Cooperatives and the reorganisation of labour-intensive production in South Africa’s clothing industry

Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings

Review of African Political Economy, 2021, vol. 48, issue 169, 403-419

Abstract: Wage regulation in South Africa’s clothing industry has pushed low-wage producers to restructure themselves as partnerships between former employers, now intermediaries, and worker cooperatives. The proliferation of employer-initiated cooperatives in the clothing sector reflects and poses challenges to South Africa’s system of industrial-level bargaining, to unionisation, and to the government’s unevenly implemented strategy of using minimum wages to force enterprises to ‘upgrade’ and become less labour intensive. Through circumventing wage regulation and institutionalising a less adversarial approach to the management of labour, worker cooperatives represent a model for low-wage labour-intensive manufacturing that disrupts government rhetoric and policymaking.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2021.1952562

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