A cabal of conservatives is rallying to break the power of unions, weaken labour laws and lower wages. Among others, it includes Capitec chairman Michiel le Roux and members of his family, the Centre for Development and Enterprise and academics like professors Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings.
They have combined to challenge minimum wage levels in the clothing sector and, we believe, are trying to create a legal precedent to roll out such challenges to other sectors, and systematically lower wages across the economy. Their campaign has been joined by the Free Market Foundation.
In pursuit of their ambition, they have attached themselves to some Newcastle clothing companies which, with the funding of a trust tied to the Le Roux family, launched a court case against the minister of labour and the clothing bargaining council. Essentially, the cabal presents these Newcastle companies as brave Davids on the frontline of a job creation war against a bullying labour Goliath.
The story is sexed up even further: that Newcastle employers are waging this war with – and for – their workers. But the truth is these companies are warring against their workers. Evidence from two of the five applicants in the court case illustrates this very well.
Africa HK is a historic stalwart of sweatshop employment. When the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) conducted an investigation of Newcastle abuses almost a decade ago, it was found that, among many other things, the company was reported to physically assault workers; it did not comply with the minimum wage requirements of the then sectoral determination, which applied before the clothing bargaining council had jurisdiction; and it did not pay female workers maternity leave pay, but rather used their absence as an excuse to lower their wages when they returned.
As with other Newcastle factories, measures were introduced to encourage compliance. But almost a decade later, non-compliance persisted. Our investigations in 2011 revealed that: workers were earning wages as low as R200 a week; they were having to use off-cut rags for toilet paper; if a worker collapsed at work from a health or safety matter, the company refused to attend to the worker and the responsibility fell to other workers; workers were not paid sick leave, even when they had valid sick notes (and even had penalty monies deducted from their wages); the company seemed to have stolen workers’ monies by deducting UIF and bargaining council levies from wages, but not paying them to the respective authorities.
Many of these same abuses were reported by workers at JCR Clothing. But other abuses were reported there too, including that: workers had as much as R50 deducted from their wages for being on the toilet for too long; and black female workers were basically strip searched by management after work, being required to show evidence of menstruation and sanitary wear when managers claimed to want to know if workers were pilfering goods. These violations exclude the multitude of health and safety problems at these factories.
We highlight these two companies as they are representatives of the Newcastle cause, and it is useful to see what they actually represent. But we could cite many other examples if needs be.
Being employed “Newcastle style” is not something that workers want, as they have told us repeatedly and as they have shown in a number of ways – including through the rise in union membership in the area in recent years, and in their increased mobilisation. In this, Newcastle workers are no different to other workers, who have also demonstrated their deep anger towards and frustration with low wages and poor working conditions.
Yet the Newcastle cause has inflamed the imagination of the political right, who see in these factories some kind of ideological salvation. By becoming cheerleaders of this style of employment, the cabal has tied its fortunes to some of the worst abusers of workers in the country.
Cabal members pretend that what Newcastle teaches is merely a different way of conceptualising wage models, even while it is clear that this low-wage model is one of worker abuse, and if it wins out we will see the insidious spread of Newcastle-type abuses around the country.
Simon Eppel is a researcher at the Southern African Labour Research Institute, which is associated with Sactwu.