Making Apartheid Work: African Trade Unions and the 1953 Native Labor (Settlement of Disputes) Act in South Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Making Apartheid Work: African Trade Unions and the 1953 Native Labor (Settlement of Disputes) Act in South Africa
Author:	Lichtenstein, Alex
Year:	2005
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	46
Issue:	2
Period:	July
Pages:	293-314
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	labour policy apartheid labour law black trade unions Politics and Government History and Exploration Labor and Employment Law, Human Rights and Violence Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/4100683
Abstract:	Most analyses of apartheid labour policy focus on the regulation of the labour market rather than the industrial workplace. Instead, this article investigates the administration of South Africa's 1953 Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act to examine shop-floor control rather than influx control. The article argues that in response to the threat of African trade unionism, apartheid policymakers in the Department of Labour addressed the problem of low African wages and expanded the use of 'works committees'. By shifting the debate about capitalism and apartheid away from influx control and migrant labour, and towards industrial legislation and shop-floor conflict, the article places working-class struggle at the centre of an analysis of apartheid. Ref., sum. [Journal abstract]