Trade-Union Internationalism and Solidarity in the Struggle against Apartheid: A Case Study of Volkswagen

Abstract

By the 1970s, the struggle against apartheid had intensified within South Africa and abroad. Eddie Webster has argued that this struggle "became the moral equivalent of the Spanish civil war … with democrats, liberals, communists and concerned Christians united in common abhorrence of white domination".1 This article focuses on the trade-union internationalism and solidarity that emerged between South African and German trade-unionists in the fight against apartheid in a major German trans-national corporation (TNC). The relationships that developed in terms of the overlapping and convergence of economic, political and institutional interests that inform actions are studied.2 Two distinct phases are identified. First, the emergence in the latter part of the 1970s of direct shop-floor and official links between South African and German trade-unionists, informed by the economic and institutional interests of the trade unions and the company involved. Second, new relationships and structures developed in the early 1980s that were informed by political interests of the actors and the German churches, in particular. The tensions between narrow forms of economically determinist trade-union internationalism and more encompassing political activity and solidarity can therefore be identified. Trade unions and the struggle against apartheid After the electoral victory of the National Party in South Africa in 1948, trade unions were separated into racial organizations, job reservation was enforced by statute to protect and promote white employment, and the government refused to recognize black unions.3 In 1955, the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU)4 was established and from the outset "chose to play a political role"5 and "adopted a higher political profile".6 By 1957, SACTU had joined the Congress Alliance that included the African National Congress (ANC) and participated in a variety of political campaigns. After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, the ANC was banned and embarked on the armed struggle. SACTU was not banned but, as many of its activists were members of the ANC, "almost [the] entire SACTU leadership were recruited" into Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC.7 A number of SACTU officials were banned by the government and "by 1965 SACTU as an internal federation of unions was effectively dead".8 SACTU went into exile and a variety of reasons have been identified as to why it was destroyed within the country. Steven Friedman argued that SACTU had become "captives of the nationalists" with the organization"s "submission to the nationalist movement now reached its logical conclusion: scores of its officials abandoned union work to take up arms".9 Jeremy Baskin draws on Rob Lambert10 and argues that SACTU"s political engagement did not destroy the organization but rather strengthened it. The mass arrests and the armed struggle are identified as further reasons why SACTU was hampered.11 The result was that by 1965 black trade-union organization and resistance was severely restricted. But as ...

Workplace trade union engagement with European Works Councils and transnational agreements: The case of Volkswagen Europe

“…The company's commitment to social partnership is not restricted to Germany: in the 1990s, it provided employees in Europe and beyond with a voice through the E&GWCs. This formalized transnational linkages between German VW workers and labour in its global subsidiaries, a history of internationalism that is a source of pride but which created tensions at certain junctures because of competition, whipsawing and diverse systems of representation within the firm (Bolsmann, 2007(Bolsmann, , 2010. The EWC was set up in 1992, 2 years before the EWC Directive was adopted.…”