In the factories, skilled jobs were reserved for white, coloured and Indian artisans, and it was a source of bitterness that African migrants were often required to train white newcomers. Migrants were often supervised by the detested black ‘baas[boss]-boys’ or indunas, who answered to white foremen, the first line of management. Hourly-paid blacks and weekly-paid whites were kept on separate payrolls, with wide variations in pay rates and benefits. They used separate changing rooms, canteens, toilets and washrooms – up to 1983, this was legislated in the Factories Act but it continued in practice for many years thereafter.
The workplace was a place of power for whites through their racially biased interaction with blacks, reinforced by workplace institutions. Employers preferred migrants because they viewed them as more submissive, loyal, reliable and hard-working than local residents, and more amenable to overtime. Township dwellers were indeed more reluctant to take on heavy, dirty work, and this, ironically, gave unskilled migrants the little bargaining power they had.
White power was often arbitrarily exercised and lines of managerial authority were unclear to workers. Africans were seen as servants and any white could give instructions, which might be unrelated to the workplace. Baaskap was maintained through fear of dismissal, verbal abuse, assault and wage cuts. Initiative and self-assertion were punished. A metal worker commented: ‘Our employers don’t treat us like human beings … because they know that as soon as they expel you, you would lose a place of residence, because you would not be able to pay for the hostel fees without the money which they provide. And the pass office will instruct you to go back where you come from.’24
Migrants were common in the labour force in the early 1980s. For example, at Scaw Metals, the largest metal factory on the East Rand, unskilled migrants constituted 70 per cent of the workforce, and semi-skilled workers 20 per cent whilst white skilled artisans comprised the remaining 10 per cent.25
It was on the racially super-exploited group of migrants that Mawu focussed its organising initiatives in the 1970s and early 1980s.26 The union initially won their trust by campaigning around migrant contracts and lack of work security, also defending workers who were threatened with the termination of contracts because of union activism. As an ex-Mawu unionist from the Highveld region recalls: ‘Slowly all workers got united. If they didn’t renew a contract and workers knew it was victimisation they would unite to take action – it was almost like fighting a dismissal.’27 In 1981, as recession set in and employment losses mounted, Mawu’s fight to protect migrants’ jobs further reinforced their loyalty. In 1982 the union launched a campaign for retrenchment negotiations in all its East Rand factories.
In this complex area, Naawu had paved the way, and following Naawu’s lead Fosatu drew up retrenchment guidelines. The first step was to win job security by demanding a freeze on recruitment, training in new techniques or work, a shorter working week, an end to overtime and staggered unpaid leave. Companies were asked to engage shop stewards on forms of cost-cutting. When retrenchments were inevitable, the union demanded adequate notice, usually a minimum of one month, and the ‘last in, first out’ system to prevent the victimisation of unionists. Further demands were the payment of all outstanding leave and pension pay, and a month’s wages for each year of service. Companies were asked to maintain lists of the retrenched, who had first option on future job opportunities.28
In 1981, Mawu used the strike weapon on at least 11 occasions over retrenchments. Krost Brothers in Heriotdale, for example, was hit by a four-day stoppage after ‘the managers just walked out of the room’ when shop stewards raised the issue of severance pay.29 The company saw reason and agreed to negotiate.30 The union also used the industrial court, or the threat of court action, to force consultation over redundancies. For example, after a Mawu court challenge Deutz Diesel in Pietermariztburg agreed to pay R6 500 each to retrenchees and to re-employ them if vacancies arose.31
Professor Nicholas Wiehahn whose recommendations on the government appointed Wiehahn Commission changed the face of labour relations (W Matlala)
Through Fosatu, Mawu also built loyalty among migrants by fighting to protect and improve their labour rights. The federation objected strenuously to proposed legislation which excluded contract workers from registered unions. The unions were well aware of government’s divide and rule strategy whereby certain workers would be granted union rights and the right to reside in urban areas, whilst migrant workers would be forced back into homelands to provide a reserve army of labour. In 1979, the government gave way on the issue.32
Exploiting Wiehahn laws
The Wiehahn reforms (three Acts passed between 1979 and 1981) offered a bridge of micro-political opportunity for the unions, catapulting migrant workers from a condition of profound vulnerability to one of comparative security. State recognition eased the fear that many Africans felt about joining unions, while registration opened the way for unions to sign recognition agreements which entrenched protection against arbitrary dismissal.
The new laws allowed the unions to break cover: no more recruiting behind bushes outside factories as ‘Baba Kay’ Makama described33 or in secret cells in company departments. Mawu now had the legal right to recruit, which shielded it from state attack. A Highveld Steel shop steward described how the union grew in the early 1980s: ‘After Wiehahn … it decriminalised things. I’d recruit a few and then the rest would play the wait and see game. Then someone was dismissed and these guys waited to see what the union would do. We went for the appeal and won. After that the stop order forms were coming in left and right.’34 Fanaroff describes the employers’ change of heart: ‘Once the law changed employers suddenly thought they had to talk to us … employers for about a year weren’t quite sure how to deal with us. Some of them went over the other way, they were so accommodating, after refusing to talk to us for years!’
Mawu capitalised on the new organising space and focused on organising workers on the East Rand, the hub of the metal industry. Partly because of the Wiehahn reforms, it made the strategic decision to move away from painstaking company-by-company recruitment to mass organisation. It recognised the strategic importance of the hostels to recruitment: hostels, designed as a control mechanism, ironically provided ideal targets because they herded together large concentrations of workers – the Vosloosrus hostel on the East Rand, for example, housed 15 000 men. A former inmate, Makhoba, remarked on the effectiveness of hostel meetings: ‘We share our experiences, and the victories and defeats in one factory become lessons for a large number of people.’35 Central to the East Rand drive was Moses Mayekiso, a fired Toyota worker leader who became an organiser in 1979.
Mawu organiser Moses (Moss) Mayekiso (Numsa)
Growing inter-union rivalry fuelled the recruitment drive. In the early 1980s, Saawu and Macwusa, the political Eastern Cape general unions, arrived in the Transvaal. They staged huge meetings where workers from different factories were urged to join the union to fight off apartheid and their capitalist oppressors. Thousands joined. Mawu was impressed and unnerved. Said Fanaroff: ‘I was convinced the new unions would come up to the Transvaal and take our members. They organised through community meetings and I argued that we could do something similar.’36 He describes Mawu’s counter-thrust: