Precarity and the Law: Regulating Casual and Contract Labour in the South Africa Retail Sector

This paper explores the history of legislation around forms of casual, part-time and contract labour in South Africa since the 1930s. Building on my previous work on casual and part-time labour regulation in the retail sector (Kenny 2009), this paper expands the discussion to explore the legal lineages which helped to define the construction of these forms of labour within the retail and distributive sector. It seeks to examine the relationship between the law as disciplinary apparatus, transnational importation of law and norm, and socio-political contexts and worker and union politics in explaining changing legal provisions over time. In so doing, I hope also to examine the boundary between these forms of employment law and the influences of Masters and Servants legislation as limit for black workers in South Africa in relation to the sector.