News

The Chair for Sociology of Africa cordially invites you to a public talk/colloquium entitled:

"The Unions are the Mine’s Biggest Partners, but They Do Not Act Like it: Union ‘Corruption’ and shareholder Primacy on Zambia’s copperbelt"

Speaker: Dr Thomas McNamara (La Trobe University, Melbourne)

Date: 07 June 2022
Time: 16:15 - 17:45

Please join us via Zoom link: https://uni-bayreuth.zoom.us/j/61988135124?pwd=ZjEvQXo5d0lKR0Y3WnZzYi81TnpPZz09
Meeting ID: 619 8813 5124
Passcode: 582380

Abstract: Mr. McNamara's article explores the dichotomous co-production of ‘corrupt unions’ and ‘shareholder-driven corporations’. It argues that Zambian union corruption convolved national political history, shifting moral economies and global responses to organised labour’s disempowerment; obfuscating the structural causes of low wages and under-development. Created in comparison to corrupt unions were shareholder-driven, economically rational corporations. In problematizing the naturalisation of these actors’ economic choices, the article reconceptualises their actions through exploring negotiations over their responsibilities between workers, employers and the state. In these negotiations narratives of shareholder primacy and Corporate Social Responsibility emboldened claims for high profits, low wages and minimal tax takes.

Keywords: Unionism, Zambia, Neoliberalism, Corruption, Transnational Capitalism