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Abstract
Labor time, as a dimension of South African mining labor history, has been ignored, both conceptually and historically. This article remedies this yawning gap by presenting primary and secondary evidence which demonstrates the centrality of labor time in South African gold mines since the discovery of gold in 1886. To this end, labor time is traced in two ways. Part I tracks industrial working time by tracing the length of the working day and week. Part II tracks the ever-increasing length of the African migrant labor contract. While industrial working hours remain remarkably stable for almost a century, the migrant labor contract systematically increases over a similar period. These two measures of labor time eventually coincide when the migrant labor system dissolves and black African workers take annual leave together with their compatriots across the racial divide. The explanation for the mining industry’s long struggle to both maintain relatively long working hours and increasingly maximize the length of the migrant labor contract is construed as completing the received wisdom of Harold Wolpe's much celebrated and criticized `cheap- labor' thesis. (Wolpe, “Capitalism and Cheap Labor Power.”)
Notes
1. Wolpe, “Capitalism and Cheap Labor Power.”
2. Du Toit, Capital and Labor, 6.
3. Van Onselen, Chibaro.
4. Higginson, “Privileging the Machines,” 2.
5. Higginson, Ibid., 3.
6. Higginson, Ibid., 2.
7. Van der Horst, Native Labor; Yudelman, The Emergence of Modern South Africa; Jeeves, Migrant Labor; Wilson, “Labor in the South African Gold Mines.”
8. Richardson, Chinese Mine Labor.
9. Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire.
10. Crush, “Power and Surveillance.”
11. Moodie, Going for Gold.
12. Stewart, “Labor Time.”
13. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy; Walker and Weinbren, 2000 Casualties.
14. Hyslop, “The Imperial Working Class”; Visser, Van MWU tot Solidaritieit.
15. Higginson, “Privileging the Machines.”
16. Nkosi, “American Mining Engineers”; Ochs, “The Rise of American Mining Engineers”; Higginson, “Privileging the Machines.”
17. Higginson, Ibid., 4.
18. Higginson, Ibid., 10.
19. Moodie, Going for Gold.
20. Stewart, “Kings of the Mine.”
21. Jeeves, “The Control of Migratory Labor,” 6.
22. Mosselmans, “Time and Value.”
23. Cockshott et al., “Testing Marx”; Shaikh, “The transformation from Marx to Sraffa”; Moseley, “Marx’s Economic Theory”; Dunne, “Quantitative Marxism.”
24. Marx, Capital, 476–97.
25. Richardson, Chinese Mine Labor.
26. Stewart, “Kings of the Mine.”
27. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold; Richardson and van Helten, “Labor in the South African Gold Mining Industry,” 85; Moodie, Going for Gold.
28. Yuelman and Jeeves, “New Labor Frontiers,” 103.
29. Wilson, “Labor in the South African Gold Mines.”
30. Lundall, “Shorter Working Hours”; Lewis, “Doing time.”
31. Stewart, “Restructuring Labor Time.”
32. Harries, Work, Culture and Identity, 110.
33. Moodie, “Maximum Average Violence” provides the central account of the ceiling established for African wages from 1913 to 1965.
34. Katz, “The Underground Route,” 483.
35. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 344.
36. Simons and Simons, Class and Colour, 53.
37. Katz ,The White Death, 89.
38. In this lone case until 1997, men did achieve a reduction to a 52½-h working week.
39. Walker and Weinbren, 2000 Casualties, 4.
40. Van Onselen, Chibaro, 142. In pre-Industrial Britain farmers would rouse their laborers ‘… and no doubt the knocker-up will have started with the earliest mills’ . See Thompson, “Time,” 64.
41. Callinicos, A People’s history, 17.
42. Richardson, Chinese Mine Labor.
43. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 31.
44. Visser, Van MWU tot Solidaritiet, 13.
45. Katz, The White Death, 170.
46. Ibid., 84–6.
47. The shape of the working week is not clear, for if Sunday was a normal working day and men officially worked nine and a half hours as the Chamber claimed in 1903, this suggests a longer week than 56-h.
48. Lundall, “Shorter Working Hours,” 66.
49. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 33.
50. Higginson, “Privileging the Machines.”
51. Lundall, 66.
52. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 33.
53. Ibid., 335.
54. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, 201.
55. Yudelman, The Emergence of Modern South Africa, 89.
56. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 343–4, notes that the Act was immediately being infringed resulted in the promulgation of the Sunday Observance Commission, but which was also widely ignored.
57. Luckhardt and Wall, Organise or Starve.
58. Allen, History of Black Mineworkers, 431.
59. If one adds a very conservative half hour for traveling and hoisting and non-compliance with the new Act regarding Sunday work, this would give a 10¼-h day or over 70-h a week. If Sunday was not worked it would still amount to a long week of over 60-h. Alternatively, there is evidence suggesting a 9-h day – a 63-h, 7 day week or a 54-h, 6 day week. See Moodie, “Maximum Average Violence,” 556 and 560.
