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| 1 |
ID:
085992
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper focuses on the processes of localised and globalised racialisation of migrant workers in South Africa, which have allowed it to treat the question of free movement, migration and integration more or less in the image of Europe. The 'rainbow nation' seems to be racialising and excluding the 'xenos' based on the apartheid legacy's treatment of migrant black labour. Moreover, the myth of the 'weak state' serves to cover up the power of capital, which is benefiting from the drive to informalisation and the irregular/undeclared work of undocumented workers. Trade unions have failed to organise migrant workers, initially reacting defensively, but now increasingly recognising that migrant workers must be incorporated in the movement and their rights defended for the benefit of all workers. If trade unions look at the European and US experience they will find similar dilemmas but also strategies for incorporation in the unions. Finally the paper looks at future challenges beyond racialisation and xenophobia.
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| 2 |
ID:
131796
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In recent years South African cities have become home to a large number of undocumented migrant workers. If trade unions do not organise undocumented migrant workers, it opens up such workers to exploitation and maltreatment by employers, thereby creating a split labour market that undermines the entire labour movement. This article focuses on the responses of the national trade union movement in the private security sector to the presence of undocumented workers at the grassroots level. Using a case study approach, we find that the pressures of labour market informalisation in the industry prompt unions to seek to maintain and advance their position from their traditional support base of citizen workers rather than attempt to include new groups. The failure to engage is reinforced by anti-immigrant attitudes which link foreigners with problems in the industry such as low wages and portrays such workers as co-conspirators rather than comrades. While justice and solidarity have always been the foundation of trade unionism in South Africa, the movement is in danger of failing this test if the current situation in terms of the exclusion of undocumented foreign workers persists.
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