On neoliberal globalization 1
Neoliberal Globalization and the Informalization of Work; a Critical Class Analysis of Trade Union Strategies in Nigeria and South Africa
Baba Aiyelabola
Introduction
Thatcher’s emergence in 1979 signalled the beginning of ‘the globalization of neoliberalism’, a hegemonic project of the transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2001) which has had dire consequences for the working class globally and within countries. We shall utilize a neo-Gramscian perspective for our class analysis of the impact of this neoliberal counterrevolution with its TINA mantra which started in 1973 as “a war” in Chile. This war of a “few winners” against the ever more “precarious popular classes” (Amin, 2007) has entailed the restructuring of work, work relations and the ‘forms of state’; in the interest of capital. Social and economic inequalities have risen like never before in human history, unemployment and under-employment in absolute terms have been on the rise. The “many losers” in the neoliberal-globalist war include the future generation; the “free market” disregards inter-generational equity as much as it furthers intra-generational inequality with its senseless degradation of the environment. Core-periphery relations have become entrenched within as well as between countries. Contradictions and competition within the working class is accentuated with the informalization of work and employment relations playing a strategic role in the re-production of capital and the lowering of totalized socially necessary time for labour’s sustenance.
This text in the next section, attempts an assessment of the impact of neoliberal globalization on the working class, with reference to Nigeria and South Africa; the two countries with the most advanced trade union movements in Africa. In the third section, we examine union strategies and the possibilities of these serving as popular-democratic templates for constituting a historical bloc within the counter-hegemonic space pitted against the globalist-neoliberal project. Based on these we posit that; trade union strategies in the two countries have been more defensive and accommodatory than offensive and transformatory.
The impact of neoliberal globalization on the working class in Nigeria and South Africa
“The impact of neoliberal globalization on the global working class is expressed through rising unemployment, the informalization (and degradation) of work and rising income inequality”
In the aftermath of trans-Atlantic Fordism and the early post-colonial decades of hope in Africa; “exclusion, precariousness and increasing inequalities of income and position” have become key social, economic and political issues, wrecking untold anguish and dispossession on the popular sectors . This pauperisation and marginalization of the working class is driven by the ‘twin pillars’ of multilateral economic institutions and the transnational capitalist class, represented by multinational and transnational corporations and institutionalized at the triple levels of the ‘social relations of production’, governance of the ‘world order’ and the neoliberal state. Its ideology cements “democracy” with liberalism.
“Neoliberal globalization is primarily a phenomenon of jobless growth” (Pillay, ibid, p.9); this situation has worsened with the present nascent recession. Working women have been worse hit, with neoliberal globalization entrenching traditional gender inequality as well as creating new ones. Migrant work is also on the rise across nations and within countries as workers try to make ends meet, sharpening intra-class competition.
The interweaving of globalization and informalization is consolidating ‘jobless growth’ and the increase in both absolute and relative numbers of the ‘working poor’. The “informal economy” increases the precarity and insecurity of jobs in the shrinking formal sector of national economies. The informal “sector” was seen in the 1970s/early 1980s as a passing phenomenon that “would tend to be absorbed by the modern economy” (Beniria and Floro, 2003, p.3). Its expansion today however, is a major labour flexibilization strategy of capitalism’s neoliberal hegemony within the production, consumption and re-distribution processes. There are “systemic links between informalization and structural conditions of advanced capitalism” as Sassen argues. These links are nodes for: intensifying social inequality; deepening poverty and; fragmenting the working class, even in the Global North.
The South though, particularly Africa remains where the most adverse impact of globalization has been felt by working people . As Rogerson avers, “in the 1990s assessments on the state of African economies make dismal reading”. He goes on to cite the ILO-JASPA 1992 study which makes it clear that Africa was the only region in the world that was expected to have a decline in growth in the current period. Poverty remains a “most sobering and disturbing” reality in Africa.
In Nigeria the neoliberal onslaught was declared with the 1981 Economic Stabilization Act. The different socio-economic packages implemented by either military or civilian administrations since then have only deepened the impoverisation of working people . In 1980, official poverty rate was 28.1%. It rose to 65.6% in 1996 and from 2001 to 2003 was 70% (Tomori et al, 2006, p.76). Privatization, corporatisation and commercialisation of public services and the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry have been key factors that have made the lives of working people in Nigeria more precarious in the neoliberal decades.
The ‘double transition’ of South Africa led to hope and “provocation”. The national-popular agenda set out in the Rapid Development Programme was jettisoned in barely two years for the neoliberal GEAR . Poverty has since then, soared while a few billionaires have emerged. An expanding “first world economy” (Thabo Mbeki, 2003) is buoyed by rising ‘non-core’ work. Unemployment rates have risen from 26.5% in 1995 to 38.8% in 2005 (Pillay, Op cit.). The present neoliberal-inspired inequalities are further inscribed on earlier inequalities based on race and gender. The migrant workforce also increased by 5-10million between 1994 and 2003. Resistance to this rot arose within the broad working class as new social movements.
Trade unions in Nigeria and South Africa being confronted by neoliberal globalization and informalization with the adverse consequences of dwindling membership and out of concern for their political base have had to respond, speaking out “for the most impoverished sections of the population” (Beckman, 2002 p. 30). This has entailed multifarious strategies.
Trade union response
Beckman, 2002, argues that the trade union movement in both South Africa and Nigeria have engaged the institutionalization of political and economic reforms in the neoliberal era, with popular-democratic strategies. We will consider the counter-hegemonic responses of unions broadly as the corporate-economic and popular-political.
At the corporate-economic level, there is much discourse on defending jobs and enhancing organizing particularly of ‘non-core’ workers. This has not been adequately matched in practice, particularly in Nigeria. Both COSATU and NLC have however placed great import on education as a strategy for building the movement.
Our main interest lies in the popular-political strategies, these being more constitutive of a historic bloc. Both union movements have been active in alliance-formation/coalition building. COSATU for example is in the People’s Budget Coalition with SANGOC and SCC. The NLC and JAF also constituted Labour-Civil Society Coalition (LASCO). While PBC has people’s budget proposals as ‘good sense’ discourse-inputs, LASCO seems to exist only when there is protest against increases in petroleum products prices. In both countries, there also seems to be an uneasy tension between considering the ‘New Social Movements’ as friend or foe.
The conception and practice of labour’s political role is very different in the strategies of the two countries union movement. COSATU remains committed to the ossified strategic formulation of a National Democratic Revolution and its tripartite alliance. NLC on its part launched a social-democratic Labour Party in February 2004, with much enthusiasm from the broad working class (Adebola, 2004). The party however sunk into inertia for many reasons including abandonment by the union movement, opportunism of its leadership, an anti-partisan trend in the trade union movement and ideological bankruptcy (Beckman and Lukman, 2007).
One site in which both movements have been very strong is that of international solidarity . A COSATU-NLC bilateral agreement was signed in September, 2002. NLC, COSATU and their affiliates have also been very vocal in both the ITUC/GUFs and the recently reconstituted WFTU.
It is curious that environmental rights do not play a prominent role in the unions’ strategic-response. This and the fact that even the more politically partisan COSATU do not consciously pursue working class power as a counter-hegemonic project might be the greatest limitations of the Nigerian and South African trade unions response to neoliberal globalization
Conclusion
The impact of globalization has been debilitating to the working class globally, especially in Africa. The trade unions in Nigeria and South Africa have had to contend with neoliberalism but have not consciously pursued this as a conscious project towards building a new historic bloc.
A new spirit is needed. The spirit as aptly captured in the Bamako appeal; would be integrative of the broad concerns of working people. The discourse and practice of trade unions need to bridge “the formal/informal, consumption/production and union/social movement divides” (Pillay, 2007, p.64). This we believe is crucial at this unfolding phase of the class struggle between transnational capital and the global working class.
NLC and COSATU are two very important social forces not only in their countries, but on the continent of Africa. The need for a popular-democratic agenda for the African continent cannot be overestimated. The two federations’ occupy objectively crucial positions for this. But first, they will have to transform their practice and discourse and in doing so, reawaken a continent that has seen so much pain that yes; it can hope.
Notes
As Rai (2005) put it: “1979 was a hallmark year for the destiny of the contemporary Global Order. That was the year of a new modus-operandi: a way of controlling the world as have never been seen, a year in which Margaret Thatcher, the prime-minister of Great Britain implemented a Socioeconomic construct that embraced Economic Social-Darwinism, ousting classical theories of nation-state economics”. See: http://www.etalkinghead.com/archives/neoliberalism-globalization-and-the-commodification-of-global-culture-2005-12-16.html
von Werhlof, C, 2008 ‘The Consequences of Globalization and Neoliberal Policies. What are the Alternatives?’ See: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7973
Sklair, L, 2001, p.3; “The transnational capitalist class is the main driver of a series of globalizing practices in the global economy. It is therefore the leading force in the creation of a global capitalist system”. We also would align with his view that these globalizing/transnational practices ‘operate in three spheres, the economic, the political and the cultural-ideological’ p.4.
See Pillay, 2007, for an elaboration on the conceptualization of the “working class’ in a broad sense.
We view class analysis as undertaking the task of understanding the nature, inter-connections and dynamics between class structure, class formation, class struggle and class consciousness.
There Is No Alternative credo, initiated by Margaret Thatcher in defence of the ‘free market’ and still held on to as the ‘common sense’ even after the Lehman brothers’ collapse of September 15, 2008. Social formations including trade union movements have merely called for the curbing of its fundamentalism with calls for regulatory frameworks and not a challenge to the power structures underlying it.
“General Augusto Pinochet and his supporters referred to the events of September 11, 1973, not as a coup d’état but as “a war”, Klein Ibid, p.3. The depth of this assertion by the coupists is borne not just by the significance of Allende’s government being the first democratically elected power based on a working class hegemonic project. As the incubation-site of neoliberalism in the twilight of the Fordist/Keynesian Welfare State, “9/11” 1973 and its aftermath was really the first shot in a long drawn war of transnational capital against the global working class.
Strange, 1999, see: http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalism.html
See Sachs, 2008, for a reiteration of the view emerging from the Rio Conference of “that climate change is far from being just an ecological issue; it is also an issue of equity”. The environmental debt being incurred for subsequent generations and the inequitable spread of the burdens of ‘climate chaos’ between and within nations involve blatant disregard for the human rights of the vast numbers of present and future humanity.
