Paper short abstract:

This proposal focuses on the working conditions, experiences, professional identity and ethics of urban working women of the so-called 'informal sector' in colonial and early post-colonial history, taking Sudan as a case in point, proposing a reflection about sources and a new research agenda.

Paper long abstract:

Looking at the research on urban working women in African history, one can reckon two main strands: women employed in informal sectors, and women who became the first educated professionals and who often struggled for women’s rights. It is relatively possible to track in official archives traces of these ‘pioneers’, through biographies and autobiographies, or through trade unions archives. If the importance that their professions had in their lives has been the object of seminal historical inquiries (Barthélémy 2019; Hugon 2009), the same cannot be said for women in informal sectors, where details about their experience of work become blurred behind structural descriptions of exploitation and vulnerability.

One of the reasons is that women who joined trade unions were overwhelmingly educated professionals, while those from the informal sector got hardly involved into unions. This fact has contributed to silence their identities as workers, their labor demands, but also more generally their day-to-day lives as workers, their contribution to family revenues and how this impacted family relations, and last but not least, work ethics and professional solidarities.

This proposal suggests a research agenda for those masses of urban working women who did not belong to professional elites. It starts first of all from deconstructing the category of “informal sector” especially when applied to colonial and early post-colonial periods, and then, taking colonial and early post-colonial Sudan as a case in point, suggests some avenues of research, and some possible sources to overcome the invisibility of women in official archives.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the interplay between pan-African and pan-Arab labour organizations, the paper analyses the relations between trade unions from Maghreb countries and the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU), from its foundation to the mid-1970s.

Paper long abstract:

The international labour networks, within and beyond Africa, have recently been the object of a new wave of interest. However, the impact of the transnational labour networks on the Maghrebi regional level has not yet been fully disclosed. This paper focuses on the experience of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU), which played a pivotal role for unionism in the Arab region over the decades. Established in 1956 to unite Arab labour under the common banner of pan-Arabism, ICATU successfully mobilized Arab union organizations and combined purely labour issues with broader political demands.

Presenting an ongoing study on the ICATU, the paper aims to investigate the participation of trade unions from Maghrebi countries (Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) to the Confederation. The study of the role of Maghrebi unions within the ICATU gives new perspectives on how the affiliated organizations participated in the transnational dimension and negotiated their role within pan-Arab and pan-African labour solidarity.

The contribution focuses on the early stage of the ICATU’s development. Going from its foundation in 1956 to the first half of the 1970s, it explores: a) the motivations that led the Maghrebi trade federations to affiliate themselves in different periods with the Confederation; b) the attitudes of Maghrebi trade federations towards Nasserist attempts to consider ICATU as a tool to strengthen his leadership in the Arab World; c) their different positioning within the pan-Arab dimension of labour solidarity and towards other transnational networks, especially the pan-African one.

Paper short abstract:

This paper details how Zambian and South African unions are grappling with pressure to close coal mines; and how these unions are responding to the rapid growth in demand for transition minerals. The paper considers who benefits from the Just Transition, and whose concept of justice is prioritised.

Paper long abstract:

In Zambia and South Africa, the militancy of mining unions was crucial to achieving democracy. However, in both nations’ democratic eras, these unions have been weakened by international capital. They increasingly take corporatist stances, working with employers and the government to expand employment numbers and maintain minimum salary standards, and are often criticised for failing to inspire workers or challenge capital. These corporatist unions have much to gain and to lose from the ‘Just Transition’: a collection of policies, practices and values aimed at ensuring social cohesion in the transition to climate friendly energy production and usage. Based upon work with the Southern African office of the IndustriALL Global Union Confederation, this paper details how Zambian and South African unions are grappling with national and international pressure to close coal mines – and their role in representing workers through this process; as well as how these unions are responding to the rapid growth in demand for transition minerals, and with this demand under-regulated new mines. More broadly, the paper considers the core questions posed by the union movement about the Just Transition: who benefits from this transition, and whose concept of justice is prioritised. In doing so, it explores how unions are attempting to challenge a capitalist-led transition and their spaces of shared resistance and tension with other civil society organisations.

