Unlike workers in the Eastern Cape auto industry, those on the East Rand were migrants. In the Eastern Cape, Naawu’s membership comprised both African and coloured workers the majority of whom lived in coloured and African townships adjacent to the cities in which they worked. At Ford, for example, all African workers had Section 10 rights (under Section 10 of the Urban Bantu Areas Act, Africans could obtain rights to live in the city if they had worked in one company for ten unbroken years) and unlike Naawu membership in Durban and Pretoria, the Port Elizabeth branch had no migrant union members. Naawu’s membership straddled jobs in both the secondary and subordinate primary labour market. The former required limited skill and involved highly repetitive tasks usually entailing some form of manual labour and low wages. The latter required a greater degree of skill, accompanied by higher wages and greater job security. 38
In comparison Mawu members on the East Rand had much less bargaining power. As Transvaal Naawu organiser Taffy Adler noted,
In the Transvaal both Mawu and Naawu organised African workers but in Mawu it was often migrant based. Motor workers in Naawu were generally urban based. I’m talking about people who lived in Brits and the homelands who would commute for a couple of hours a day like Soshanguve and rural townships in Bop [Bophuthatswana], Mamelodi, Atteridgeville. Originally in Mawu we organised the big steel processing plants - this is a different type of person from the person who works in the electronic industry. In the early days of Mawu we were organising in foundries and workers there were poorly educated, low paid, migrants. In components, workers were urban (out of Pretoria townships) less educated and sophisticated than in the assembly plants but not as badly off as people in the foundries.39
The increase in the number of black semi-skilled operative workers, the decline in unskilled work, and the drop in number of semi-skilled white, Coloured and Indian workers, discussed in the previous chapter, had opened the way for a huge growth in African unionism especially in the metal sector. In the early days however it was the “badly off” workers in the foundries and other migrants performing lower semi- and unskilled manual work in heavy engineering that formed the basis of Mawu’s membership. Later the African semi-skilled workforce on the East Rand which had acquired a role in the production process entered the union in large numbers. Such workers, although not as strategically positioned as the auto workers in the Eastern Cape, nevertheless possessed a bargaining power which unskilled workers lacked.
It was these semi and un-skilled migrant workers who became the backbone of Mawu. Not many of the new echelon of African urban workers however, joined unions like Mawu in the beginning.
Most of those who joined the union in the Transvaal and Natal had their roots in the countryside.
According to Mawu’s Fanaroff,
Almost all workers were migrant workers, that was characteristic of the union in the early days. Some, as at Kraft Engineering, lived in Alexandra or Soweto but all of them saw themselves as temporary in the towns... even when they had lived all their lives in the towns. Like these guys Isaac Modise and Ledwaba. Their ambition was to get enough money to buy a few cattle and then go back to Northern Transvaal. People felt they were here to provide for their families and they wanted to go back home. All people at that time were migrants in heavy engineering.40
Typically a migrant working in the male dominated heavy engineering industry left his village, in say Kwa Zulu, driven out by drought, and inadequate and over-used land where it was impossible to eke out a subsistence living, knowing that his family could not survive without the wages he would earn in the city. His primary loyalty would reside with his family and home in the rural area.
As Rely Precision migrant, Mandlenkosi Makhoba put it, “I work here [East Rand] but my spirit is in Mahlabatini [KwaZulu]”41 Such migrants were usually first recruited by the local labour bureau near their village to work for a particular employer with no choice of work type or location. They would be placed in a job without prior training, perhaps in the casting section of a foundry even though it was highly dangerous, and would imitate what other workers were doing. The more resilient of these migrants would take about two weeks to get used to the arduous nature of this work, whilst others would struggle to deal with the burns and great heat of the fires and would be quickly weeded out and dismissed. As a migrant foundry worker related, “After about two months you get the hang of the job. But before that many people are sacked because they recoil from the fires.”42 Dismissal forced the migrant back on his home village from which he usually returned illegally to the city. This was known as `shooting straight` because he would now be blacklisted by the labour bureau, and would seek out a relative or `homeboy` to assist him with work possibilities and temporary accommodation. In the city he would live in fear of the law which stipulated that a migrant workseeker could only reside legally for three days (72 hours) without permission from the Bantu Local Affairs Commissioner’s Office. Without possession of a passbook giving legal passage to reside in the city, the shadow of arrest and harassment from the authorities dogged all his movements. Even at night he was exposed to such raids conducted by the hated black
municipal police, or`blackjacks`, who would storm into hostel dormitories shouting, swearing, and kicking, expelling half-dressed illegal migrants into the cold night air. As Paul Stewart, who wrote a biography of Makhoba explained, “The blackjacks are the mediating influence between the policies of the local authorities and the migrant labourers at whom these polices are directed.”43 - it is estimated that 17 and half million Africans were prosecuted under these pass laws between 1916 and 1981.44 On finding new employment he would be contracted on an annual basis
travelling home every year at Christmas when his contract lapsed for a two week period, after which he would return to renew his contract, often with the same company at which he had worked for many years. Although dismissals were common, with `slow` and `cheeky` workers being weeded out, many of these workers had served long years in one company, in the foundries for example, 54 per cent of workers had worked in one company for over ten years. His work would entail long hours, and hard, badly remunerated, repetitive labour often involving overtime and Saturday work.
