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Collective Bargaining as an Internal Sanction: the Rôle of U.S. Corporations in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Christopher Coker
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Extract

Foreign investment in South Africa during the past 20 years has been subject to criticism form several diverse schools of thought, ranging from those who believe it has contributed to country's economic growth without improving the condition of the black workers, to those who maintain that – at best – apartheid has been modernised rather than fundamentally changed.

Today the focus of attention has shifted to collective bargaining and trade union rights, to the action that can be taken on their own behalf by the ecomomically underprivileged and the politically dispossessed, and to the assistance which foreign-owned companies have been given in improving the terms and conditions of employment of their own non-white employees by the codes of conduct that have quite recently been adopted by their own governments.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 647 - 665
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 648 note 1 American investment is not as large as European. American-owned companies employ less than 100,000 labourers out of a total workforce of 5·5 million. In the manufacturing sector they employ less than 30,000 workers in all. General Motors, which ranks eleventh in terms of the total assets held by foreign companies, ranks only thirty-fourth in terms of the number of employees on its payroll. And although non-white labour constitutes 72 per cent of the total workforce of South Africa, it represents only 38 per cent of those employed by the signatories of the ‘Sullivan Principles’. For a discussion, see United States Corporate Interests in Africa. Report by U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sub-Committee on African Affairs (Washington, D.C., 1978).Google Scholar

page 650 note 1 Galtung, Johan, ‘On the Effects of International Economic Sanctions’, in World Politics (Princeton), 29, 3, 04 1967, p. 371.Google Scholar

page 651 note 1 Mathews, A. S., Law, Order and Liberty in South Africa (Cape Town, 1971), p. 299.Google Scholar

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page 652 note 2 Kadish, Mortimer, Discretion to Disobey: a study of lawful departures from legal rules (Stanford, 1973), pp. 93–140.Google Scholar

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page 655 note 2 US Business Involvement in Southern Africa, Part 3, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Sub-Committee on Africa, House of Representatives, 93rd Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C., 1973),Google Scholar Appendix 1.

page 656 note 1 For a comprehensive discussion, see Rothmyer, Karen and Lowenthal, Ann, The Sullivan Principles: a critical look at the United States corporate role in South Africa (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

page 656 note 2 The New York Times, 8 October 1977.

page 656 note 3 Sullivan, Leon, ‘Amplified Guidelines to South African Statement of Principles’, New York, 6 07 1978.Google Scholar

page 656 note 4 Ibid.

page 657 note 1 Department of Labour and Mines, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation (Pretoria, 1979), ch. 1, para. 16.Google Scholar

page 657 note 2 Cited in Activities of Transnational Corporations in Southern Africa: impact on financial and social structures (New York, 1978), p. 8.Google Scholar

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page 658 note 2 The Times (London), 4 07 1980.Google Scholar

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page 659 note 2 The Financial Times (London), 26 05 1981.Google Scholar

page 659 note 3 The New York Times, 28 December 1980.

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page 663 note 1 Cited in Toit, D. du, Capital and Labour in South Africa: class struggles in the 1970 (London and Boston, 1981), p. 386.Google Scholar

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page 664 note 1 ‘Foreign Investment in South Africa’, statement by the African National Congress, London, 30 11 1977.Google Scholar

page 665 note 1 Alastair Sparks originally made this point in the Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg), 6 08 1978.Google Scholar For a discussion, see Harries-Jones, Peter, Freedom and Labour: mobilisation and political control on the Zambian copperbelt (Oxford, 1975).Google Scholar