to precarious and vulnerable
workers, is as relevant in analysing the on-going success in the United Kingdom
(UK) of the McStrikers, as it is when applied in the second part of the book,
to domestic workers in Accra, Ghana.
The
book applies an ethnographic approach across a series of case studies of
organising experience in Ghana, India and South Africa to examine the
challenges and opportunities of organising across the informal economy. It
addresses questions of how informal workers come to organise, and helpfully
examines models of self-organisation, and the use co-operatives as a means to
generate and sustain decent work. Importantly for those engaged in issues of
trade union renewal, the book offers insights on the ways in which organisations
comprised of precarious workers engage with trade unions and other civil
society organisations, and their respective response.
The
first part of the book caters for the broad theme of agricultural work
including a focus on tea plantation workers in India, oil palm plantation
workers in Ghana and in South Africa coverage of farm workers based in the
horticultural sector in Gauteng, and wine farms in the Western Cape. The second
part of the book is more diverse, and across six chapters examines: the experience in India of home-based workers
in Maharashtra and steel utensil manufacturing workers in Delhi; the experience
of organising through the collective agency of domestic workers in Accra,
Ghana; waste pickers in Accra, Ghana, and Pune, India; and a chapter on
municipal workers in Johannesburg South Africa.
This
approach to critical comparison works well, as it helps underline that which is
common, for example, in distinguishing the legacy and endurance of colonialism
as a key feature differentiating the experience of precarious work and the
typologies of workers between the Global South and North. And, that which
differs across the case studies, for example, between clumsy attempts by the
‘official’ labour movement in South Africa to absorb the informal economy into
its purview, contrasted with wholly independent, new forms of workers’
organisation emerging in India.
The
introductory chapter to the book outlines its conceptual and theoretical basis.
As such we start with a clear sense of how processes of globalisation,
accelerated by neo-liberal policy, have induced the rapid, yet uneven
informalisation and casualisation of work and employment.
Thus,
whilst the readership of the book will span trade union activists and
officials, as well as students of political economy, development studies and
labour studies, it will have an appeal also to radical geographers also, as the
book is reflective of the following dominant themes.
The
Organising Space
Conventional
analysis of strategies to organise and mobile workers is typically predicated
on conventional forms of work, workplace/space and worker. Precarious work
often by its nature, and whether formal or informal, takes place in the
unconventional, whether this is the street, the home, or performance space. A
considerable strength of the book are those chapters, like that of Wilderman on
farm workers in the Western Cape, which bring fresh dynamic insight to the
relevance of the ownership of public space as a feature of organising strategy.
Here, the takeover by striking farm workers of a motorway held significant
symbolic power as a counterweight to their otherwise subdued state through a
form of paternalistic feudalism whilst living of farmland.
Worker
Identity
A
major impediment in the informal economy to strategies to collectivise workers’
interests, and express these through representative channels, is that work,
sometimes undertaken in an educational context as the book documents, which
helps shape a collective consciousness of being workers located within the
economy. Gartenberg’s insight on this work with poor women workers in
Maharashtra, is a considerable asset to those engaged in similar work in the
Global North. The generation of identity and agency is achieved here through
the relatively simple device of using existing activists in the LEARN Women Workers Union to
overcome an often innate sense of inferiority held by informal economy workers,
but compounded here by patriarchy and the caste system.
Worker
& Employment Status
Intrinsic
to those challenges of organisation and mobilisation identified above, is that
caused with the fragmentation of work across supply chains at both global and
level levels. Similarly, as witnessed in the UK postal and package delivery
service, the concerted effort to fragment workers between core and periphery,
has led to widespread concern around the abuse of workers engaged in false
self-employment. Those chapters dedicated to the experience of organising waste
pickers helps shed considerable light on the ways in which work in the informal
economy, and the status of workers involved, reflects a complexity of status,
and the challenge of organising those workers.
Between
these chapters clear delineation of status can be established which then helps
distinguish strategies for organising. As Gadgil and Samson reveal when examining the narratives of waste
pickers in Pune, India, attempts to regularise and formalise work through the
formation of co-operatives enables negotiation with local government to improve
the conditions of work, and the safety of workers. As is known through others
studies of the union-co-op relationship in organising workers and creating
safe, decent work, hybridity can generate solutions, as well as challenges.
This chapter does not shy away from acknowledging these, and this approach
ensures that the approach overall in the allied chapters, combine to provide
rational, honest assessments of the durability and resilience, or not, inherent
to organising in the informal economy.
Ultimately, the book retains an optimistic,
rational tone. Its strength is to make the often invisible work of poor,
vulnerable workers in the informal economy, open to scrutiny and analysis. It
conjures an honest assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of organising
approaches to-date, and most importantly, establishes a constructive sense of
informal workers as capable of creating organic models of solidarity to protect
and promote their collective interests.
In Solidarity
Ian
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