If he found a job without company hostel facilities he would register at the Bantu Local Affairs Commissioners Office and attain a single bed ticket to reside in a single sex hostel (owned by township Administration Boards) from the township superintendent’s office. If his wife or family came to visit he would rent a shack in the location for a few weeks so he could stay with them.
Hostel accommodation, where he shared a room with at times 16 other migrants, was often the only alternative because a room in the location was expensive and his wages small - in the region of R30 a week45 including overtime, well below the Household Subsistence Level. The hostels were a focus of many grievances for workers, they were dirty, housing filthy broken toilets and wash facilities, noisy, and overcrowded which obviated any form of privacy, whilst stealing, drinking, fighting and violent assaults were a commonplace weekend phenomena. Makhoba observed of the Vosloosrus Hostel in 1980, “The last time the hostel was cleaned was when it was built [in 1963] ...There are absolutely no improvements in the hostel. Things are getting worse and the cause is there is no repairer. There is no person who represents people’s grievances. The only person is the superintendent whose major concern is the money at the end of the month.”46 Despite these conditions, hostel fees were raised without consultation or improvements to facilities.47
Within the workplace migrants suffered the rigours of the apartheid workplace regime with its rigid racial hierarchy by virtue of which most skilled jobs were reserved for white and a few coloured and Asian artisans. It was a source of great bitterness that when a white worker entered the job for the first time, the migrant workers was often obliged to train him. As Makhoba remarked, “When he gets employed they say he knows the work. When he is inside the firm I teach him. That made me cry. I didn’t get the money which he is getting, but am supposed to be his teacher.”48 In production migrant workers were often supervised by a black `baas[boss]-boy` or induna, universally hated by African workers for carrying out the white employers’ dirty work. Makhoba commented on this detested form of authority, “If I were to hit him I would be breaking the law.
When you hit the induna you lose your job. It’s possible though that you can hit him in the night, provided nobody sees you.”49 Indunas in turn laboured under the authority of white foremen who constituted the first line of management. In this hierarchy African workers constituted a cheap labour force. Black hourly paid workers and white hourly paid workers existed on separate
payrolls with widely varying rates of pay and benefits. Racial categories were the basis for the division of labour and this permeated both the occupational structure of the workplace as well as its social structure. White and black workers had separate changing rooms, ate in racially segregated canteens with facilities varying accordingly, and were allocated separate toilets and washrooms, which up to 1983 was stipulated by law in the Factories Act (passed in 1928 and later amended to enforce workplace segregation) but which in reality continued in traditional practice for many years after the cessation of the Act.
The apartheid workplace meant that “power in the workplace was racially constituted”50 rendering the factory a place of power for whites through workplace institutions and through their racially biased interaction with blacks. Conversely it was a place of disempowerment for blacks. White managements’ preference for employing African migrants, as opposed to African urban workers, underlined both their insecurity in these power relations as well as their active promotion of African disempowerment for reasons of profit. They felt that contract workers were more obedient, loyal to the company, reliable, and worked harder than local people. They articulated their preference in this way: “They [migrants] aren’t so free to change and are consequently more loyal and they stick with the job.” and “Locals don’t want this kind of work. Local labour is drunk and rebellious, and if they have a disagreement with you they pull out a knife and stab you, especially the young ones.”51 Another employer commented that it was easier to get homeland workers to do overtime as they often lived in the company’s hostel. Employers might have been reluctant to employ local labour, but local labour was equally reluctant to take on the kinds of jobs that migrants were forced to entertain, “We contract people are different; we do the rough work while the location people do the easy work.”52 This reluctance by township dwellers to take on heavy, dirty work ironically gave unskilled migrant workers the little bargaining power they did have.