Paper short abstract:

This paper uses Coordination and Context-Appropriate Power Theory as a framework to analyse the efforts of the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers’ Union in Ghana to defend the rights of workers in the oil industry.

Paper long abstract:

Employing Coordination and Context-Appropriate Power Theory as a framework, this article assesses the efforts of the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers’ Union (GTPCWU) in Ghana to defend the rights of workers in the oil industry. Whether the GTPCWU has been able to employ structural, institutional and conditional power, as framed within CCAP, in defending the interests of its members, is examined. The analysis draws on first-hand knowledge of trade union policies and practices in Ghana, through interviews with a GTPCWU official, other Ghanaian trade unionists and an academic specialising in labour issues. It is argued that the structured labour regime, in which the GTPCWU is embedded make it hard for the union to employ structural, institutional and conditional forms of power effectively. Nevertheless, the agency of union officials and members is significant. This is evidenced by the success of a small number of individual union actions, indicating that the GTPCWU possesses a degree of structural power. Utilising institutional power effectively is difficult, as enforcement of labour legislation is weak and costly legal processes ensue when cases reach court. The GTPCWU struggles to use conditional power, since union member are perceived to have lucrative formal sector jobs. In an attempt to increase its agency, the GTPCWU is endeavouring to diversify its membership, particularly through recruitment campaigns to attract women and youth. The union is also prioritising finding support in addressing the retraining needs of members in the context of the transition away from fossil-based systems of energy production to renewables.

Paper short abstract:

This communication focuses on the role played by labor unions in Senegal and Mali, in fighting harassment and violence at work in the public sector and concerning advocacy about the ratification of ILO-Convention 190. It mobilizes data from semi-structured interviews in 4 ministries in each country.

Paper long abstract:

The International Labour Conference (ILC) adopted the Violence and Harassment Convention (No. 190) and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 206) in 2019. These two instruments that have been built with active participation of unions, are the first international labour standards to provide a common framework to prevent, combat and eliminate violence and harassment in the professional work, including gender-based violence and harassment. While the number of African countries that have ratified the Convention is still very low, the international multidisciplinary research team (members coming from law, sociology, anthropology and gender studies; from Mali, Senegal and France) presenting this communication is analysing which stakeholders are involved in the prevention of violence and harassment, in security and care for suvivors and in relevant public policy. The case studies from Mali and in Senegal focus on the public sector, with its supposedly exemplary role. The object is to identify who are the principal actors mobilized, how they interact and what are their strategies and methods, and the results obtained. Based on data from semi-structured interviews with key actors in 4 ministries in each country, and from an online survey of the ministries’ staff, particular emphasis will be placed on the role that the labor unions in both countries play in fighting harassment and violence at work in the public sector and also concerning advocacy about Convention 190 in Senegal and Mali.

Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnographic study conducted with Lagosian scrap dealers from 2015 to 2019, this paper hypotheses that the growing role of local governments in the regulation of popular economies has opened the way for a “return of the guilds” as a core means of labor organization in Nigerian cities.

Paper long abstract:

In precolonial Nigeria, guilds (egbe) played an important role in the Yoruba city-states of the Southwest. Crafts were recognized by city authorities, their leaders held official titles and were responsible for regulating their trade in the city (Williams 1980). In Hausa city-states, guilds equally played a pivotal role in urban politics (Griffeth 2000).

In each case, the centrality of guilds in the regulation of labor and professional relations coincided with high urban autonomy and autocephaly – a historical “coincidence” that has been underlined in various contexts (Weber 1966, Bayly 1983). Inversely, guilds receded together with urban political autonomy, first because of the integration of city-states in larger territorial systems (Sokoto Caliphate and British colonization), and ultimately following the nationalization of industrial relations (Cooper 1996).

From the mid-1980s, however, macroeconomic transformations and SAPs led to the decline of the Nigerian state’s position in the regulation of labor and industrial relations. As urban governments regained extensive political autonomy at the turn of the 2000s (Salvaire 2021), they took on frontline positions in the regulation of popular economies, with environmental and security policies being increasingly mobilized to regulate economic activities and trades.