Informalization of work is the most general manifestation and generation of this not only in work locations but as well in living situations. “Brazilianization” and traditional phenomenon utilized in furtherance of an exploitative “international division of labour”, such as unfair terms of trade are equally components of that core-(semiperiphery)-periphery stratifications within and between countries.
This still multi-articulating counter-hegemonic challenge to neo-liberal globalization in the decade since Seattle marks an end to the capitalist-triumphalism that seemed to legitimize the transnational capitalist class’ hegemony after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.
See Pillay, 2007, p. 8
See Liepietz, 2001, p. 17
See Aiyelabola, 2005, p.10 (subsequently published in Labour Factsheet, the details of which unfortunately are not available with me here)
These are primarily the unholy trinity of the World Bank, IMF & WTO, but also include such bodies as the OECD. They work directly through the countries that are ‘member-states’ (or within the orbit of the member-states for the OECD), as well as through an interlocking mosaic of regional finance and development institutions and agreements across the continents
we are of the view that while this two terms are used synonymously, they reflect different emphasis of the activities of transnational capitalist class in its attempt at being dis-embedded from the encumbrances of even the capitalist state in “host countries”
See Pillay, 2007 p. 5 – 8.
In virtually all (advanced capitalist) economies, unemployment rates are rising at an alarming pace.
See Werhlof, Op cit.: “It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”) in the household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid “housewifized” work outside (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1988). Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the work”.
This should not be seen as a free flow for labour akin to that of capital. On the contrary, very unlike the belle époque the migration of labour (particularly South-to-North, but as well from poorer Global Southern countries to their richer neighbours e.g. Zimbabweans to South Africa or of Togolese to Nigeria), labour migration is greatly regulated. Further, it plays the role of ‘brain drain’ as much as –if not now, more than- furnishing the host countries with ‘fetchers of water and hewers of wood’.
This is in response to the continued underdevelopment of rural areas –especially in the underdeveloped Third World, with the consequent deepening of the rural-urban drifts that had existed, hitherto.
Responses to this by workers and the marginal mass in countries where this migrant workers make home could include the rise of xenophobic sentiments. This could be played on by populist right-wing parties or could spontaneously ignite class-fratricidal violence as happened last year in South Africa. We consider this class-fratricide as the non-precarious immigrants living behind their iron gates and far from the reach of the angry mob, hardly ever get consumed by such xenophobic conflagrations. A similar situation could occur on ethno-regional basis within countries, as many of the “religious riots” in Nigeria actually reflect.
Rogerson for example sees globalization and informalization as distinct phenomena, which within a neo-liberal paradigm become mutually reinforcing. The importance of this is that it engenders the conception of non-neoliberal globalization and the perception of globalization, even within its present neoliberal ‘common sense’ as a multi-faceted process of processes and not merely the same as economic globalization. See: http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu26ue/uu26ue0q.htm
We do to a great extent agree with the formulation of the ‘working poor’ as covering workers in the semi-formal and informal economy by Pillay, ibid, p.8. We do however think it might be inadequate since there are non-poor persons in the informal economy (medium-scale entrepreneurs for example) and more importantly, there is an increasing number of the poor in even stable locations within the gamut of the constricting formal sector’s ‘core workers’. This reality we believe is quite palpable in the Global South; with Nigeria as an example.
In our view: ‘The informal economy is not a clearly defined sector or set of sectors with a common position in the work process; it is, rather, a process with changing boundaries and is, in certain cases, highly opportunistic’, see Sassen, 1997, p.3. We thus consider “informal economy” more apt for our conceptualisation of the broad shadows of the overlapping periphery and semi-periphery of today’s world of work.
See Sassen, Op cit, p.9. This is important for debunking the neo-modernizationist thinking of political elites in the Global South who still sell the “catching up” with the West thesis to the populace, especially in un-industrialized countries. The informalization of a tertiarized economy like those in the Global North might be considered post-industrial. Informalization of an economy like Nigeria, which is locked into the neoliberal paradigm of “growth”, circumscribes any feasibility of (autarchic) industrialization, thus reinforcing its dependent site within the rubric of imperialism.
This is because as Harman (2007) puts it; “the most thorough attempts to implement neoliberal practices have been in the poorer countries of the Global South”. The reason for this as he noted was because the comprador Southern (and we could argue; particularly the African) elites were (junior) components of the transnational capitalist class’ hegemony and thus were beneficiaries of the neoliberal order even if their countries and the immense majority of their populations suffered from its debilitating impact.
Centeno and Portes (2006, p.38) succinctly captured how this was done within the paradigm of the “Washington Consensus” when they noted that: “Countries were to reverse their old policies in the direction of flexibilization, the liberalization of markets, and the privatization of state enterprises.”
ILO-JASPA 1992 p.5 as cited in Rogerson Op. cit.
Colloquially known as “austerity measure” it signalled the beginning of what would become a monotonous call for belt tightening to the masses while the political elites’ ostentatious lifestyles moved from the alarming to the preposterous. That same year for example, Adisa Akinloye, Chair of the ruling right-wing National Party of Nigeria had expensive champagne branded in his name to mark his becoming a billionaire! Yet, the “retrenchment” entered our lexicon, then.
