" Trade unions and the new economy: 3 African case studies show how workers are recasting their power in the digital age" 01 October 2023

From US car factories to public sector workers in Nigeria and South Africa, strikes by trade unions continue unabated among the established sectors of the working class. In Detroit in the US, workers are resisting contract employment. In Nigeria they are angry over the rising cost of living and in South Africa, municipal workers are striking for better wages. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to build sustainable worker organisations as companies employ more people on a casual basis in the digital age. Work has become more precarious and workers are easily replaceable.

In our new book, Recasting Workers’ Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age, we focus on workers’ power. The classic example of workers’ power is the strike: the collective withdrawal of labour to force an employer to do what they would otherwise not have done. In this book we challenge the dominant narrative that new technology has destroyed workers’ power. We focus on the new jobs that are being created – food couriers, e-hailing drivers, street traders and the growing numbers of casual workers at the core of the economy. [...]

We focus on three sectors: factory workers in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg in South Africa; food couriers in Johannesburg; and transport workers in Kampala, Uganda. We examined their ways of organising by applying, in addition to the strike weapon, the lens of three other ways of exercising power: associational power (collective organisation), coalitions (societal power) and institutional power (laws that entrench labour rights).

We found the factory workers were using a range of tools – old and new – to organise. Factory committees were formed at some workplaces. This involved working with a labour supportive NGO. But they also drew on old practices (institutional power) by taking up cases through the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration and the amended Labour Relations Act. Both offer the possibility of workers being able to get permanent jobs in the company at which they work.