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Privatization and the Historical Trajectory of “Social Movement Unionism”: A Case Study of Municipal Workers in Johannesburg, South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2007

Franco Barchiesi
Franco Barchiesi
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Abstract

The article discusses the opposition by the South African Municipal Workers' Union (SAMWU) to the privatization of Johannesburg's municipal services under Apartheid and in the new democratic dispensation. The unionization of South African black municipal workers has been shaped by a tradition of “social-movement unionism,” which greatly contributed to the decline and fall of the racist regime. The post-1994 democratic government has adopted policies of privatization of local services and utilities, which SAMWU opposed in Johannesburg by resurrecting a social movement unionism discourse. Conditions of political democracy have, however, proven detrimental to such a strategy, whose continued validity is here questioned.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , Spring 2007 , pp. 50 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © The International Labor and Working-Class History Society 2007

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References

NOTES

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