The power of whites in the workplace was often arbitrary and lines of managerial authority were not always clear to workers. Any white could issue an instruction whether it contradicted a previous instruction and whether it was directly workplace related or not. Blacks were seen as the servants of whites and being asked to wash the baas’ (a subservient term used to address an employer) car over the weekend, or to wash his overalls, was considered well within the non-existent job description of the black worker. This `baaskap` (act of being a `baas`) was maintained through fear - fear of dismissal, verbal abuse, assault, reduction in wages, refusal to give an increase and so on. Subservience was rewarded (or might be), initiative and assertion punished. As a metal worker explained:
Our employers don’t treat us like human beings, but animals, 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 is going to be indifferent and will instruct you to go back where you come from. That is
very painful.53
It was on this racially super-exploited group of migrants that Mawu focussed its organising initiatives in the 1970s and early 1980s. Over time it established a substantial basis of trust through its commitment to workers` control which enabled migrant members to experience a level of control not encountered elsewhere in their lives. At the time of the East Rand strike wave which erupted in 1981, 60 per cent of contract workers came from Lebowa and South Ndebele and the rest mainly from Kwa Zulu. At Scaw Metals, the largest metal factory on the East Rand, for example, the company employed about 3 000 migrant workers in 1980, which increased by the mid eighties to about 4 000. These migrants who resided in the company hostels came predominantly from Kwa Zulu, with the remainder coming from the Northern Transvaal Pietersburg area and from the Eastern Cape. Unskilled migrants constituted 70 per cent of the workforce, semi-skilled workers 20 per cent whilst white skilled artisans comprised the remaining 10 per cent.54
The union initially won the trust of migrant workers in company recognition struggles during the 1970s and early 1980s when it waged battles around migrant contracts and lack of work security, assisting members to resist the employer tactic of terminating, or refusing to renew, workers’
contracts if they were suspected of being union activists. 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. We would go on strike if they didn’t renew a workers contract.”55 Mawu defended workers against dismissals, and an important message that accompanied this was that the union was standing up for their humanity, their human rights. Numerous migrants explained, “I joined the union because workers are not treated like human beings by management.” and “I joined the union because I was dismissed for being absent from work for three months. I had in fact been admitted to hospital where I was being treated for swollen feet caused by working in the furnace.”56
In 1981 when the recession set in, it was Mawu’s fight to retain migrant workers’ jobs that further reinforced the loyalty of these workers to the union. Inevitably the scale of job losses focussed Mawu on the issue of job security and retrenchment. It fought some hard, but ultimately defensive battles, in attempts to address the issue. In 1982 the union initiated a campaign to negotiate retrenchment agreements in all its East Rand factories. Many companies were in the process of negotiating recognition agreements, and retrenchment procedures constituted an important part of such contracts. Negotiating retrenchment procedures was a complex matter. As Adler recalled,
“The first retrenchment agreement that I was involved in we let slip an important definition regarding the transfer of workers inside the plant. We have to tighten up, it is not sufficient just to
talk about procedure in terms of last in first out. For example, we must talk about numbers to be retrenched, the amount of redundancy pay, recalling workers etc.”57 Naawu had paved the way, and Fosatu followed by drawing up retrenchment guidelines which Mawu endorsed. Step one was to win job security by demanding that the company freeze recruitment, train workers in new techniques or jobs, introduce a shorter working week, stop overtime, and grant unpaid leave to workers at different times. In addition the company was asked to engage shopstewards in
discussions over redundancies to find other ways of cutting costs. Step two was implemented when retrenchments were inevitable. In this instance the union demanded adequate notice of
retrenchment, usually a minimum of one month. The last in, first out system was insisted upon in order to prevent management from retrenching strong unionists. Efforts to negotiate adequate compensation were made including the payment of all outstanding leave and pension pay, and one month’s wages for each year of service. Finally, companies were obliged to maintain lists of retrenchees so that they had first option on any future employment opportunities in the company.58
In 1982 Mawu members struck at least eleven times over retrenchments. Krost Brothers in Heriotdale, for example, announced they were retrenching 140 workers. Shopsteward, Elias Novela, said that when shopstewards raised the issue of severance pay “the managers just walked out of the room.”59 This prompted a four day stoppage by the entire workforce until the company agreed to negotiate retrenchment issues. At a factory in Port Elizabeth, Carborundum Universal, management attempted to outsource their security in an apparent cost-cutting exercise.
Immediately prior to the company’s decision Mawu had discovered that it was paying the guards for a 45 hour week, instead of a 60 hour week. After negotiations employers agreed to back-pay for the seven guards. The union was convinced that the sizeable back-payment was behind the
retrenchments. A strike of 200 workers, however, changed the company’s mind and the seven security guards were retained.60
In a number of cases Mawu successfully resorted to the Industrial Court to force consultation over redundancies, particularly in the early days of the Court’s existence. Many companies settled before the case came to court. Deutz Diesel in Pietermarizburg, for example, refused to negotiate the retrenchment of five workers and it was only after Mawu instituted court proceedings that it settled at R6 500 severance pay and agreed to re-employ workers when vacancies arose. Geo Stott paid out R10 000 to retrenched workers in an out of court settlement, and Triple A Rubber at Prospecton near Durban paid out R2 500, and agreed to re-employ the 25 workers if vacancies became available after the union threatened legal action.61
A further basis of migrant deep trust and loyalty to their union was the way in which it fought hard for migrant group rights. Mawu through its federation, Fosatu, voiced strong opposition to a
government Bill arising out of the Wiehahn Commission’s Report which recommended that migrant workers (termed `commuters` in the Bill) should be excluded from registered unions and registered unions should be fined R500 for each migrant member in their ranks. The emerging
government Bill arising out of the Wiehahn Commission’s Report which recommended that migrant workers (termed `commuters` in the Bill) should be excluded from registered unions and registered unions should be fined R500 for each migrant member in their ranks. The emerging