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Abstract
This paper analyses the political organisation by informal transport workers, and their partial achievements in claiming rights at work from employers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's largest city, from 1995 to the present. The paper takes issue with the influential view that, due to widespread economic informalisation, trade unionism and workplace labourism are no longer a viable option for defending workers' interests. From less despondent approaches to the possibilities for labour(ism), it borrows the insight that making sense of workers' unrest requires a political economy approach. This entails, first and foremost, locating workers within their economic structure, and understanding their relationship to capital. The paper thus starts by sketching out the state of public transport in Dar es Salaam, the predominant employment relationship in the sector, and the balance of power between bus owners and workers. It then analyses workers' organisation since 1997, workers' strategies to achieve (in conjunction with the Tanzania transport workers union) the formalisation of the employment relationship with bus owners, and their progress towards it. The conclusion reflects on the broader lessons that can be learned from this case study.
[Informalisation et fin du syndicalisme traditionnel? Réflexions dissidentes à partir d'une étude de cas en Tanzanie.] Cet article analyse l'organisation politique des travailleurs informels du secteur des transports, et les résultats de leurs revendications pour faire valoir leurs droits fondamentaux au travail auprès des employeurs à Dar es Salaam, première ville de Tanzanie, de 1995 à maintenant. L'article conteste l'opinion influente selon laquelle, en raison de la généralisation du travail informel économique, le syndicalisme et le labourism ou « travaillisme » sur le poste de travail ne sont plus une option viable pour défendre les intérêts des travailleurs. À partir d'approches moins pessimistes sur le potentiel du « travail(lisme) », l'article suit l'idée selon laquelle la compréhension des conflits sociaux nécessite une approche en terme d'économie politique. Ceci implique, avant toute chose, de placer les travailleurs au sein de leur structure économique, et comprendre leur relation au capital. L'article commence donc par esquisser l'état du transport public à Dar es Salaam, les relations d'emploi prédominantes dans le secteur, et le partage du pouvoir entre les propriétaires des bus et les travailleurs. L'article analyse ensuite l'organisation des travailleurs depuis 1997, les stratégies des travailleurs pour arriver (en conjonction avec le syndicat des travailleurs du transport de Tanzanie) à la formalisation des relations d'emploi avec les propriétaires des bus, et les progrès accomplis. La conclusion se penche sur les leçons plus larges pouvant être tirées de cette étude de cas.
Mots-clés : syndicats; économie informelle; droits du travail; transport urbain; gouvernance urbaine; Tanzanie
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank for constructive comments to earlier drafts of this paper Ben Fine, Gabrielle Lynch, two anonymous referees, Danisha Kazi, who also provided excellent research assistance, and Mark McQuinn, who also kindly shared his fieldwork interview cited in the paper. My gratitude also goes to UWAMADAR and COTWUT staff for sharing their time and materials on the organisation of urban transport workers.
Notes
Two further sub-types of structural power are to be considered. By marketplace bargaining power Wright means the power that workers command due to conditions in the labour market across economic industries. A tight labour market will lead to workers' high marketplace power. The second subtype, the workplace bargaining power, results (or not) from the specific industrial location of workers, e.g., minibus workers operating in Dar es Salaam, horticulture estate workers in Brazil, etc.
This will be published as a forthcoming monograph entitled Taken for a ride: Neoliberalism, informal labour and public transport in an African metropolis. Oxford: Blackwell Wiley, Antipode Book Series.
The author shared a draft of this paper with UWAMADAR's leaders, who provided useful comments and corrected some of its inaccuracies. The author also plans to deliver a paper copy of this article to COTWUT as email communication with its deputy secretary proved impossible.
UDA, Dar es Salaam public transport company, was operating about 20 buses in 2010. Unless otherwise stated, this section draws on Rizzo (Citation2011, 1183–1200).
The history of the relationship between UWAMADAR and COTWUT is recalled in ‘UWAMADAR speech before COTWUT General Secretary’, 9 November 2000. Titles and contents of the Swahili documents quoted in this paper have been translated by the author.
‘Temeke, Tandika, Mbagala, shule ya uhuru branch’, handwritten speech, signed by Mlawa and Kayombo (both UWAMADAR's leaders later on) 13 July 1997.
Dar es Salaam Zonal Secretary, COTWUT to General Secretary COTWUT, ‘The establishment of the daladala workers organization’, 8 September 1997.
It should also be pointed out that efforts by COTWUT to recruit members from new (sub-)sectors go alongside its struggle to retain some of its current membership. For example, the Telecommunication Workers Union of Tanzania (TEWUTA) was formed in 2004 as a breakaway from COTWUT. Its founders were a group of retrenched Tanzanian Telecommunication Company workers who felt betrayed by the redundancy package negotiated by COTWUT on their behalf. In response to this, they started a new union (McQuinn, personal communication, based on his interview with TEWUTA's Head of Research, Loans and Economy, 15 August 2006). Furthermore, post office staff recently shifted their membership from COTWUT to TEWUTA (Babeiya 2011, 128).
‘UWAMADAR speech’.
From Dar es Salaam Zonal Secretary COTWUT to General Secretary COTWUT, ‘Request from the association of drivers and conductors of urban buses (UWAMADAR) to meet with you’, 7 June 2000.
This is a literal translation which aims to reflect the broken Swahili in which this document was written.
Secretary UWAMADAR to General Secretary COTWUT, ‘The problems that driver and conductors get a work’, 5 July 2000.
This can be discerned from a number of letters documenting the trade union's positive response to UWAMADAR's requests of financial support from the Union for events to be held.
‘The way to run UWAMADAR’, 10 March 2001. The same document outlined the financial plan to make UWAMADAR financially sustainable. This entailed the payment of a daily sum (2000 shillings) from each branch and the payment of fees from individual members (2000 shillings to join in and 250 shillings monthly) and proactively looking for sponsors – including UNDP, JICA, and the Nyerere Foundation who had shown an interest in supporting the organisation.
Such a percentage was based on the estimate that there were 6000 private buses operating in Dar es Salaam at that time.
Chairman DARCOBOA to Jimmy Mnkeni UWAMADAR, ‘The contract for decent work’, 31 March 2003.
General Secretary DARCOBOA to Zonal Secretary COTWUT, ‘Seminar of daladala owners’, 9 February 2004. Both UWAMADAR leaders and transport public officers suggested that such claims were false and had to be interpreted as an attempt by employers to downplay the strength of the labour coalition. See author interviews (2009a) and (2009d).
‘Contracts yet to materialise’, unknown day and month in 2004, The Express, http://www.theexpress.com/express%20367/news/news2.htm#5 (accessed on 30 August 2011).
Dar es Salaam Secretary CotwuT to Chairman DRTLA, 29 March 2004.
General Secretary UWAMADAR to Regional Commissioner Dar es Salaam, 19 April 2004.
Dar es Salaam Secretary COTWUT to Regional Commissioner Dar es Salaam, ‘Complaints against DAR(CO)BOA on the implementation of decent work contracts for drivers and conductors of daladala’, around 29 July 2004.
‘Minutes of a meeting on the conditions and problems of drivers with the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Infrastructural Development called by the Tanzania Drivers Association’, no earlier than 13 July 2006.
It is fascinating to note the way in which these negotiations disappear from the radar of newspapers and from the Coalition's correspondence, only to remerge years later.
Doubts have been raised on the strategic superiority of a focus on social protection over and above rights at work as a measure to tackle precarity. As the political momentum behind universal social protection is nowhere to be seen in many developing countries, calls for it lack the necessary pressure that is likely to result in its adoption (see Lerche Citation2012).