Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Florian Schaefer
(King's College London)
Carlos Oya (SOAS University of London)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- New geographies of work
- Location:
- Library Presentation Room
- Sessions:
- Friday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Labour-intensive manufacturing has grown rapidly in parts of Africa in recent years. Despite some emerging research we know little about the workers whose labour drives this expansion. This panel therefore investigates the working lives of Africans in the region's new manufacturing sectors.
Long Abstract:
Manufacturing employment and production have grown rapidly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, driven by the expansion of light manufacturing. Manufacturing exports from sub-Saharan Africa doubled between 2005 and 2014 (Te Velde 2016). In part this is due to increases in foreign direct investment, of which ventures by Chinese companies have perhaps attracted the most attention. In a region characterised by low wages, high unemployment and comparatively easy access to consumer markets in EU and the US, we could see a substantial reordering of production networks built around labour-intensive manufactuing, prompting parts of the business press to declare Africa 'the new China'. Some of China's 85 million labour-intensive manufacturing jobs might move to Africa, but the window of opportunity may close soon (Lin 2011).
Many African men and women have found employment in new and expanding factories across the continent. Who is getting these new jobs? What are their expectations? How do new workers adapt to the rigidities of factory life? What skills do they gain? How does labour productivity evolve? How do they bargain for better conditions? Is labour retention a challenge, and why? These and other questions frame the analytical and empirical focus of this panel.
Despite some emerging field-based research we know comparatively little about the workers whose labour is the foundation of manufacturing expansion. We therefore invite papers that investigate the working lives of Africans in the region's new manufacturing sectors, with particular interests in the questions proposed above.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 21 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This study explores work in the cashew processing factories in Mozambique. Using a social reproduction framework and drawing on qualitative interviews, it sheds light on who the factory workers are and how the organisation and timing of work shapes their working lives.
Paper long abstract:
In many African countries, economic growth driven by investments in natural resources and export-oriented agriculture failed to generate quality employment. While Mozambique is a prime example of these growth patterns, pockets of employment creation appear with scattered sectoral growth. The cashew-nut processing industry is on a revival path driven by the concerted action of government, donors and private investors. It provides a case study to explore labour at the intersection of commodity chains, public-private partnerships and gender relations, with 65 per cent of the workforce being female. While the literature on global production networks provides the necessary background, this study seeks to bring an additional angle to the debate: who are the labourers and how does the organisation and timing of work, inside and outside of the factory, shape their working lives? This paper presents preliminary findings on these questions from a qualitative study informed by a social reproduction theoretical framework. Drawing on interviews with workers, managers and key stakeholders in the sector, we look at organisation of work, recruitment and payment systems, workers' motivation for staying in the job or leaving, and tensions on labour demands posed by the necessity to combine factory work with other types of productive and reproductive work, for different groups of workers. Furthermore, we highlight some methodological considerations on how to investigate the working lives of factory workers. We conclude that understanding the organisation of workers' lives is essential to investigate the quality of work in the factories and its implications for socioeconomic transformation.
Paper short abstract:
Workers co-operatives emerged in the South African clothing industry in response to rapidly rising minimum wages. The trade union dismisses them as 'sham' yet it is an open question whether these new industrial formations offer workers a better and more dignified working life than wage labour.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses the rise of workers' co-operatives in the South African clothing industry. Workers co-operatives emerged in response to pressure from the National Bargaining Council for the Clothing Manufacturing Industry (NBC) to pay rapidly rising minimum wages in the face of intensifying international competition. These minimum wages, set by the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU) and urban-based employers, were too high for the labour-intensive end of the industry producing relatively simple garments for the mass market. Many Chinese-owned enterprises in places like Newcastle (in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands) opted to restructure their businesses into partnerships with workers' co-operatives (mostly comprising their previously employed workers). Members of workers' co-operatives are not subject to NBC minimum wages because they share profits rather than earn wages. The rise of workers co-operatives in the clothing industry is testimony to the power of minimum wage setting institutions to drive labour-intensive capitalist enterprises out of business - but it also speaks to the possibility of more progressive and inclusive forms of production and distribution emerging in this archetypical 'sweatshop' industry. Precisely because workers' co-operatives emerged as a defensive response to minimum wage regulation, SACTWU dismisses them as 'sham'. Yet, so far, all legal challenges to these co-operatives, and to the institutional framework for them, have failed. The jury is out as to whether workers' co-operatives will succeed in competing with Chinese imports, and whether these new industrial formations offer workers a better and more dignified working life than wage labour.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on a quantitative survey and over 100 qualitative interviews we compare wages and working conditions for low-skilled workers in Chinese companies in Ethiopia and Angola with those in other international and domestic firms. We find low wages, but wages and working conditions are comparable.
Paper long abstract:
The rapidly expanding investments of Chinese companies in Africa have attracted widespread attention, and have generated debates both in the continent and beyond about the implications for Africa's economic development. Driven in part by critical media reports, the wages and working conditions offered to African workers by Chinese companies have been a particular focus of interest. At the same time we still lack studies that systematically compare conditions in Chinese and non-Chinese enterprises. Drawing on a quantitative survey of 1,500 workers and over 100 qualitative interviews we compare wages and working conditions for low-skilled workers in Chinese companies in Ethiopia and Angola with those in other international and domestic enterprises. Our sample is drawn from the manufacturing and construction sectors in both countries, as these have seen especially high levels of Chinese engagement. We find that, with appropriate controls for company characteristics in place, differences in wages between Chinese and non-Chinese companies are small, and working conditions are comparable in a number of important dimensions, such as overall safety and the provision of a food and transport. However, this is in a context of low wages and long working hours across all surveyed companies. We also find that Chinese companies are more hostile to trade unions. We use qualitative life-history interviews with workers to illustrate how such conditions impact the overwhelmingly young African work force.