These are: Structural Adjustment Programme (initiated by the Babangida military junta in 1986); the National Poverty Alleviation/Eradication Programmes & National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (both instituted by the civilian regime of Obasanjo – 1999 & 2003, respectively). Incidentally though these were straight from the IMF/World Bank cook book recipes, they were all sold to the populace as ‘home-grown’. This was not accidental, it was part of the ideological discourse necessary for the comprador elites as (junior) partners within the transnational capitalist class’ hegemony to maintain a semblance of ‘soveriegnity’ more over the people as epigones of the neoliberal overlords in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo, that they genuflected before.
This matter has been a tinder box of class struggle in Nigeria since 1988 as almost all increases in the petroleum products pump prices have been met with stiff popular resistance in the form of demonstrations, riots and since 2000 on a consistent basis, General Strikes. See Fawehinmi, 2002 for a detailed analysis of “the truth” on petrol price increases in Nigeria from 1966 to 2002.
Webster and Adler, 1999, cited in Pillay, 2007, p.45
Hart, 2008 describes the South African elites’ adoption of neoliberalism as provocative and insulting to the nation, considering the bitter national liberation struggle against apartheid.
Acronym for Growth Employment and Redistribution plan of the RSA government since 1996
Despite being an “upper middle-income country” poverty rate in 2003 was 45%. See NALEDI,
As cited in Bond, 2007, p.2
See NALEDI, 2004, p.15
With the frustration and bitterness stemming from the neoliberal provocation, it is hardly surprising that xenophobic sentiments could at times spill out the way they did last year for example. See Aye, Working People’s Vanguard, issue 2, June 2008.
These social movements such as the Landless’ movement and the Anti-Privatization Forum, appear to have had their apogee in the mid – 2000s but seem to have fizzled out, subsequently.
He further notes that differences in the form and extent of success of these might be ‘path dependent’ (p.13), pointing out that while COSATU wields respect won from being at the fore in the anti-apartheid struggle (and a footstool in government through the tripartite alliance), NLC was formed through a military fiat that sought to establish a state-labour ‘political pact’ (p.19) and not without some limit of success
These two domains of the trade unions strategic responses are mutually re-enforcing for constructing a national-popular/popular-democratic historic bloc. Sacrificing some elements of its corporate-economic interest might be necessary for a leading social formation’s forging of a hegemonic bloc. A counter-hegemonic historic bloc in our view however requires a redefinition of corporate-economic interests that does not entail abandonment. A weak working class can not provide a strong counter-hegemonic leadership
COSATU for example has pursued a Jobs and Poverty Campaign since 1999. The One Million More Members Campaign supposedly initiated last May Day in Nigeria however, seems to have gone with the winds, immediately it was launched!
Of its 8 policies only the NLC Education Policy (and to a lesser degree, its Gender Policy) have been implemented to any considerable extent. Since 2002, NLC has pursued the education and training of trade union activists and leaders at different levels. Starting with two national schools, there are now State Level Schools which run for ten sessions in the 36 states (and Federal Capital Territory) of Nigeria. Shop steward schools and a Political Economy Training for Leadership Programme are to commence this year. Issues on globalisation as well as traditional trade union concerns constitute the contents of these programmes. Similarly COSATU has its summer and winter schools. Of significance in this to us is the Chris Hani Brigade made up of young shops stewards being trained as educators. The motto of the NLC State Level Schools probably best captures the significance of this strategy; building our future through education.
South Africa NGOs Coalition
South African Churches Council
Joint Action Forum, a left learning assemblage of Civil Society Organisations
An edition of the South African Labour Bulletin in 2003 or 2004 and some of the tensions at plenary sessions on this at the 2004 COSATU Winter School which we participated in brought this to our attention. The Nigerian situation is more interesting. “New Social Movements” are represented more by NGOs and “NGIs”, a derisive term meaning “non governmental individuals” with an office, a registered NGO and donor funds-seeking activities. However while COSATU has been very active in the Social Forums, etc, the trade union movement in Nigeria hardly seems to be aware of the growing Global Justice Movement.
COSATU as addressed international strategy from a broader view which includes sub-regional projects such as the Alternative to Neoliberalism in Southern Africa (ANSA) with sister trade union centres in the sub-region
NLC however is not part of the WFTU, and just three of its thirty seen affiliates are also affiliated to WFTU (a fourth WFTU affiliate in Nigeria is of the much smaller Trade Union Congress).
In our view, this struggle has taken different dimensions within the three decades of neoliberalism. In grappling analytically with this we wish to periodize neoliberal globalization into three phases thus: 1979 – 1989, the neoliberal counterrevolution initiates its offensive with Reaganomics and Thatcherite vigour, challenged by the alternative of socialism which in its “actually existing” form was on a decline; 1989 – 1999, the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequently the failure of the Yanayev coup opened the period for the consolidation of the transnational capitalist class and the perceived commonsensical wisdom of the superiority of capitalism, as typified by neoliberalism; 1999 – 2008, the events of Seattle marked the beginning of a global counter-hegemonic project that started with Zapatismo in 2004 (much the same way Thatcher’s rise magnified the war that started six years earlier in Chile, to the global level). The possibility of another world entered public discourse once more, rooted in a (yet disparate) project. The collapse of Lehman brothers and the recession we have entered, open a vista of opportunities for building a transformatory counter-hegemonic project. How far this can go depends largely on the strategies formulated and pursued by the working class and its organisations globally and in various nations.
