Crisis and Neoliberal Reforms in Africa: Civil Society and Agro-Industry in Anglophone Cameroon�s Plantation Economy

3. CDC workers and the agro-industrial crisis

69 3 CDC workers and the agro-industrial crisis Introduction Surprisingly, while it is now widely accepted that wage workers have been among the most seriously affected by the economic crisis and structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in Africa, their responses have hardly been studied. The existing literature tends to focus on the actions of central labour organisations and their defence of members’ interests. There seems to have been a large variation in the role played by these organisations in African states: it is said to have been ‘spectacular’ in Zambia (Simutanyi 1992), ‘considerable’ in Nigeria (Olukoshi & Aremu 1988), ‘unexpected[ly] low’ in Ghana (Herbst 1991) and ‘absent’ in Cameroon (Mehler 1993; Konings 2007b). Although there are references to the responses of workers themselves, these are seldom based on research at the local level. This may give rise to easy generalisations and even to incomplete or false interpretations of workers’ responses as numerous studies of organised labour have highlighted the remarkable difference in workers’ consciousness and actions between and within African states, and the contradictions between the rank and file and the union leadership (Jeffries 1978; Sandbrook & Cohen 1975). Nigeria is one of the few countries in Africa for which empirical studies on local workers’ responses to the economic crisis and SAPs exist. These studies draw different conclusions. Oloyede (1992), for example, claims that shop-floor workers in a local subsidiary of a Dutch electronics multinational were more likely, on the basis of a rational calculation of benefits and costs, to adopt an individual survival orientation than a collective oppositional posture to managerial adjustment measures, with the benefit in this case being individual security or tenure, and the cost being the likely further weakening of collectivism, which individual pursuit can bring about. Some other case studies, however, do not support Oloyede’s claim: 70 Crisis and Neoliberal Reforms in Africa Bangura (1991) and Bangura & Beckman (1993), for example, argue that Nigerian industrial workers have continued to oppose managerial adjustment measures. This chapter examines the response of plantation workers in Nigeria’s neighbour, Cameroon. It focuses on CDC tea pluckers who have had to cope with the severe crisis affecting the corporation since 1986/87 and the subsequent structural adjustment measures aimed at cost reduction and increases in productivity (see Chapter 2). Soon after the signing of a four-year performance contract (1989/ 90-1993/94) with the government, the CDC’s general manager announced a managerial crusade against undisciplined and unproductive workers: In the Contract Plan drawn up and signed by the Government of Cameroon and the Corporation, the corporation is required to meet certain standards of efficiency and to be self-supporting and profitable….. That is why we have to be generally very strict on discipline and sanction any manifestation of laxity….. Maximum efforts shall be required of employees so as to continuing producing more at lower and lower cost; laxity and laissez faire which are characterised by an alarming rate of absenteeism and uncompleted tasks shall not be tolerated.1 A study of tea pluckers’ responses to the crisis is all the more interesting as the labour force on one of the two selected estates was female-dominated. This enables an exploration of the possibility of gender-related differences in pluckers’ responses, taking into account the frequent assumption in managerial circles that female workers are more docile and disciplined because of their persistent subordination to patriarchal domination in society (cf. Elson & Pearson 1984; Mies 1986; Ezumah & Fonsah 2004). This chapter is divided into two parts. The first discusses the role of CDC trade unions during the agro-industrial crisis and the second part assesses the role of workers on CDC tea estates during the agro-industrial crisis, showing their various modes of resistance to the intensified control and exploitation in the labour process. 71 Chapter 3: CDC workers and the agro-industrial crisis Trade unionism in the CDC and the agro-industrial crisis Trade unionism in the CDC has a long history. Immediately after the corporation was established in 1946/47, a trade union was organised on its estates and duly registered. This union, the Cameroon Development Corporation Workers’ Union (CDCWU), was soon to become one of the largest and most powerful in West Central Africa (Warmington 1960; Konings 1993a). In contrast to the CDC management, the British Trusteeship Authority was not opposed to the formation of this union, if only as it offered a more sophisticated means of...