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Walmart in South Africa: Precarious Labor and Retail Expansion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2014

Bridget Kenny
Bridget Kenny*
Affiliation:
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
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Extract

In 2011 Walmart's bid to buy a controlling stake in South Africa's Massmart Holdings, Inc. went before the country's Competition Commission and Competition Tribunal, both of which would determine whether to grant the merger outright or to place conditions on it. Massmart Holdings comprises a number of branded subsidiaries in the South African market, including Walmart-style general merchandise dealers, electronics retailers, do-it-yourself building suppliers, and food wholesalers—Game, Dion, Builder's Warehouse, and Makro, respectively—as well as the more recently acquired food retailer, Cambridge Food. South African unions, most prominently the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu), with support from the Global Union Federation UNI Global and, in the United States, the United Food and Commercial Workers, fought the merger.

Type
Reports from the Field
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 86 , Fall 2014 , pp. 173 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2014 

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References

NOTES

1. Kenny, Bridget, “Citizen Wal-Mart? South African Food Retailing and Selling Development.” In New South African Review 4, ed. Khadiagala, Gilbert M., Naidoo, Prishani, Pillay, Devan, and Southall, Roger (Johannesburg, 2014): 56–74 Google Scholar.

2. A nonrepresentative survey was conducted with 109 workers in 6 branches of Cambridge Food in Gauteng. In addition, focus group interviews were conducted in each branch and one with shop stewards from across the branches. Access was facilitated by Saccawu. The project was funded by UNI Global. Project researchers included Bongani Xezwi, Ntsiki Mackay, Lesego Ndala, Matlhako Mahapa, Zakhele Dlamini, Tlaleng Letsheleha, and Zivai Sunungukayi Mukorombindo.

3. Kenny, Bridget, “Claiming Workplace Citizenship: ‘Worker’ Legacies, Collective Identities and Divided Loyalties of South African Contingent Retail Workers,” Qualitative Sociology 30 (2007): 481–500 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Labour Research Service, Bargaining Monitor (Cape Town, 2013), 179Google Scholar.

5. See Chan, Anita, ed., Walmart in China (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2011)Google Scholar and Lichtenstein, Nelson, ed., Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism (New York and London, 2006)Google Scholar.

6. Kenny, Bridget, “Mothers, Extra-ordinary Labour, and Amacasual: Law and Politics of Nonstandard Employment in the South African Retail Sector,” Law & Policy 31 (2009): 282–306 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Theron, Jan, “Employment Is Not What it Used To Be: The Nature and Impact of the Restructuring of Work in South Africa,” in Beyond the Apartheid Workplace: Studies in Transition, ed. Webster, Eddie and Holdt, Karl Von (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 2005), 293–316 Google Scholar.

8. BMI (Business Monitor International), Food and Drink Report: South Africa Food and Drink Report (London, 2013)Google Scholar; Janice Kew, “Wal-Mart's Massmart Expands in Africa as Regional Competition Increases,” Bloomberg, August 25, 2011. Available at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-25/wal-mart-s-massmart-expands-in-africa-as-regional-competition-increases.html (accessed September 8, 2011).

9. Macquarie First South, South African Food Retailers (Johannesburg, 2013)Google Scholar.

10. See http://www.cambridgefood.co.za/about.asp (accessed June 1, 2013).

11. James, Deborah, “Money-go-Round: Personal Economies of Wealth, Aspiration and Indebtedness,” Africa 82 (2012): 20–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Bond, Patrick, “Debt, Uneven Development and Capitalist Crisis in South Africa: From Moody's Macroeconomic Monitoring to Marikana Microfinance Mashonisas,” Third World Quarterly 34 (2013): 569–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. See Kenny, “Citizen Wal-Mart?”: 57.

14. Collins, Jane L., “America in the Age of Wal-Mart,” in The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It, ed. Gusterson, Hugh and Besteman, Catherine (Berkeley, CA, 2009)Google Scholar.