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Baba Aiyelabola
Introduction
Thatcher’s emergence in 1979 signalled the beginning of ‘the globalization of neoliberalism’, a hegemonic project of the transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2001) which has had dire consequences for the working class globally and within countries. We shall utilize a neo-Gramscian perspective for our class analysis of the impact of this neoliberal counterrevolution with its TINA mantra which started in 1973 as “a war” in Chile. This war of a “few winners” against the ever more “precarious popular classes” (Amin, 2007) has entailed the restructuring of work, work relations and the ‘forms of state’; in the interest of capital. Social and economic inequalities have risen like never before in human history, unemployment and under-employment in absolute terms have been on the rise. The “many losers” in the neoliberal-globalist war include the future generation; the “free market” disregards inter-generational equity as much as it furthers intra-generational inequality with its senseless degradation of the environment. Core-periphery relations have become entrenched within as well as between countries. Contradictions and competition within the working class is accentuated with the informalization of work and employment relations playing a strategic role in the re-production of capital and the lowering of totalized socially necessary time for labour’s sustenance.
This text in the next section, attempts an assessment of the impact of neoliberal globalization on the working class, with reference to Nigeria and South Africa; the two countries with the most advanced trade union movements in Africa. In the third section, we examine union strategies and the possibilities of these serving as popular-democratic templates for constituting a historical bloc within the counter-hegemonic space pitted against the globalist-neoliberal project. Based on these we posit that; trade union strategies in the two countries have been more defensive and accommodatory than offensive and transformatory.
The impact of neoliberal globalization on the working class in Nigeria and South Africa
“The impact of neoliberal globalization on the global working class is expressed through rising unemployment, the informalization (and degradation) of work and rising income inequality”
In the aftermath of trans-Atlantic Fordism and the early post-colonial decades of hope in Africa; “exclusion, precariousness and increasing inequalities of income and position” have become key social, economic and political issues, wrecking untold anguish and dispossession on the popular sectors . This pauperisation and marginalization of the working class is driven by the ‘twin pillars’ of multilateral economic institutions and the transnational capitalist class, represented by multinational and transnational corporations and institutionalized at the triple levels of the ‘social relations of production’, governance of the ‘world order’ and the neoliberal state. Its ideology cements “democracy” with liberalism.
“Neoliberal globalization is primarily a phenomenon of jobless growth” (Pillay, ibid, p.9); this situation has worsened with the present nascent recession. Working women have been worse hit, with neoliberal globalization entrenching traditional gender inequality as well as creating new ones. Migrant work is also on the rise across nations and within countries as workers try to make ends meet, sharpening intra-class competition.
The interweaving of globalization and informalization is consolidating ‘jobless growth’ and the increase in both absolute and relative numbers of the ‘working poor’. The “informal economy” increases the precarity and insecurity of jobs in the shrinking formal sector of national economies. The informal “sector” was seen in the 1970s/early 1980s as a passing phenomenon that “would tend to be absorbed by the modern economy” (Beniria and Floro, 2003, p.3). Its expansion today however, is a major labour flexibilization strategy of capitalism’s neoliberal hegemony within the production, consumption and re-distribution processes. There are “systemic links between informalization and structural conditions of advanced capitalism” as Sassen argues. These links are nodes for: intensifying social inequality; deepening poverty and; fragmenting the working class, even in the Global North.
The South though, particularly Africa remains where the most adverse impact of globalization has been felt by working people . As Rogerson avers, “in the 1990s assessments on the state of African economies make dismal reading”. He goes on to cite the ILO-JASPA 1992 study which makes it clear that Africa was the only region in the world that was expected to have a decline in growth in the current period. Poverty remains a “most sobering and disturbing” reality in Africa.
In Nigeria the neoliberal onslaught was declared with the 1981 Economic Stabilization Act. The different socio-economic packages implemented by either military or civilian administrations since then have only deepened the impoverisation of working people . In 1980, official poverty rate was 28.1%. It rose to 65.6% in 1996 and from 2001 to 2003 was 70% (Tomori et al, 2006, p.76). Privatization, corporatisation and commercialisation of public services and the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry have been key factors that have made the lives of working people in Nigeria more precarious in the neoliberal decades.
The ‘double transition’ of South Africa led to hope and “provocation”. The national-popular agenda set out in the Rapid Development Programme was jettisoned in barely two years for the neoliberal GEAR . Poverty has since then, soared while a few billionaires have emerged. An expanding “first world economy” (Thabo Mbeki, 2003) is buoyed by rising ‘non-core’ work. Unemployment rates have risen from 26.5% in 1995 to 38.8% in 2005 (Pillay, Op cit.). The present neoliberal-inspired inequalities are further inscribed on earlier inequalities based on race and gender. The migrant workforce also increased by 5-10million between 1994 and 2003. Resistance to this rot arose within the broad working class as new social movements.
Trade unions in Nigeria and South Africa being confronted by neoliberal globalization and informalization with the adverse consequences of dwindling membership and out of concern for their political base have had to respond, speaking out “for the most impoverished sections of the population” (Beckman, 2002 p. 30). This has entailed multifarious strategies.
