From Precariat to Permanent. How South African Labour Broker Workers Mobilised the Workplace and the Law.

Like elsewhere in the world, labour broker workers in South Africa face a challenging environment, the legislative framework effectively excludes or curtails their rights while at the same time the traditional union movement subjects such workers to hostile indifference. Across the world, there has been rising public resistance to the conditions of precarious work, leading some countries to attempt to control some of the practices associated with labour broking. In 2015 the Labour Relations Act was amended to curtail the use of contract labour to work of a ‘genuinely temporary nature’ and ensure that labour broker workers become permanent after a period of 3 months. These changes in the legislation were largely ignored by the traditional labour movement and in their absence community advice offices have begun to fill the gap. This paper will document the work of the Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO) and the Simunye Workers Forum based in Germiston, Gauteng. Since the amendments came into effect in 2015, CWAO has assisted over 8,000 workers to gain their new rights through the new legislation. Furthermore, it has also assisted workers to organise in their workplaces into forums or workplace councils under the banner which led to the formation of the Simunye Workers Forum. While other scholars of precarious labour have analysed non-unionised organising as a form of ‘insurgent unionism’ due to the way in such organising falls outside of the legislated labour relations framework, this paper takes a different point of departure. This paper analyses how the amendments to the LRA opened a space for contract workers to organise both within and outwith the labour relations framework. It analyses how labour broker workers have mobilised the law, setting new conditions under which precarious workers can continue to fight for their rights.