60. Callinicos, “The Compound System,” 111–2.
61. The Charter demanded ‘a maximum 8-hour working day,’ ‘payment for an additional shift in the event of working five consecutive night shifts and the abolition of all Sunday work and Saturday night shifts.’ See Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 488.
62. Cartwright, “The Gold Miners”; Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 382; Davies, Capital, State and White Labor, 95.
63. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist.
64. Visser, Van MWU tot Solidariteit, 25.
65. Cartwright, “The Gold Miners,” 212.
66. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, 337.
67. Bonner, “The 1920 Black Mineworkers Strike.”
68. Simons and Simons, Class and Colour, 230.
69. Ibid., 238.
70. Visser, Van MWU tot Solidariteit, 30. That black workers were spending many hours idle underground.
71. Meel, “Doing Time.”
72. Prices rose almost 50% between 1917 and 1920. See Wilson, “Labor in the South African Gold Mines,” 9.
73. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, 101 appears to ignore the fact that these reductions did not bring … working hours into line with the legislation of the 1911 Act.
74. Lundall, “Shorter Working Hours,” 66. The precise year workers won the 48-h working week remains somewhat in dispute. See Moodie, “Profitability, Respectability and Challenge,” 13.
75. Allen, History of Black Mineworkers, 336.
76. This submission is appended to Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers, 428–70.
77. Allen, 462.
78. The AMWU appealed to the Factories Act of 1944 of a lunch break and against the racial character of the Mines and Works Act of 1911: paid holidays and a range of other time-related benefits for white workers. See Johnstone, Class Race and Gold, 98–9.
79. Guy and Thabane, “Technology, Ethnicity and Ideology,” 263, show that Shaft sinkers from the British territory of Basutoland (now Lesotho) were working three shifts of 8-h, 24-h a day.
80. Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers, 35.
81. This government commission (UG No 28 of 1950) was never published.
82. See the Franzsen Commission.
83. The MUJC requested an ‘occasional’ Saturday morning off, later to become every second Saturday a month which the Chamber declined.
84. The demand was not an unrealistic one, the Garment Workers’ Union having already won it. See O’Meara Volkskapitalisme, 94.
85. Parsons, “How Attractive is Gold Mining,” 26.
86. The TUC was renamed the Trade Union Congress of South Africa (TUCSA) in 1962.
87. These ‘successes’ would have been ‘the 5-day week discussions,’ ‘the paid holiday of Republic Day discussions,’ and ‘negotiations on miners’ service years.’ See Sitas “Rebels without a Pause,” 35.
88. Franszen Commission, 17.
89. Ibid.
90. Sitas, “Rebels without a Pause, 35.
91. Allen, History of Black Mineworkers, 35.
92. Allen, Ibid., 35 suggests the majority worked a shift of 9-h, with a ‘substantial portion’ of men working a 12-h shift making the working week anything from 57 to 72-h.
93. The industry would really have preferred ‘rostering,’ i.e. continuous work schedules. See Chamber of Mines, Eleven Shift Fortnight.
94. de Vletter, “Conditions Affecting Black Migrant Workers,” 112. The introduction of the ESF was the cause of ‘bitter dispute’ between the Chamber of Mines and the MWU.
95. Horner and Kooy, “Conflict on South African Mines,” 15.
96. Stewart, “Working Time and ‘Time Off’.”
97. Davies and Head, “The Future of Mine Migrancy.”
98. See Stewart “Restructuring Working Time” for this period.
99. Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers, 246.
100. The acronym is also rendered WNLA and is used below.
101. First, “Black Gold,” 232.
102. Lengthening the labor contract can be traced to the diamond fields in the 1870s when contracts of 2 or 3 months increased to 6 months. See van Onselen Chibaro, 130 and Turrell “Kimberley,” 50–5.
103. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, 35.
104. Moodie and Ndatshe, Going for Gold.
105. Katz, “Revisiting the Origins,” 75.
106. ‘Smaller contingents of coloreds and Indians’ (South African race classifications) were included in this group, Katz, Ibid., 74.
107. Breckenridge, “The Allure of Violence,” 688.
108. Katz, “Revisiting the Origins,” 75.
109. Burawoy, “The Capitalist State,” 328.
110. Bozzoli, The Political Nature, 41.
111. Innes, Anglo, 59.
112. Jeeves, Migrant Labor, 187ff; Allen, History of Black Mineworkers, 155.
113. Allen, Ibid., 198.
114. Levy, The Foundations, 91.
115. van der Horst, Native Labor, 102.