Trade union response
Beckman, 2002, argues that the trade union movement in both South Africa and Nigeria have engaged the institutionalization of political and economic reforms in the neoliberal era, with popular-democratic strategies. We will consider the counter-hegemonic responses of unions broadly as the corporate-economic and popular-political.
At the corporate-economic level, there is much discourse on defending jobs and enhancing organizing particularly of ‘non-core’ workers. This has not been adequately matched in practice, particularly in Nigeria. Both COSATU and NLC have however placed great import on education as a strategy for building the movement.
Our main interest lies in the popular-political strategies, these being more constitutive of a historic bloc. Both union movements have been active in alliance-formation/coalition building. COSATU for example is in the People’s Budget Coalition with SANGOC and SCC. The NLC and JAF also constituted Labour-Civil Society Coalition (LASCO). While PBC has people’s budget proposals as ‘good sense’ discourse-inputs, LASCO seems to exist only when there is protest against increases in petroleum products prices. In both countries, there also seems to be an uneasy tension between considering the ‘New Social Movements’ as friend or foe.
The conception and practice of labour’s political role is very different in the strategies of the two countries union movement. COSATU remains committed to the ossified strategic formulation of a National Democratic Revolution and its tripartite alliance. NLC on its part launched a social-democratic Labour Party in February 2004, with much enthusiasm from the broad working class (Adebola, 2004). The party however sunk into inertia for many reasons including abandonment by the union movement, opportunism of its leadership, an anti-partisan trend in the trade union movement and ideological bankruptcy (Beckman and Lukman, 2007).
One site in which both movements have been very strong is that of international solidarity . A COSATU-NLC bilateral agreement was signed in September, 2002. NLC, COSATU and their affiliates have also been very vocal in both the ITUC/GUFs and the recently reconstituted WFTU.
It is curious that environmental rights do not play a prominent role in the unions’ strategic-response. This and the fact that even the more politically partisan COSATU do not consciously pursue working class power as a counter-hegemonic project might be the greatest limitations of the Nigerian and South African trade unions response to neoliberal globalization
Conclusion
The impact of globalization has been debilitating to the working class globally, especially in Africa. The trade unions in Nigeria and South Africa have had to contend with neoliberalism but have not consciously pursued this as a conscious project towards building a new historic bloc.
A new spirit is needed. The spirit as aptly captured in the Bamako appeal; would be integrative of the broad concerns of working people. The discourse and practice of trade unions need to bridge “the formal/informal, consumption/production and union/social movement divides” (Pillay, 2007, p.64). This we believe is crucial at this unfolding phase of the class struggle between transnational capital and the global working class.
NLC and COSATU are two very important social forces not only in their countries, but on the continent of Africa. The need for a popular-democratic agenda for the African continent cannot be overestimated. The two federations’ occupy objectively crucial positions for this. But first, they will have to transform their practice and discourse and in doing so, reawaken a continent that has seen so much pain that yes; it can hope.
Notes
As Rai (2005) put it: “1979 was a hallmark year for the destiny of the contemporary Global Order. That was the year of a new modus-operandi: a way of controlling the world as have never been seen, a year in which Margaret Thatcher, the prime-minister of Great Britain implemented a Socioeconomic construct that embraced Economic Social-Darwinism, ousting classical theories of nation-state economics”. See: http://www.etalkinghead.com/archives/neoliberalism-globalization-and-the-commodification-of-global-culture-2005-12-16.html
von Werhlof, C, 2008 ‘The Consequences of Globalization and Neoliberal Policies. What are the Alternatives?’ See: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7973
Sklair, L, 2001, p.3; “The transnational capitalist class is the main driver of a series of globalizing practices in the global economy. It is therefore the leading force in the creation of a global capitalist system”. We also would align with his view that these globalizing/transnational practices ‘operate in three spheres, the economic, the political and the cultural-ideological’ p.4.
See Pillay, 2007, for an elaboration on the conceptualization of the “working class’ in a broad sense.
We view class analysis as undertaking the task of understanding the nature, inter-connections and dynamics between class structure, class formation, class struggle and class consciousness.
There Is No Alternative credo, initiated by Margaret Thatcher in defence of the ‘free market’ and still held on to as the ‘common sense’ even after the Lehman brothers’ collapse of September 15, 2008. Social formations including trade union movements have merely called for the curbing of its fundamentalism with calls for regulatory frameworks and not a challenge to the power structures underlying it.
“General Augusto Pinochet and his supporters referred to the events of September 11, 1973, not as a coup d’état but as “a war”, Klein Ibid, p.3. The depth of this assertion by the coupists is borne not just by the significance of Allende’s government being the first democratically elected power based on a working class hegemonic project. As the incubation-site of neoliberalism in the twilight of the Fordist/Keynesian Welfare State, “9/11” 1973 and its aftermath was really the first shot in a long drawn war of transnational capital against the global working class.
Strange, 1999, see: http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalism.html
See Sachs, 2008, for a reiteration of the view emerging from the Rio Conference of “that climate change is far from being just an ecological issue; it is also an issue of equity”. The environmental debt being incurred for subsequent generations and the inequitable spread of the burdens of ‘climate chaos’ between and within nations involve blatant disregard for the human rights of the vast numbers of present and future humanity.
