Industrial conciliation law

The labour contract was governed quite differently for white workers. I shall examine it in two legal contexts: the first is the development of the legal regime of industrial conciliation law covering strikes and trade unions; the second the legal regulation of wages. The broader discursive universe did not clearly separate these and both were approached within the context of debates about the role of the state in regulating the ‘market’ in labour, and the urgent politics of protecting the position of white workers. The first of several major statutes in this period was the Transvaal's Industrial Disputes Prevention Act of 1909, which was to be the model for aborted national legislation in 1914 and 1919. In the Act an employee was defined as ‘any white person engaged’ in the industries covered by the Act – the mines and public services. This exclusion of Africans from the mechanism of industrial dispute settlement was the subject of debate in the Transvaal legislative assembly in 1909 (see Lever 1978: 85–6). Some Labour members objected, but it was on the grounds that the exclusion made Africans more attractive to hire because of their legally subordinate position. However Smuts stated the central rationale, which was that it was unthinkable that a legislative means of regulating strikes should apply to African workers because it was unthinkable that black workers should take part in legitimate concerted labour actions like strikes.