116. Levy, The Foundations, 63.
117. Kimble, Migrant Labor and Colonial Rule, 50.
118. Kynoch, “Your Petitioners,” 541.
119. Levy, The Foundations, 199.
120. Richardson, “The Role of the State,” 5.
121. Kynoch, “Controlling the Coolies,” 312.
122. Richardson, Chinese Mine Labor, 171ff.
123. Ibid., 178.
124. Ibid., 156.
125. Ibid., 186.
126. Richardson and van Helten “Labor in the South African Gold Mining Industry,” 88–9. Jeeves, Migrant Labor provides a full account.
127. Ibid., 176.
128. Ibid., 166.
129. Bonner, “The Black Mineworkers Strike,” 285.
130. Moodie, “Profitability, Respectability and Challenge,” 12.
131. Allen, History of Black Mineworkers, 343–4.
132. Ibid., 343.
133. Ibid., 345.
134. First, The Mozambican Miner, 57–70 and “Black Gold.”
135. Wilson, “International Migration,” 10.
136. Head, “Migrant Mine Labor,” 131–4.
137. Ibid., 131.
138. Nite and Stewart, Mining Faces.
139. Kimble, Migrant Labor and Colonial Rule, 249.
140. Ibid., 183–4.
141. Ibid., 183.
142. Ibid.
143. Crush, “Inflexible Migrancy,” 54.
144. Murray, Families Divided, 41.
145. The circumstances around which this 2-year maximum contract length came into force, presumably for workers from Lesotho, is not clear.
146. Spiegel, “Changing Patterns,” 3.
147. Crush and James, Crossing Boundaries.
148. Cobbe, “Macroeconomic Statistical Evidence,” 153.
149. See the table in de Vletter, “Conditions affecting black migrant workers,” 154.
150. Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire, 160.
151. Jeeves, Migrant Labor, 194.
152. Jeeves, Ibid., 162.
153. Crush, “Inflexible Migrancy,” 53.
154. Jeeves, Op cit., 169.
155. Crush, Ibid., 56.
156. Jeeves, Op cit., 154.
157. Yudelman and Jeeves, “New Labor Frontiers.”
158. Breckenridge, “We must speak for ourselves,” 102ff.
159. Beinart, “Labor Migrancy,” 101.
160. Ibid.
161. Wilson, “Labor in the South African Gold Mines,” 72.
162. O’Meara, “The 1946 Mine-Workers Strike,” 207.
163. Moroney, “Mine Worker Protest,” 46.
164. Warwick, “Black Industrial Protest,” 27.
165. Allen, History of Black Mineworkers, 431.
166. Ibid., 430.
167. Kimble, Migrant Labor and Colonial Rule, 92.
168. Wilson, “International Migration,” 11.
169. Ibid., 10.
170. Jensen, “Review of Personnel Research,” 67.
171. Ibid., 68.
172. See Beinart, “Labor Migrancy.”
173. Crush, “Inflexible Migrancy,” 54.
174. Crush et al., South Africa’s labor Empire, 152.
175. James, Our precious metal, 39.
176. De Vletter, “Conditions Affecting Black Migrant Workers,” 88.
177. James, Ibid., 20.
178. McNamara, “Black Worker Conflicts,” 243.
179. Ibid., 243.
180. Crush, “Inflexible Migrancy,” 70.
181. Wilson, “International Migration,” 41.
182. Yudelman and Jeeves, “New Labor Frontiers,” 122; Crush et al., South Africa’s Empire provide a fuller account.
183. Pinnock “Telona,” 72 and MacMurray, “Black Labor,” 27.
184. Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire, 153.
185. Parsons, “How Attractive is Gold Mining,” 1.
186. Ibid., 16–7.
187. Parsons, Ibid., 19.
188. De Vries, “What are Black Mineworkers Saying,” 4.
189. Parsons, Op cit., 21–4.
190. James, Our Precious Metal, 29.
191. See Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire, 127ff.
192. Manona, “Marriage and Family Life,” 186.
193. James, Our precious Metal, 55–6.
194. Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire, 157.
195. O’Connell, “Xesibe Reds,” 278.
196. Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire, 152.
197. Cited in O’Connell, “Xesibe Reds,” 186.
198. Yudelman and Jeeves, “New Labor Frontiers,” 122.
199. Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire 1991, 165.
200. Crush, “Inflexible Migrancy,” 63.
201. James, Our Precious Metal, 69–70.
202. Davies and Head, “The Future of Mine Migrancy,” 442.
203. James, Our Precious Metal.
204. Crush, “Migrancy and Militance,” 17.
205. Jones and Inggs, “An Overview of he South African Economy.”
206. Crush et al., “Undermining Labor,” 23–4.
207. Jeeves, “The Control of Migratory Labor,” 6.
208. Lewis, Aspects of the Labor Regime, 15.
209. Roediger and Foner, Our Own Time, vii.