Informalization of work is the most general manifestation and generation of this not only in work locations but as well in living situations. “Brazilianization” and traditional phenomenon utilized in furtherance of an exploitative “international division of labour”, such as unfair terms of trade are equally components of that core-(semiperiphery)-periphery stratifications within and between countries.
This still multi-articulating counter-hegemonic challenge to neo-liberal globalization in the decade since Seattle marks an end to the capitalist-triumphalism that seemed to legitimize the transnational capitalist class’ hegemony after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.
See Pillay, 2007, p. 8
See Liepietz, 2001, p. 17
See Aiyelabola, 2005, p.10 (subsequently published in Labour Factsheet, the details of which unfortunately are not available with me here)
These are primarily the unholy trinity of the World Bank, IMF & WTO, but also include such bodies as the OECD. They work directly through the countries that are ‘member-states’ (or within the orbit of the member-states for the OECD), as well as through an interlocking mosaic of regional finance and development institutions and agreements across the continents
we are of the view that while this two terms are used synonymously, they reflect different emphasis of the activities of transnational capitalist class in its attempt at being dis-embedded from the encumbrances of even the capitalist state in “host countries”
See Pillay, 2007 p. 5 – 8.
In virtually all (advanced capitalist) economies, unemployment rates are rising at an alarming pace.
See Werhlof, Op cit.: “It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”) in the household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid “housewifized” work outside (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1988). Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the work”.
This should not be seen as a free flow for labour akin to that of capital. On the contrary, very unlike the belle époque the migration of labour (particularly South-to-North, but as well from poorer Global Southern countries to their richer neighbours e.g. Zimbabweans to South Africa or of Togolese to Nigeria), labour migration is greatly regulated. Further, it plays the role of ‘brain drain’ as much as –if not now, more than- furnishing the host countries with ‘fetchers of water and hewers of wood’.
This is in response to the continued underdevelopment of rural areas –especially in the underdeveloped Third World, with the consequent deepening of the rural-urban drifts that had existed, hitherto.
Responses to this by workers and the marginal mass in countries where this migrant workers make home could include the rise of xenophobic sentiments. This could be played on by populist right-wing parties or could spontaneously ignite class-fratricidal violence as happened last year in South Africa. We consider this class-fratricide as the non-precarious immigrants living behind their iron gates and far from the reach of the angry mob, hardly ever get consumed by such xenophobic conflagrations. A similar situation could occur on ethno-regional basis within countries, as many of the “religious riots” in Nigeria actually reflect.
Rogerson for example sees globalization and informalization as distinct phenomena, which within a neo-liberal paradigm become mutually reinforcing. The importance of this is that it engenders the conception of non-neoliberal globalization and the perception of globalization, even within its present neoliberal ‘common sense’ as a multi-faceted process of processes and not merely the same as economic globalization. See: http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu26ue/uu26ue0q.htm
We do to a great extent agree with the formulation of the ‘working poor’ as covering workers in the semi-formal and informal economy by Pillay, ibid, p.8. We do however think it might be inadequate since there are non-poor persons in the informal economy (medium-scale entrepreneurs for example) and more importantly, there is an increasing number of the poor in even stable locations within the gamut of the constricting formal sector’s ‘core workers’. This reality we believe is quite palpable in the Global South; with Nigeria as an example.
In our view: ‘The informal economy is not a clearly defined sector or set of sectors with a common position in the work process; it is, rather, a process with changing boundaries and is, in certain cases, highly opportunistic’, see Sassen, 1997, p.3. We thus consider “informal economy” more apt for our conceptualisation of the broad shadows of the overlapping periphery and semi-periphery of today’s world of work.
See Sassen, Op cit, p.9. This is important for debunking the neo-modernizationist thinking of political elites in the Global South who still sell the “catching up” with the West thesis to the populace, especially in un-industrialized countries. The informalization of a tertiarized economy like those in the Global North might be considered post-industrial. Informalization of an economy like Nigeria, which is locked into the neoliberal paradigm of “growth”, circumscribes any feasibility of (autarchic) industrialization, thus reinforcing its dependent site within the rubric of imperialism.
This is because as Harman (2007) puts it; “the most thorough attempts to implement neoliberal practices have been in the poorer countries of the Global South”. The reason for this as he noted was because the comprador Southern (and we could argue; particularly the African) elites were (junior) components of the transnational capitalist class’ hegemony and thus were beneficiaries of the neoliberal order even if their countries and the immense majority of their populations suffered from its debilitating impact.
Centeno and Portes (2006, p.38) succinctly captured how this was done within the paradigm of the “Washington Consensus” when they noted that: “Countries were to reverse their old policies in the direction of flexibilization, the liberalization of markets, and the privatization of state enterprises.”
ILO-JASPA 1992 p.5 as cited in Rogerson Op. cit.
Colloquially known as “austerity measure” it signalled the beginning of what would become a monotonous call for belt tightening to the masses while the political elites’ ostentatious lifestyles moved from the alarming to the preposterous. That same year for example, Adisa Akinloye, Chair of the ruling right-wing National Party of Nigeria had expensive champagne branded in his name to mark his becoming a billionaire! Yet, the “retrenchment” entered our lexicon, then.
