Industrial Relations in Zambia to 1975

This chapter surveys labour relations in Zambia, one of Africa’s most industrialised and urbanised states, which has a wage-earning sector larger than most and a relatively high wage economy. Any such survey must necessarily acknowledge the central position within the economy of the copper-mining industry which was the basis of the colonial economy, on which the country remains overwhelmingly dependent and which has had a major influence upon the development of industrial relations. The development of the copper-mining industry turned Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in twenty years from a backward rural territory into one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world. The imposition of a modern, highly mechanised industry upon a rural subsistence economy produced the rural-urban gap which remains one of the country’s most critical problems.1 The growth of an urban working class was a direct consequence of the growth of that industry. Moreover, it was the miners who pioneered industrial action and established the militant tradition which has characterised the labour movement and out of which grew one of Africa’s most powerful industrial unions. The mining industry in addition has had a major influence upon wage movements which have produced the country’s high wage economy.