Abstract
The South African labour movement’s strength has often been attributed to the vitality of local democratic structures and institutionalised mechanisms of worker control that govern unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Workers and shop-stewards continue to participate actively in local union activities and sustain democratic processes but, in an apparent contradiction, the arrival of political democracy has been associated with a decline in the intensity and vitality of local union democracy. As a result the model of union democracy is shifting from participatory to representative. This article draws on the results of the fourth leg of a longitudinal survey of COSATU members and shop-stewards and compares these results with surveys conducted in 1994, 1998 and 2003. The article explores the functioning of union democracy at the workplace and compares the attitudes of ordinary members and their elected representatives. At issue is whether this decline in the intensity of shop-floor democracy has resulted in a growing representation gap between workers and their elected representatives. The article concludes by examining the implications for union democracy of the recruitment of a large proportion of shop stewards into the South African Communist Party.
Highlights
The emergence of the independent labour movement in the 1970s led to the development of distinctive trade union structures that reflected the need to break with traditional bureaucratic organisational models
For ordinary members the union is given shape and meaning through their shop stewards who service grievances, provide information, influence how members vote and whether they attend meetings, and provide opportunities to interface with the union
At twenty-six years old, COSATU and its affiliates are confronting the challenges of adulthood and organisational maturity that Michels recognised as the “iron law of oligarchy”
Summary
The emergence of the independent labour movement in the 1970s led to the development of distinctive trade union structures that reflected the need to break with traditional bureaucratic organisational models. Many attributed the rapid growth of the South African labour movement in the 1980s to the vitality of local democratic structures and institutionalised mechanisms of worker control. The constitutions of COSATU and its affiliates all provide formally that control lies in the hands of directly-elected worker representatives who dominate decision-making structures. The model of worker control was developed primarily to serve the interests of small local union structures, to ensure that officials operated with mandates from the membership and to protect the organisation from state and employer repression. As unions grew rapidly and merged in the 1980s, direct worker control became less practical and was replaced by a governance model of representative democracy that
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