Contracting out of the Constitution: Labour Brokers, Post Office Casual Workers and the Failure of South Africa’s Industrial Relations Framework

There is widespread concern over the continued viability of South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional settlement and the increasingly violent axes of social tension. This article outlines the mobilisation of casual workers, employed by labour brokers but working in the South African Post Office (SAPO), who were excluded from the constitutionally sanctioned industrial relations system, despite the presence of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)-affiliated Communications Workers Union (CWU). Drawing on interviews, ethnographic research, court documents and other material, the article analyses the casuals’ mobilisation strategies that succeeded in removing labour brokers from SAPO. Initially the key conflict introduced by the use of labour broking was between the labour brokers and their employees: a tension, it is argued, moulded by South Africa’s constitutional settlement, which has largely frozen inequality in place, combined with neo-liberal pressures. In maintaining discipline over a parallel but unequal workforce within SAPO, labour brokers departed from the constitutionally framed industrial relations system. After extensive, but unsuccessful, attempts to resolve matters though constitutional means, casual workers prosecuted alternative, violent forms of industrial action. They also re-aligned conflict from labour brokers to SAPO as they negated the ‘contractual move’ on which labour broking, and other forms of externalised employment, relies. The article reflects on this ‘contracting out of the Constitution’, particularly in regard to the role of unions struggling to remain relevant within a changing employment terrain, the crisis of the South African industrial relations system, and the increasingly violent nature of the country’s democracy.