Based on an ethnographic study conducted with Lagosian scrap dealers from 2015 to 2019, this paper hypotheses that urban autonomization and the growing role of local governments in the regulation of popular economies has opened the way for a “return of the guilds” (Lucassen, De Moor, Van Zanden 2008) as core means of labor organization in contemporary Nigerian cities.

Paper short abstract:

Against the backdrop of South Africa as historical home of ‘social movement unionism’, I map the complex intertwining of contentious politics and clientelism in post-apartheid teacher unionism, and explore its implications for the future of public sector unionism in wider political struggles.

Paper long abstract:

Unions were at the forefront of anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, and scholars held up this activism as an exemplar of a powerful ‘social movement unionism’ internationally. Like unions in authoritarian regimes of South America, the activism went beyond struggles regarding conditions in the workplace, to an examination of wider process of social reproduction, and to alliances with anti-state protests for political and economic rights. Teacher unions, the focus of my paper, were an important part of this movement, lending many progressive reformers to the new democratic state in the 1990s. Decades later, however, teacher unions have been implicated in the chronic inability of the state to provide decent education to working class and poor communities. Local commentary on teacher unions, and public sector unions more generally, has tended to be polarised – involving either dismissal of unions as deeply implicated in state patronage, or as victims of neoliberal education policy against which teachers have appropriately rebelled. Drawing inspiration from anthropologist Javier Auyero and scholars of urban governance in South Africa, I dispute the polarised framing of contentious politics and patronage in studies of teacher unionism, and explore the intersections between the two. I also show how state restructuring under new public management and post-apartheid reforms shaped the union as fragmented, a characteristic it now shares with unions in some other African countries such as Ghana. I conclude by considering the implications of this Janus-faced, fragmented public sector unionism for future struggles for a more just society.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the connections between Zambian and Yugoslav trade unions, focusing on the transfer of material aid and knowledge exchanges in the early 1960s Cold War just before the independence of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia).

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the connections between Zambian and Yugoslav trade unions in the Cold War 1960s. It argues that trade unions served as important organizations for establishing initial contacts and facilitating the transmission of material aid and knowledge exchange before the independent Zambian government established official bilateral contacts with Socialist Yugoslavia in 1964. Through key ‘hubs of decolonization’ such as the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, Zambian trade union officials, in close contact with leaders of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), sought to receive material support (typewriters, officie supplies, vehicles, monies) from Yugoslav trade unions, but also to draw inspiration from the system of workers’ self-management and union-party relations in a socialist republic through study tours in Yugoslavia. Zambian trade union officials also successfully applied for scholarships for technical training and universities in Yugoslavia, showing that they were influential not only in the world of work, but also in areas such as diplomacy and education. Last but not least, closer ties with Zambian trade union and party officials enabled Yugoslav trade union representatives to travel widely in the region through these ‘hubs of decolonization’ to understand the challenges of an incipient independent government and trade unions in future Zambia through on-the-ground inquiries.

Paper short abstract:

Making use of historical documents on the formation of two Pan-African trade union organisations, this paper aims to shed a new light on the causes that led to an historical split within the African labour movement in the early 1960s.

Paper long abstract:

The year 1961 marks a fundamental transition in the international history of African trade unionism: in May, the All African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) was formed, in Casablanca, which then led to the formation of another pan-African organisation and its counterpart, that is the African Trade Union Confederation (ATUC) set up in January 1962 in Dakar. In a year, the pan-African trade union movement evolved and increased its activism, both nationwide and at an international level. The events that led to the emergence of these organisations put to serious test the entire pan-African political movement. Historiography often attributes the unsuccessfulness of the pan-African movement to nationalist appetites for power on behalf of the African political elites. This paper will argue that the demise of pan-African has its roots also in African unionism. Furthermore, it will also argue that the international trade union organisation such as the communist World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), the reformist and pro-Western International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions played a major role in the weakening of the pan-African front. This emerges, for example, from the archives of the ITUC, the ILO, national European unions, AFL-CIO, and so on. Hence, this paper concludes that the internationalisation of African trade unions’ activities and their participation in the ballets of “labour diplomacy” weakened not just their “pan-Africanism”, but and especially their role in the struggle for the African workers.