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Bad as conditions were in factories, the evil of homework was even worse. The worker who is compelled to turn his home into a workshop usually belongs to the poorest of the poor. This poor man's "castle" presents a picture of squalor and misery-little sticks of furniture, a couple of children and poverty everywhere. The place is too hot in summer and too cold in winter, with dingy lighting and bad ventilation. The woman who has to work at home is too harassed to find time to attend to her household. Often young children who should be playing or sleeping, are drawn into the work. The home worker is isolated and a helpless victim in the hands of the unscrupulous employer. Difficult to organise, unproÂtected by law, he has no choice but to accept the pittance offered him for his labour or starve. Homework tended not only to degrade the life of the home workers, but also to lower the standards for the industry as a whole.
The efforts of the union to eliminate sweating and underpayment of wages in established workshops met with considerable success. But it was felt that so long as middlemen tailors and workers continued taking work home, sweating could not be entirely stamped out. The Factories Act of 1918 regulated the giving-out of work to be made up at home. But firstly there was no one to enforce the Act and secondly, like all South African labour legislation, it was drafted so clumsily that it made strict enforcement very difficult. The victories scored by the union, through mass demonstrations, fired the spirit of the workers and bands of volunteers were organised to raid home workshops. These bands usually operated from eight p.m. to two a.m. No legal or other sanctions could be applied to tailors found working late at night. But the mere invasion of a home workshop by a group of men invariably had the effect of shaming the offending tailor into obeying the rules laid down by the union. They learnt that they could not continue degrading their own standards and the standards of the industry with impunity. The evil of homework was not finally abolished until some years later, but much headway was made in eliminating at least the worst feature of the system by our earlier efforts.
At a meeting of the Industrial Council for the Clothing Industry early in 1929 I presented a complaint from the union about the wholesale underpayment of workers in the clothing industry. The five employers' representatives on the Council were associated with the larger factories. The chairman of the Council, an employer, Mr. J. Rosen, was an honorable man and on his advice the Council readily agreed to allow Mr. D. Colraine, secretary of the Council, and me to examine the entire wage registers in the industry. Indeed, every one of the employers' delegates asked that his register should be examined first. While not consciously engaging in the dishonorable practice of making workers sign for wages which they did not receive, even the best employers-including those on the Council- were guilty of wholesale underpayment. They knew vaguely that there was an agreement fixing certain minimum wages and other conditions of employment, but did not take the trouble to ensure that the provisions of the agreement were strictly observed.
For over three months, we spent many hours interrogating workers and checking wage registers. A detailed statement of underpayment had to be prepared for each worker, and as the agreement had been in force for about two years, it was necessary to back check the wages for a hundred and two weeks. We found that about two-thirds of the workers were not receiving the wages due to them under the agreement, the amounts underpaid ranging from a few shillings to over £50. We submitted an interim report of our investigations, disclosing underpayment of many thousands of pounds. Only one factory that of Mr. Rosen showed no underpayment.
Some of the employers refunded the back-pay and gave instructions to the wage clerks to pay the correct legal minimum in future and, in cases of doubt, to contact the union; but quite a large number tried to find all sorts of excuses to evade paying the correct rates.
But our determined efforts to clean up the clothing industry met suddenly with a very serious setback. In a judgment of the Supreme Court, arising from a case in the building industry (Rex v. Goodman)', all industrial agreements were held to be invalid because of some technical irregularity in signing them. This meant that the demands for back pay could not be enforced in the courts. A special Council meeting was called to consider the situation. The union delegates informed the employers that, unless the back-pay due was paid, the union would take strike action. Eventually, after much discussion, the union representatives agreed to accept two-thirds of the back pay, but only on the assurance of the employers that in future the agreements would be strictly observed.
Probably no country in the world shows so little respect for agreements and laws governing workers' wages and conditions as South Africa.
The Goodman judgment and a series of similar judgments of the Supreme Court which followed, invalidating industrial council agreements and wage determinations, led to disastrous consequences for the workers. The employers had never had much faith in legal wage instruments, and many of them now began to take full advantage of the situation. Claims for back pay could no longer be enforced through the courts, and the salutary effect of the earlier rigorous enforcement of agreements soon wore off. The employers who were willing to pay the agreement wages were faced with unfair competition from those who exploited to the full the legal chaos created by the successive judgments.
The union determined to take energetic counteraction to meet this contingency. During the currency of agreements, strikes were prohibited under a penalty of three years imprisonment and a £500 fine. Now that the agreements had been invalidated, strikes became lawful, provided the dispute was first submitted to an industrial council or conciliation board. Such submission was a mere formality which, though irksome, did not present insurmountÂable difficulties.
We decided to make an example of two of the worst factories, each employing about sixty workers. In the first factory, the employer, a cut-make-and-trim manufacturer, was in the habit of paying his workers a few shillings a week, the balance being "carried forward". Some workers did not receive any wages at all and six were even compelled to pay a premium of £3 for the privilege of learning how to make cheap khaki trousers. Two of them had to pawn their belongings in order to pay the premium. The wage register was kept on scraps of paper which the employer's son carried about in his pocket. Repeated demands that the agreement be observed met with blank refusal or vague excuses; the union therefore decided to take strike action.
