Individual Trust and Distrust in South African Trade Unions: A Quantitative Analysis, 2011–2013

Abstract

The South African organized labour movement is one of the most powerful on the African continent. A central actor in the democratic struggle, the movement continues to play a crucial role in the post-apartheid period. However, public opinion data collected by the South African Social Attitudes Survey for the period 2011–2013 suggest that only a minority of the public currently trust the organized labour movement. No cleavage in individual trust in trade unions was noted between age cohorts and labour market status. Distrust among the lower and working class has expanded significantly between 2011 and 2013. Findings suggest that trade unions in the country are increasingly associated with the unpopular political establishment. More research on public attitudes towards unions is required. There is a need for trade unions to intensify their engagement with working-class communities in order to build greater levels of individual trust.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the Coordinators of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Benjamin Roberts and Jarè Struwig at the Democracy Governance and Service Delivery research programme, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) for their cooperation and support during the writing of this article.

Notes

1. See von Holdt (2002) for a review of the scholarship as it pertains to South Africa.

2. See Bassett (2005) who provides an analysis of the role organised labour played in the transition.

3. For a discussion of poverty in post-apartheid South Africa, see Mosoetsa (2011).

4. According to the latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) report (2015, 11), quarterly increases were apparent in the number of employees with contracts (137,000) of an unspecified duration and among those with contracts of a limited duration (42,000) between the last quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015. The number of employees with contracts of a permanent nature, on the other hand, declined by 25,000. Between the first quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 the number of employees with contracts of unspecified duration and those with contracts of a limited duration increased by 160,000 and 108,000, respectively. In contrast the number of employees with contracts of a permanent nature declined by 137,000 during this period.

5. According to the 2015 first quarter LFS the share of the employed that belonged to a trade union was roughly three and a half million workers; about 32% of the all workers in the formal, non-agricultural sector were unionised. Between the first quarter 2014 and the first quarter 2015, union membership declined by 84,000 (LFS 2015, 11). The number of workers whose salaries were determined through a bargaining council or other sector bargaining arrangement and those negotiated between a union and employer declined between 2014 and 2015 (by 155,000 and 54,000, respectively). Although not beyond reproach, the LFS data represent the most accurate available source on absolute trade union membership numbers in the country for the recent period.

6. A number of researchers have commented on these campaigns see Seekings (2004); Buhlungu (2010) and Dibben, Wood, and Mellahi (2012).

7. See Webster and von Holdt (2005) and Barchiesi (2011) for a discussion of the apartheid workplace.

8. An interesting example of this is the establishment of union investment companies by trade union federations and others. As Webster and Buhlungu (2004, 236) argue the widening gap between union leaders and their members and the breakdown in union democracy, allowed new entrepreneurs to proceed with their investment activities in almost complete secrecy (also see Masondo 2013). Buhlungu (2010) describe this as ‘comrade capitalism’.

9. The survey found that a considerable number of federation members view their leaders as corrupt (COSATU 2012, 28–29). Around a third of union members reported that they believed there was corruption in their unions (although fewer than one in seven indicated that they had personally experienced corruption). It appears that a number of allegations made by respondents in the survey did not constitute corruption as is usually understood but rather ‘corruption’ is identified with a perception that union leaders were not serving members.

10. In order to derive the subjective class variable, respondents were asked the following common social class identification item: ‘People sometimes describe themselves as belonging to the working class, the middle class, or the upper or lower class. Would you describe yourself as belonging to the… ?’ Respondents could choose from five ordered response codes: ‘lower class’, ‘working class’, ‘middle class’, ‘upper middle class' and ‘upper class’. Adult South Africans were able to identify with one of the five choices, with the exception of 3% that reported that they were uncertain of which class group they belonged to. Subjective class is associated with socio-economic indicators. For example, the poor (measured in terms of a wealth index based on household assets) were found to be more likely to identify themselves with the lower classes than the wealthy. Given the deprivation faced by many South Africans in their day-to-day lives, the fact that a significant proportion of the adult public identified with the lower and working class is not surprising.

11. South Africans are clearly able to identify themselves as members of specific social classes, however, this does not appear to be a major source of their identity or group belonging and this should be understood when working-class identity is discussed. The SASAS 2011 also contained an item probing for the three main sources of group-based identity people use to describe themselves. The results reveal that most South Africans identified their family or marital status as an important form of their identity (66%), followed by race or ethnicity (40%), gender (33%) and current or previous occupation (28%). Only 13% of South Africans identified their social class as an important form of self-identification.

12. A number of scholars have noted that attempts by trade unions to organise ‘peripheral’ workers has been less than successful (see e.g. Webster and Buhlungu 2004; Webster and Von Holdt 2005; Buhlungu 2010). As early as the late 1990s COSATU officials identified the growth of flexible labour as a key challenge and potential threat for the trade union movement in their 1997 September Commission Report. The 2012 COSATU Secretariat Report admits that this fundamental challenge has not been met.

13. Those who were dissatisfied with the general economic situation in South Africa were, on average, twice as likely to be dissatisfied with political leaders when compared to those who were satisfied with the economic situation.