The Changing Role of Worker Advice Offices in South Africa, from 1970s to the Present

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the history and changing role of worker advice offices between the 1970s and the present. It summarises different aspects and different periods of legal advice office history. In the experience of these offices, we see an experimentation with new forms of worker organisation and sources of power for a workforce facing exclusion and oppression. During the struggle against apartheid, at a time when traditional union activity relied on workers’ structural bargaining power, it was not always a safe option and institutional power was lacking, advice offices contributed to the labour movement by building workers’ associational power and aiming at development of strong trade unions. In post-apartheid South Africa, on the contrary, despite gains in institutional power, labour faces weakening structural and associational power due to challenges of neoliberal globalisation, so worker advice offices have to look for new approaches to help workers defend their labour rights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This definition of societal power also fits into Wright’s broad definition of associational power quoted above (not only trade unions, but also parties, workers’ councils and community organisations).

2 Contemporary worker centres in North America have also come to this understanding of the importance of networking. Some of the larger networks of advice offices are the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Enlace and Interfaith Worker Justice in the US, or the Temporary Agency Workers Association in Canada. Some cities, like Los Angeles have their own networks of worker centers and organisations that support them. There are also attempts to create sector-based networks, like the National Domestic Worker Congress, or the Restaurant Opportunities Center United. But the creation of a broad, nationwide network of advice office remains a developing goal in counties like Canada and the US (see Fine 2006 for a survey of 135 US worker centres and their networks, Chadry and Henaway 2014 for an overview of Canadian worker centres, and Narro 2006 for the Los Angeles ones).

3 It is worth noting that most of worker advice offices had very few resources or paid staff. The resources that were available came primarily from donors and overseas funders, while the organisations relied heavily on volunteers, students, and activists, to provide the staff capacity to execute on their activities (Moss 2014).

4 According to Godfrey (2014) it was unclear whether this approach really worked because workers who sought advice were often already dismissed or dealing with individual issues and not in a position to really engage in a more collective way with co-workers. In addition, the more advice office focus of the Bureau meant that it was not really equipped or structured to follow up with workers to help turn individual problems into more organisational or collective activity (2014). Similarly, as the IAS office became more well known, the case load of complaints and advice increased, with mostly volunteers trying to help workers enforce what minimal rights they had with institutions like the Labour Department, Bantu Affairs Administration Board, or the Industrial Councils, and, some leaders at the IAS questioned whether taking on these complaints really served any value in promoting worker organisation (Moss 2014).

5 This changed on the 20 September 2016 when the current paper was being edited: the Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO), the Black Sash, the Maokeng Advice and Resource Centre and Ntombi Dladla won an important victory against the CCMA rules of representation. The CWAO argued that these rules limit the rights of workers who do not belong to a trade union (currently over 70% of the labour force do not belong to a trade union, according to Statistics South Africa). The CCMA’s new rule 35(1) allows it discretion to allow other parties to represent workers. The court gave the CCMA 10 days to issue a practice note to all commissioners outlining how the discretion must be exercised. The practice note must explicitly allow Advice Offices to represent workers at the CCMA, where appropriate.