All the workers in the factory were called to a meeting and the situation explained to them; they readily agreed to stop work as soon as the legal formalities had been complied with. The evening before the strike was due to start, two union officials, one of them a woman, waited outside the factory to tell the workers they were to stop work the following morning. The woman organiser was violently assaulted by the employer's son. In the meantime, the employer had been busy visiting the workers at their homes trying to persuade them not to strike and, the following day, many scabs reported for work. Early in the morning, however, the union
Officials mobilised an army of about a thousand workers who formed a picket line outside the factory. Within a few minutes twenty policemen appeared and this attracted a large crowd of passers-by. The factory area of Johannesburg became very lively of a sudden. The Riotous Assemblies Act makes it a criminal offence to "molest" or "intimidate" strikebreakers, but the mere presence of a thousand garment workers and probably two thousand onlookers had the desired effect on any would-be scabs.
A small core of workers, led by two sisters who had been forced to pay a premium, was determined to scab. I interviewed the two ring-leaders, who seemed intelligent and tenacious. They lived in appalling poverty, yet they were determined to perpetuate a system of sweating and misery for themselves and their fellow-workers.
The union learnt that the firm which supplied this rat-shop with work was one of the leading wholesale houses in Johannesburg. Two thousand garment workers, followed by an equal number of inquisitive sightseers, demonstrated outside the firm's premises. I told the crowd that the magnificent building where the firm had its offices and warehouse was really built, not of brick, but of the sweat and toil of young women workers. The following morning I received a message from the general manager of the firm asking me to come and see him. When I presented myself, he seemed resentful and I quickly made to leave. He called me back politely and asked me why we had held a demonstration outside his firm. I told him of the disgraceful conditions in the factory which his firm was supplying with work and also made it clear that we would continue with the demonstrations until the firm gave its work only to those employers who treated their workers fairly. The manager asked for time to consider the matter and, within a few days, I was called in again and advised of the following decision:
(a) That in future the firm itself would be responsible for the proper payment of wages and the conduct of the factory,
(b) That, should the union find the employer reverting to his old practices, the firm would give the work elsewhere.
These terms were conveyed to the employer, who had been kept waiting outside. The manager expressed his regret and assured me that he had not been aware of the conditions in which the work had been made up.
In the second factory the position was more complicated. A vicious woman ran it with the assistance of her husband and son. Every clause of the agreement was treated with contempt.
Wages were paid if and when cash was available. Hair-pulling face slapping and abusive language were common.
One evening the workers were told by the union that a strike-would begin the following day. At five in the morning sixty-three-workers turned up in pouring rain to form a picket line outside the-factory. This proved unnecessary, as there was not a single scab. At about seven a.m. the strikers marched to the Trades Hall where, still full of high spirits despite their drenching, they started dancing. During the lunch hour the workers marched back to the factory and held a meeting. A large crowd collected and, standing in the doorway of a building, I began to address them. Within a few minutes a sergeant of police, accompanied by two constables, rushed up and angrily told me that I was causing an obstruction. I pointed out to him that I was standing on private premises and was not causing any obstruction; that if there was an obstruction, it was caused by the crowd. I also suggested that the citizens of JohannesÂburg were entitled to use public places to discuss public affairs and we were discussing something of national importance-the inhuman exploitation of large numbers of women. This brought laughter and cheers from the crowd, but the sergeant was not impressed.
He arrested me and led me through the centre of Johannesburg; hundreds of workers followed, using language about the police which was not altogether complimentary. I told the sergeant that there was no need to stage this demonstration and that I would report to Marshall Square to be charged, or he could bring me to court by summons. He was too angry to yield and so the procession continued through the city to Marshall Square. There, bail was fixed at £2.
A few days later, the employer surrendered and an agreement was signed which opened with the clause:
"The employer undertakes not to use abusive language towards employees in the factory. For every occasion when the employer or his representative uses abusive language against one or more workers, he shall pay a fine of £2".
We asked the employer, as a guarantee, to deposit £50 with the union but, as he had no cash, we accepted promissory notes.
The woman who was in charge of the factory proved incorÂrigible, but the main abuses were eliminated. For many years, however, there were constant disputes in this factory and it was only when the woman retired from business and the son took over that harmony was established.
Some weeks after the strike, I received a summons to appear in the Magistrate's Court, Johannesburg, to answer a charge of obstruction. I defended myself and pleaded "not guilty". The prosecutor called three policemen as witnesses. The case lasted two days and I made use of the opportunity to experiment in cross-examination. The Crown then closed its case and the magistrate seemed ready to convict and punish me. I told him that I was applying for my discharge on the ground that the bye-law under which I was charged was invalid, and I quoted the case of Naidoo versus the Pretoria Municipality, T.P.D., 1927. The magistrate angrily enquired why I had not raised the point at the opening of the proceedings before the Crown called evidence. I explained that I was not a lawyer, but only a trade union official. Although the quoted case was perfectly clear, he would not give judgment immediately, but made me appear again the following week. There was no smile on his face as he discharged me. Every little victory the union scored, however remotely connected with the workers' conditions, and had a tremendous effect on the morale of the workers. This case received much press publicity and, when the workers learnt that I was discharged, there was great rejoicing.