Institutionalised conflict, subaltern worker rebellions and insurgent unionism: casual workers’ organisation and power resources in the South African Post Office

Across the globe, the increasing number of precarious workers has (re)created bifurcated labour markets. This paper looks at casual worker mobilisation in the South African Post Office. Attention is paid to one group of workers, the Mabarete, and the way they projected power in a classification struggle pursued though violence and intimidation, rather than moral or symbolic power. Their struggle was spatially and morally sculpted by the communities in which they lived, but was not social movement unionism. Why the Mabarete transformed – from the successful organisation structure that had evolved to registered union – is addressed through two alternative models of industrial engagement: the use of official, legal frameworks in which conflict is institutionalised and that of subaltern worker rebellions in which extra-legal, covert forms of power are mobilised. Insurgent unionism, it is argued, can be understood as the combination of, or oscillation between, these two alternatives.