The Politics of Neoliberal Reforms in Africa: State and civil society in Cameroon

12. Structural Adjustment and Trade Union Identity in Africa: The Case of Cameroonian Plantation Workers

265 12 Structural adjustment and trade union identity in Africa: The case of Cameroonian plantation workers Introduction It is now widely recognised that wage workers were among the most seriously affected by the economic crises and Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of the 1990s in Africa. SAPs conventionally prescribed devaluation, major cuts in public expenditure, privatisation, rehabilitation or elimination of most parastatals, as well as liberalisation. As a result, wage workers were faced with managerial efforts to intensify supervision and increase labour productivity, retrenchments, curtailments in pay, suspension of benefits compounded by soaring consumer prices and user charges for public services. The World Bank attempted to justify these anti-labour measures not only in economic but also in political terms (Bangura & Beckman 1993; Adesina 1994; Gibbon 1995). They argued that the historical influence of African trade unions has led to excessive levels of wage employment, inflated wages and a pro-urban, pro-worker allocation of public funds. It is interesting to observe that this view approximates earlier populist positions regarding ‘labour aristocracy’, ‘urban bias’ and ‘urban coalition’, all of which portrayed workers as a privileged minority, pursuing narrow self-interests at the expense of the urban poor and peasantry in coalition with the urban elite (Waterman 1975, Lipton 1977, Bates 1981). Although these views have been severely criticised by various authors (Jamal & Weeks 1993, Adesina 1994, Thomas 1995), they were nevertheless used by African leaders, like Rawlings in Ghana, to legitimise the implementation of SAP measures and to suppress trade union opposition (Kraus 1991). 266 The Politics of Neoliberal Reforms in Africa Given the formidable challenge SAPs posed to trade unions in Africa, there was a surprising dearth of studies on the actual trade union response to SAPs. Existing studies focus mostly on the national level. They show that some trade union centres, notably in countries like Zambia, Ghana and Nigeria where trade unionism managed to preserve a certain degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the state in the post-colonial era, attempted to oppose SAPs (Akwetey 1994, Panford 1994, Hashim 1994). This opposition, however, proved unsuccessful in the end. SAPs seriously weakened the position of trade unions in African states. Mass retrenchment of labour in the public and private sector led to substantial losses in trade union membership and trade union revenues, whilst government abolition of legislative provisions concerning job security, participatory rights or guaranteed collective bargaining rights, and outright government oppression of any trade union oppositional action forced trade unions’ backs against the wall. In these circumstances, there was little the trade unions could do for their suffering members. Increasing job insecurity and falling real earnings forced the rank and file to search for alternative sources of income, ‘straddling’ between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors and subsistence farming, as well as engaging in illicit incomegenerating activities such as theft, corruption, black-marketeering and prostitution. The ‘fusion’ of labour markets ensured the survival of workers, but, according to some authors (Jamal & Weeks 1993), it also signified the virtual collapse of the wage-earning class as a distinct entity. Consequently, trade unions faced a deep crisis of identity. It would appear that they have not yet devised any new strategies to deal with their dramatic loss of membership and the fusion of labour markets. Even less research was done on the impact of such changes in trade union bargaining strength and labour markets on workers’ trade union identity. Studies of industrial workers in Nigeria contradicted each other. Some claimed that workers no longer had faith in their unions and were inclined to embark instead on individual survival strategies and income-generating activities (Oloyede 1991). Others argued that workers often still relied on their unions to settle individual and collective grievances (Isamah 1994). Still others pointed out that workers combined individual survival strategies 267 Chapter 12: Structural adjustment and trade union identity with union activities. For example, Bangura & Beckman (1993) illustrate how workers attempted to pursue individual strategies via trade union actions: their actions were directed at obtaining levels of termination payment that would enable them to set up farms or petty transport and trading operations. These studies caution against easy generalisations. There may indeed be a considerable variation in workers’ trade union identity under SAPs, dependent on factors such as the differential impact of SAPs on economic sectors, the historical strength of trade unionism, the location (urban/rural) of affected enterprises, among other factors. In this study the focus is on changes...