not be a sign of willingness to relate to strong and independent unions in meaningful collective bargaining. Maintaining parity conditions of employment and union recognition was a key demand in the Tribunal process of Saccawu, the majority union and Cosatu affiliate in the sector.
In general, South African retail employment is precarious, with low wages, low skills, part-time hours and few benefits describing many workers’ conditions (Kenny 2001; 2005). In 2005 in the retail trade as a whole, 75 per cent of the workforce was permanent. In large enterprises this figure dropped to 67.8 per cent, with 32.2 per cent being casual (Statistics South Africa 2007: xii). In the category ‘non-specialised stores with food, beverages and tobacco predominating’, permanent employment fell to 55.3 per cent, and casual and temporary was 44.6 per cent (Statistics South Africa 2007:14). In the same category but of only large enterprises, the figures for permanent employment dropped again, to 51.9 per cent; casual and temporary employment was 48 per cent (Statistics South Africa 2007:15). It must be remembered that the sectoral determination promulgated in 2003 made a much wider category of ‘casual’ workers technically ‘permanent’ but part-time. These statistics are therefore likely to hide the extent of part-time employment within the category ‘permanent’ (Kenny 2009).
In preliminary results of a non-representative, qualitative survey that colleagues and I have conducted in Cambridge stores, Massmart’s newly-expanding food retail subsidiary, unionisation is almost nonexistent, and conditions are basic. In the sample of 109 workers interviewed from six branches in Johannesburg,17 most workers were not even employees of the retailer: over 74 per cent were employees of labour brokers, with only 14.7 per cent being employees of Cambridge (the remaining 12 per cent were direct employees of suppliers); 42 per cent earned R2 000 per month or less,18 and 78 per cent earned R3 000 or less. Although nearly 92 per cent said that they had a written contract with their employer, 81 per cent said that they did not personally have a copy of it. In focus group interviews, workers told us in fact that managers and contractors would not allow them to take a copy of the contract home to read, and some said that they were instructed to leave the date blank when signing the contract; it was explained that a date would be filled in when a worker was ‘dismissed’ enabling ease of firing even for employees meant to be on fixed term contracts. Only 31 per cent of workers reported that they received a pension or provident fund and 4.7 per cent of workers reported that they had medical aid. Nearly 60 per cent of workers said that they did not have opportunities for promotion.
Only 28.4 per cent of workers reported being members of a union, although the survey would have self-selected for union members through access and sampling through Saccawu networks. Of the thirty-one people reporting to be union members, only eight were members of Saccawu, seven were members of Fawu (typical for merchandisers employed by a major food supplier company), and fourteen were members of another retail union, the Federal Council of Retail and Allied Workers (Fedcraw). The mean length of time for which union members reported being members was over five years and 96 per cent of workers had not engaged in any form of collective action in these stores.
When asked what were the most important problems they faced on the job, 29 per cent of workers cited relations with management or supervisors; 29 per cent cited low wages or pay issues; over 30 per cent cited poor working conditions, job security or their contracts; and 9.7 per cent cited store operations. Thus, some 68 per cent of workers complained about the level of conditions, work organisation, surveillance and pay, followed by nearly 30 per cent about relations with management. In short, preliminary results at store level with retail workers in Cambridge Foods suggest a pattern of low-skill low-wage jobs with little worker attachment and less possibility of advancement. Notably, a large percentage of this workforce was contracted-in through labour brokers. Such corporate retailers grow employment in South Africa but continue to do so through precarious jobs.
CONCLUSION
Retail is not just a passive or benevolent conduit between food production and the consumer. In order to provide ‘cheap food’, retailers rely on low-wage labour in shops and the efficiencies met through a capital-intensive agro-food system. If we take seriously the embedded relations through which retailers operate in local economies, then there is a much wider scope around which to engage both state policy and labour movement politics.
The focus on smallholder integration into markets via corporate supply chains carries with it the assumption that production for profit is the only logic available. There is room here to push a direct examination of the power of retail firms, imbricated as they are with state deregulation of the agro-food economy, trade liberalisation, financialisation of capital, precarious service employment, and promotion of processed foodstuff generally of lower nutritional value.
Saccawu has focused attention on its All-Africa Wal-Mart Alliance, which seeks to network around conditions of employment across Massmart subsidiaries in Africa. Although this is an important effort, it has the effect of limiting its focus on the employer (see Kenny 2012b). This chapter sought to examine how Wal-Mart’s entry into South Africa raises questions about the embedded context of corporate retail capital and its power in the agro-food system in South Africa. It highlights the mutual interests of the state and retail capital in promoting supermarkets as providers of cheap food and as leverage points for smallholder development. Yet it also suggests that Wal-Mart’s ‘citizenship’ status, based on bringing consumer choice at a cheap price, has other costs bound into a system that relies on precarious employment and large-scale corporate control of the food system. Access to supermarkets may seem to be an easy way of ensuring food security for South Africans but we bind ourselves into a ‘reverse Fordism’ where cheap food is necessary because wages are so low (Collins 2009). Numsa and Fawu have recently launched a campaign to transform the agro-food system in South Africa, emphasising food security by focusing on ownership and inequality throughout the food sector. Low-wage food retail workers could contribute to this campaign. These efforts provoke hard questions about how the labour movement is organised by sector and employer in South Africa.
Corporate food retailers have been portrayed as the guardians of quality, the champions of reducing inefficiencies in the chain, the advocates for smallholder development, and our compatriots who bring us cheaper food; but if Wal-Mart’s entry tells us anything it is that the public debate over the Tribunal process has had no effect on the relations of inequality structuring South Africa’s food system based on a low-wage, racist labour regime. In accepting Wal-Mart as our fellow ‘citizen’, we may find choice in supermarket aisles, but we ultimately continue to reinforce a development agenda which reproduces poor quality jobs, excludes vast numbers of people from active economic participation, and offers little by way of food security.
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