Aid Thoughts

In a recent post I argued that development work paid too little attention to the prospects of unionism as a method of protecting the poor and mitigating inequality in a rapidly growing economy. I mentioned that there have been a number of successful union movements historically that have served this specific purpose. In the comments, Lee (of Roving Bandit fame) made the very valid point that a unionism movement may actually harm some of the poor if it blocks out ‘Outsiders’ to the movement and prevents them from accessing the benefits of organization. These outsiders are, of course, likely to be the unemployed seeking work.

This is of course possible. But a union can function in a number of ways. The most common in the developed world is as a set of insiders seeking to protect their material conditions by collectively bargaining with employers and preventing outsiders from undercutting their position. This is the kind of unionism, relying as it does on an insider-outsider distinction and the coercive ability of the union to exclude outsiders from even entering the realms of discourse, which Lee worries about.

In the developing world, a different kind of unionism can be seen. In many cases the politically loaded term ‘Union’ may not even be the best descriptor for what is observed. We could rather call them ‘workers cooperatives’. Their aims are different: not only to create a better division of an industries surplus between capitalists and labour, but to protect basic rights which are poorly understood and poorly protected. This kind of unionism isn’t as widely required among the workers in the developed west because the state takes this role for all citizens through legislation on health and safety and so on (the obvious exception being for illegal migrant labour, who are denied access to the state’s protection or are operating under the radar and hence opt not to appeal to it).

What these unions or cooperatives exist for has less to do with bargaining and more to do with ensuring that legal frameworks are provided and that workers understand what their rights are vis-à-vis employers. One relatively well known historical example concerned migrant labour which entered South Africa for mining work. Many workers were under the misapprehension that their presence in South Africa was illegal and therefore accepted conditions well below the statutory minimum until a movement built up to ensure that all workers were aware of their statutory status.

Alongside this kind of unionism is another kind – the representation of a ‘captured’ population. The classic case here is of plantation labour descendent from migrants: these are workers who have historically formed a labour pool that is almost bonded, even after being freed. Bonded plantation labour of slave plantations were established across the globe: Zanzibar’s economy was in large part built on slave plantations, and Sri Lanka’s on bonded plantation labour. The case of Sri Lanka is particularly illuminating. Though the plantations were captured labour and virtually bonded through the lack of education and social mobility imposed on them, a number of union movements emerged, including the Ceylon Worker’s Congress. Under its original leadership, the CWC made enormous gains for all plantation workers – improved education, housing, healthcare and wages without apparently operating any penalizing system to punish either those who defected from the union or those who were members of other unions. Similar success stories are apparent in Southern India in particular.

Both of these models could be profitably applied to the African context. Such is the excess of unemployed (more accurately, underemployed) in Africa, that individuals are deeply reluctant to assert their rights to employers. Employers also use strategies to minimize the risk of this, particularly in rural areas, where employers often employ a calculated strategy of using day-workers, changing the individuals picked up regularly. Often, they target female heads of household, who are even less likely agitate, given their precarious financial situation. These areas need movements to educate individuals about their rights and the laws, but also need organizations to represent their voice collectively and therefore reduce the risk associated with individual agitation.

Economic analysis would have it that this kind of organization is extremely difficult: free riders can break the effectiveness of a collective, and an insider-outsider problem could result in a situation where some of the poor achieve better standards while others are condemned to even more extreme poverty. Yet historical analyses demonstrate that these problems are far less common than we would predict. My Master’s thesis was on this specific question, how union movements can overcome collective action problems and I found that South and South-East Asia in particular have many success stories in this vein, some of which have been achieved in the face of severe Government oppression as in the case of Free Trade Union in Cambodia (though this example is more recent than the ones I studied).

What helped unions overcome these problems? The answers seem to be a combination of identity and leadership. Where there was a common identity that either pre-existed or could be created among the workers, the need for a stick to go along with the carrot was much reduced. This, however, did not explain the dynamism of some the unions that existed, nor their varying fortunes over time. Some of the latter was no doubt due to prevailing economic fortunes and the tolerance or otherwise of the Government, but a major aspect was leadership. Some movements were lucky to get charismatic, developmental leaders who aimed at the betterment of all, rather than the enrichment of the few; in many cases, succession to new leaders removed this all-important aspect and the effectiveness of the union declined and occasionally they even turned predatory.

The lessons from this aren’t simple, nor uniformly positive. In certain circumstances workers have been able to collectivise for the common good under inspired leadership; but this hasn’t always been the case. When identity fractures rather than unites invididuals, insider-outsider problems have worsened the prospects of some. When leadership has been predatory rather than inspirational, rather than protecting the rights of workers, unions have joined with capital to predate on their weaknesses. All we can do is try and make conditions as easy as possible for the right kind of workers movements to flourish, while discouraging the predatory kind. This isn’t going to be easy, but it appears to me that even in those countries where the ILO is active, little in the way of real effort is being made.

I mention the ILO with reason. This is an organization with the potential to fulfill this role, but it’s advocacy voice and policy influence isn’t in the same league as some of its fellow UN agencies, which I view as a shame. It’s not perfect by a long sight and I have particular problems with the use of ILO definitions of unemployment for Africa, but if any agency can champion workers' rights effectively, surely it’s this one.