These are: Structural Adjustment Programme (initiated by the Babangida military junta in 1986); the National Poverty Alleviation/Eradication Programmes & National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (both instituted by the civilian regime of Obasanjo – 1999 & 2003, respectively). Incidentally though these were straight from the IMF/World Bank cook book recipes, they were all sold to the populace as ‘home-grown’. This was not accidental, it was part of the ideological discourse necessary for the comprador elites as (junior) partners within the transnational capitalist class’ hegemony to maintain a semblance of ‘soveriegnity’ more over the people as epigones of the neoliberal overlords in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo, that they genuflected before.
This matter has been a tinder box of class struggle in Nigeria since 1988 as almost all increases in the petroleum products pump prices have been met with stiff popular resistance in the form of demonstrations, riots and since 2000 on a consistent basis, General Strikes. See Fawehinmi, 2002 for a detailed analysis of “the truth” on petrol price increases in Nigeria from 1966 to 2002.
Webster and Adler, 1999, cited in Pillay, 2007, p.45
Hart, 2008 describes the South African elites’ adoption of neoliberalism as provocative and insulting to the nation, considering the bitter national liberation struggle against apartheid.
Acronym for Growth Employment and Redistribution plan of the RSA government since 1996
Despite being an “upper middle-income country” poverty rate in 2003 was 45%. See NALEDI,
As cited in Bond, 2007, p.2
See NALEDI, 2004, p.15
With the frustration and bitterness stemming from the neoliberal provocation, it is hardly surprising that xenophobic sentiments could at times spill out the way they did last year for example. See Aye, Working People’s Vanguard, issue 2, June 2008.
These social movements such as the Landless’ movement and the Anti-Privatization Forum, appear to have had their apogee in the mid – 2000s but seem to have fizzled out, subsequently.
He further notes that differences in the form and extent of success of these might be ‘path dependent’ (p.13), pointing out that while COSATU wields respect won from being at the fore in the anti-apartheid struggle (and a footstool in government through the tripartite alliance), NLC was formed through a military fiat that sought to establish a state-labour ‘political pact’ (p.19) and not without some limit of success
These two domains of the trade unions strategic responses are mutually re-enforcing for constructing a national-popular/popular-democratic historic bloc. Sacrificing some elements of its corporate-economic interest might be necessary for a leading social formation’s forging of a hegemonic bloc. A counter-hegemonic historic bloc in our view however requires a redefinition of corporate-economic interests that does not entail abandonment. A weak working class can not provide a strong counter-hegemonic leadership
COSATU for example has pursued a Jobs and Poverty Campaign since 1999. The One Million More Members Campaign supposedly initiated last May Day in Nigeria however, seems to have gone with the winds, immediately it was launched!
Of its 8 policies only the NLC Education Policy (and to a lesser degree, its Gender Policy) have been implemented to any considerable extent. Since 2002, NLC has pursued the education and training of trade union activists and leaders at different levels. Starting with two national schools, there are now State Level Schools which run for ten sessions in the 36 states (and Federal Capital Territory) of Nigeria. Shop steward schools and a Political Economy Training for Leadership Programme are to commence this year. Issues on globalisation as well as traditional trade union concerns constitute the contents of these programmes. Similarly COSATU has its summer and winter schools. Of significance in this to us is the Chris Hani Brigade made up of young shops stewards being trained as educators. The motto of the NLC State Level Schools probably best captures the significance of this strategy; building our future through education.
South Africa NGOs Coalition
South African Churches Council
Joint Action Forum, a left learning assemblage of Civil Society Organisations
An edition of the South African Labour Bulletin in 2003 or 2004 and some of the tensions at plenary sessions on this at the 2004 COSATU Winter School which we participated in brought this to our attention. The Nigerian situation is more interesting. “New Social Movements” are represented more by NGOs and “NGIs”, a derisive term meaning “non governmental individuals” with an office, a registered NGO and donor funds-seeking activities. However while COSATU has been very active in the Social Forums, etc, the trade union movement in Nigeria hardly seems to be aware of the growing Global Justice Movement.
COSATU as addressed international strategy from a broader view which includes sub-regional projects such as the Alternative to Neoliberalism in Southern Africa (ANSA) with sister trade union centres in the sub-region
NLC however is not part of the WFTU, and just three of its thirty seen affiliates are also affiliated to WFTU (a fourth WFTU affiliate in Nigeria is of the much smaller Trade Union Congress).
In our view, this struggle has taken different dimensions within the three decades of neoliberalism. In grappling analytically with this we wish to periodize neoliberal globalization into three phases thus: 1979 – 1989, the neoliberal counterrevolution initiates its offensive with Reaganomics and Thatcherite vigour, challenged by the alternative of socialism which in its “actually existing” form was on a decline; 1989 – 1999, the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequently the failure of the Yanayev coup opened the period for the consolidation of the transnational capitalist class and the perceived commonsensical wisdom of the superiority of capitalism, as typified by neoliberalism; 1999 – 2008, the events of Seattle marked the beginning of a global counter-hegemonic project that started with Zapatismo in 2004 (much the same way Thatcher’s rise magnified the war that started six years earlier in Chile, to the global level). The possibility of another world entered public discourse once more, rooted in a (yet disparate) project. The collapse of Lehman brothers and the recession we have entered, open a vista of opportunities for building a transformatory counter-hegemonic project. How far this can go depends largely on the strategies formulated and pursued by the working class and its organisations globally and in various nations.
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