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White Building Workers and Coloured Competition in the South African Labour Market, c. 1890–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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The article deals with “racial” aspects of the labour market and labour relations in South Africa's building industry, focussing largely, though not exclusively, on skilled building workers on the Witwatersrand (Southern Transvaal). Different trade-union strategies are examined, as pursued by building trade unions in the Transvaal as well as the Eastern Cape and Natal, in order to add a comparative dimension. In the latter areas, shortly after World War I, a white-exclusionist organizing policy was replaced in some urban centres by a pragmatic strategy of incorporating “coloured” artisans (Africans and Indians continued to be excluded). In the Transvaal, on the other hand, the relatively strong position of white building workers and a deeply-ingrained racism ensured the maintenance of racially-exclusive trade unionism in the building industry.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1992

References

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55 Johannesburg MBA, General Meeting, April 127, 1906 (Minute Book housed at Office of the Association, Fairview, Johannesburg). It should be noted once again that, in the Transvaal context, it is not always clear whether “coloured” refers to “Cape coloured”, has the connotation of “non-white”, “black”. Nevertheless, after 1900 there was a growing tendency even in the Transvaal to distinguish between “coloured” and “native”, African.

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70 Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners' Monthly Report (Johannesburg), 06, 1916, p. 12;Google ScholarGitsham, and Trembath, , Labour Organisation, pp. 71–3, 162163, 171, 178;Google ScholarSimons, and Simons, , Class and Colour, p. 197; Records of the Trade Union Council of South Africa (hereafter: TUCSA), SAIF, Bc 8, Bd 2; Records of the Garment Workers Union (hereafter: GWU), Dba 66: Constitution of the Building Workers' Industrial Union of South Africa (1947). On BWIU activity among unskilled whites, see in particular TUCSA, SAIF, Bc 1.2; GWU, Dba 11;Google ScholarMaster, Builders and Trades, Allied Association of the Witwatersrand, Annual Report, 1922, p. 12.Google Scholar

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73 TUCSA, SAIF, Ba 1.1.

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84 Report of the Economic and Wage Commission, Pretoria 1926 (U.G. 14-'26), pp. 290291; AEWC, report submitted by the Kimberley and District Trades and Labour Council. It would seem that trade-union policies in Kimberley were more like those in the Transvaal than in the coastal centres.Google Scholar

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87 AEWC, evidence by Rogers, Crowe, Goodman, Ontong and Rasdien.

88 AEWC, evidence by Tyler, Johannesburg, 1180–1198a; TUCSA, SATUC, Ca 1.4, report of South African Trade Union Congress, March 1929. Tyler belonged to the small group of progressive white trade union leaders, who were more enlightened on racial matters than their own rank and file.

89 See note 87.

90 Ibid..

91 Ibid..

92 AEWC, memorandum by BWIU, 20.8.25.

93 As a result, by 1938 fifty-five per cent of the 46,130 workers in the building industry covered by agreements under the Industrial Conciliation Act in the seven largest cities were African. By this time semiskilled and unskilled workers were provided for in the agreements as well. Annual Report of the Department of Labour for the Year 1938, p. 53;Google ScholarReport of the Industrial Legislation Commission (U.G. 37-'35), p. 15.Google Scholar

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