in insecure, often hazardous conditions. Is any job really better than no job?
Non-standard forms of employment are increasingly common throughout the South African labour market, in line with the global restructuring of work which has led, through a great diversification of employment arrangements, to widespread precariousness. Contrary to what is often assumed, this is not restricted to the ‘margins’ of the labour market, but is increasingly a feature of its core (Chang 2009). In South Africa, restructuring started ahead of the transition to democracy and has since become a wideranging phenomenon in sectors as diverse as healthcare, mining and forestry (see Pons-Vignon and Anseeuw 2009; and Von Holdt and Webster 2005 for a broad range of case studies). In mining in 2008, one out of three workers was employed by a contractor or a sub-contractor (Bezuidenhout 2008), a figure which has probably increased in the wake of the 2012 violence across platinum and other mines. The forms taken by work-restructuring have been varied, and include the growth of third-party employers such as labour brokers and contractors, alongside a sharp rise in casualisation, documented in a vast range of sectoral case studies but poorly captured by labour force surveys (for a methodological discussion, see Sender and Pontara, 2010). Casualisation, for instance, entails work arrangements such as homework (Godfrey et al. 2005) or the hiring of gangs of workers by the day to perform certain tasks. With a few exceptions, for instance in transport (Barrett 2003) or metals and engineering, trade unions have not been able to counter employer strategies and prevent casualisation.
Labour casualisation has entailed a marked deterioration in levels of pay and security. In terms of pay, this is visible in the consistently low wages received by workers covered by sectoral determinations (see section 2), two-thirds of whom were classified as ‘poor’ in 2007 – with an increase in the number of poor workers in certain sectors since the adoption of a determination (DPRU 2010). In terms of employment security, out of a workforce of 13 million in 2008, 5.8 million workers were not covered by unemployment insurance; 2.7 million did not have written contracts; and 4.1 million did not have paid leave entitlements (Marais 2011). Workers have suffered most where employers have adopted task-based payment, which often leads workers to super-exploit themselves to meet unrealistic production targets (Pons-Vignon, forthcoming).
It is therefore unsurprising that the problems associated with the labour market have contributed to a sharp crisis of reproduction experienced by many poor people in South Africa.
The crisis of reproduction
South African workers are confronted with a particularly difficult socioeconomic situation, rendering their reproduction costly and difficult. Combined with the casualisation and unemployment crises which they experience in the labour market is an increasing commodification of essential services, from transport to healthcare (Barchiesi 2011). The upshot is that workers require more cash – at the same time as the incomes of many are declining. The ensuing reproduction squeeze often precipitates workers into the arms of very costly providers of consumption credit (Bateman 2012; James 2012). South African wage levels must therefore be understood in the context of a very expensive cost of reproduction due to commodified and often poorly managed services.4 Although some of the poor in South Africa have benefited from increasing conditional cash transfers, the latter typically contribute to entrenching neoliberalism when they are associated with the private provision of services (Ghosh 2011). Moreover, grants are, like micro credits, primarily channelled to purchasing goods provided by large-scale oligopolistic producers (Valodia op.cit.), able to fix prices for certain basic foodstuffs such as bread or poultry (Competition Commission 2010).
A crucial consequence of labour casualisation has been to exacerbate poverty, as the ability of workers to support dependants has been adversely affected.5 In poor households, it is common that workers’ wages are ‘the main safety net … [hence] even the limited income available to low paid workers is eroded through support for the unemployed’ (Coleman forthcoming). The weight of interpersonal solidarity imposed on the poor in South Africa is not limited to wage transfers, but also includes care. Many companies have thus managed, thanks to outsourcing and casualisation, not to bear the costs associated with HIV and AIDS. The economic burden of the disease has been shifted from business onto government, households and individuals, with women paying the highest price of caregiving (Marais 2005). Where contract and casual labour is extensively used, workers’ benefits are nearly absent and the entire cost of healthcare is displaced onto formal and informal caregivers (nurses and especially women of the family of the affected persons). In the context of insufficient investment in public health, access to health services is skewed not only in terms of race and class, but also against rural dwellers. This may explain why South Africa’s labour force participation rate is so low (54.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2013); indeed, many women are prevented from entering the labour market because they are looking after ill family members. Some are supported by NGOs or by new government schemes, but they are paid way below other healthcare professionals. Moreover – and crucially – sick workers who do not have permanent contracts cannot benefit from company-supported medical aid or sick pay.
Deepening inequality
With such poor records in employment creation and growth, it is not surprising that the unequal distribution of wealth has not altered. The country has the unfortunate record of being the most unequal in the world, ahead of Brazil, with a Gini coefficient rising from about 0.56 in 1995 to about 0.63 in 2009.
In a country where, despite the low rate of employment, low labour force participation and pervasive casualisation, wages remain by far the most significant share of income, particularly for the poorest, it is hardly surprising that poverty remains a critical issue in spite of a relatively large social grant programme. Inequality among wage earners has increased (Strauss 2013). When measured in racial terms, inequality dynamics are also surprising: racial inequality decreased dramatically during the last twenty-five years of apartheid while it did not fall between 1996 and 2001 (Leibbrandt et al. 2010)
If workers, and in particular poor workers, have lost since 1994, who has won? Like other countries, South Africa has experienced a rapid rise in the income of the super-rich, with the share of total income earned by the top 1 per cent jumping from about 10 per cent in the 1980s and early 90s to 18.1 per cent in 2007 (Unctad 2012). This trend has been supported by an unflinching commitment to ‘orthodox’ macropolicies and is closely related to the rise of the financial sector and of its ability to absorb resources at the expense of other sectors (Fine and Ashman 2013).
