Summary

Has the apartheid workplace changed over the past ten years of democracy in South Africa? In order to answer this question, the contributors of this book studied seventeen different workplaces, including BMW, a state hospital, footwear sweatshops and the wine farming industry. The editors broaden the definition of work to cover studies of the informal economy, including street traders, homeworkers and small rural enterprises. Beyond the Apartheid Workplace shows how South Africa's triple transition-towards political democracy, economic liberalization and post-colonial transformation-has generated contradictory pressures at workplace levels. A wide range of managerial strategies and union responses are identified, demonstrating both continuities and discontinuities with past practices. These studies reveal a growing differentiation within the world of work between stable, formal-sector work, casualized and outsourced work, and informal work where people struggle to make a living on the margins of the formal economy. The majority of workplaces are marked by the persistence and reconfiguration of the apartheid legacy. Deepening poverty and exclusion have been generated among great numbers of workers and their dependents.