This paper explores the efforts of South African employers and the apartheid state to remake
industrial relations during the 1970s in order to preserve racial capitalism. During the 1970s,
South African manufacturers faced a new set of challenges. International economic pressures
began to choke off their export markets, yet the domestic market remained severely limited
because of employers’ dependence on Black labor paid a subsistence wage. Low productivity
made it hard for manufacturers to compete globally, yet import substitution remained blocked
by low consumption. Finally, in 1973, manufacturers faced mass strikes by underpaid African
workers. Faced with this impasse, employers and the state sought to stabilize industrial relations
by creating “communication” with Black workers, improving personnel relations, and
even boosting some wages, but without promoting Black unionization. Despite these efforts to
“reform” industrial apartheid, by the end of the decade Black workers succeeded in using the
opening provided by these changes to lay the groundwork for an independent union movement.
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