Norway has a coalition government of the Christian Democrats, the Centre Party and the Liberal Party. The Prime Minister is from the Christian Democrats and the politics is based on the social democratic tradition. There is a problem of population distribution and there are struggles to keep welfare and social security.

Workers’ education association members are trade unions, political and cultural movements. The AOF promotes equality between men and women, the acculturation of all members, adult education for all and debates. It distributes information and materials on adult education and cultural activities. AOF has 49 national members organisations including the Labour Party. The AOF is the largest organisation of adult education in Norway.

South Africa has a multi-party system with the African National Congress in government. There are 3 trade union federations - COSATU, NACTU and FEDUSA. FAWU, which has 139 000 members, is an affiliate of COSATU along with 18 other unions. FAWU organises some 43 % of all workers in the food industry. There are many women in FAWU but few in leadership positions. All COSATU unions do however have gender co-ordinators. COSATU also has a 3-year programme of women empowerment taken in 1997.

Thoko Mchunu represents the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) at this meeting. SACCAWU organises workers in the retail and hotel/restaurant sectors.

Jacky Breda represents FAWU and COSATU (W.Cape)

Egypt is a country of 65 million people concentrated close to the Nile River and in Cairo and Alexandria. Cairo is the fourth biggest city in the world.. The country has a parliament and a 5-year election cycle. Elections are however not free, the government is repressive and pro-Free Market. There are 13 political parties but there is a Party Committee which vets whether you can register a party.

The Ishmael Nedziwe College of Labour Studies was formed by food unionists from Sweden coming to Zimbabwe and meeting Zimbabwean food unions. The late Ishmael Nedziwe was himself a general secretary of the United Food and Allied Workers Unions of Zimbabwe. The College offers facilities to unions and trains workers and develops curricula.

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7100 islands of area 3 000 square kilometres. Low lying lands and programmes of deforestation cause land problems. Four major plains produce nearly all of the country’s staple products, foremost of which are rice and corn. There are 74 million people of whom half are under 20 years old, 80 % are Catholic and about 5 % Muslim. The church has a great influence on the social life.

40 % of the population live below the poverty datum line and the average wage is about $6 per day. 48.5 % of the labour force is female.

Economic policy is a neo-liberal one with an export-led industrial policy. The parliament has a US style president and a bi-chamber. The system is an elite democracy with no ideological basis to parties although the introduction of party-list elections in May 1998 was deemed as an important break from the traditional personality-orientated politics.

Lima is the capital and has 1/3 of the people. The north produces most of the food. There has been years of internal violence - 25 000 deaths in 15 years and a large investment in the military. The external debt is $ 22 billion and therefore most of the GDP goes to pay the external debt.

Fish meal is by far the largest export (15 %), but also copper, gold, zinc and coffee (all primary products). Other food industry products are fish, cooking oil, asparagus, sugar and tinned fish. The president is Fujimori and has already served 2 terms of office. The elections is next year but the opposition is weak and divided.

Established in February 1990, 52 trade union federations. Since 1995 it has been a member of the ICFTU and the ETUC. It participates in the National Council for Tri-partite Co-operation as well as in tri-partite structures at industry level.

Bulgaria has food industry unions since 1908 consisting of trade unions for food and agriculture by tobacco workers. In 1945 the trade unions were consolidated and in 1992 replaced by the United Food and Agriculture workers. After 1992 two unions were established - Federation of Food workers (120 000 members of which 52 % are women), affiliated to the IUF and the Federation for Agricultural workers. There are separate unions for the tobacco industry and the breweries.

Huge Labour Party majority in the 1997 general elections but New Labour Party has carried on the neo-liberal policies of the Conservatives. Decline in industrial base and decline in trade union membership. The country has moved heavily into the service and finance sectors. It can be called a 2/3 : 1/3 society in which the 1/3 of the people have become expendable. The society is overwhelmingly white but has minorities from the ex-colonies and is moving slowly and painfully into a multi-cultural society.

The WEA was started in 1903. It grew out of the labour movement for working class people to get education. Today the WEA really consists of districts of England and Scotland. Northern Ireland and Wales separated in the last 5 years. The WEA has 3 main areas of work - general education, community education and workplace education. The 3 largest unions viz. UNISON, The Transport & General Workers’ Union and the GMB are all affiliated to the WEA. There are no formal links with the Agriculture Workers Union (which was the first union in Britain formed in 1820).

Estonia is a small republic near the Baltic Sea. It has about 1,4 million inhabitants. The capital is Tallinn and is the biggest town in Estonia. 1/3 of population live in Tallinn. The president is Mr Lennart Meri and he has already served 2 terms of office. Parliament consist 101 members.

Estonia trade unions were given independence on December 14th 1989 and on 15th of December a new trade union law was promulgated by the Estonian Supreme Soviet that is still in use today. This year on 15th of December 1999 the trade unions will have their 10 year anniversary and the Land and Food Workers Union will arrange a conference in Tallinn.

The Estonian Open Education Association (OEA) was established in 1991 and is the first Estonian post-war study union created with the aim of developing adult voluntary education. The OEA has 30 member organisations in Estonia.

Today OEA membership comprises all-Estonian organisations including 23 training centres. 7 of them are created by OEA itself. The OEA's goal is the development of voluntary education - a voluntary joint enhancement. The aims of Voluntary Education are the development of personality and the enhancement of management skills and competence, rather than knowledge and skills in one field only. The leading principle of OEA activities is "Development through learning"

Since 1992 the Land and Food Workers' Union is a member of OEA.

Land and Food Workers Union has about 70% women members and more than 70% are over 30 years old. Membership is drawn from the dairy and meat industries as well as from Coca-Cola, breweries, beverages, bakeries, sweet factories and agricultural farms.

Retail capital has begun to be examined as a segment of global capital in its own right, uniquely located between production and consumption. The capital imperatives facing retailers in globalising markets are deemed to be different than for manufacturing because its specific function is to "realise the surplus value in commodities produced by manufacturers for consumption by the final consumer". Retailers mediate between producers and consumers, but they are not neutral mediators. They source and select goods; they help to determine the terms on which they buy products; and they influence consumer preference through marketing. Thus retailers structure consumers’ desires and choices and impact not only on what is produced but how it is produced. In this way, the trends in retail restructuring which I will explore will have a ripple affect ‘up-stream’ all the way to food producers.

A significant part of what has driven capital accumulation within retail has been the changing relations between retailers and suppliers. Those writing on the retail industry, especially in the UK and the US, emphasise the trend toward the vertical disintegration of firms within food production-food retailing chains. In the UK, a feature of the success of retailers during the 1980’s was their ability to reshape and control supply relations. This happened as food retailers consolidated holdings. In Britain during the 1970’s and 1980’s retail capital became increasingly concentrated in a few major retailers. UK retailers were able to consolidate holdings in part because of loose regulatory environment which allowed for mergers and acquisitions in the sector. By 1992, the top 5 UK food retailers held over 50% of the total grocery market share.

In the US, one of the effects of the concentration of capital through acquisitions and hostile take-overs were high levels of related debt, store closures, and bankruptcies. The result was that a number of large retailers closed stores and downsized. As retail companies consolidated, as well, the US saw large job shedding. In the first half of 1991 alone, for instance, the US retail industry lost 285,000 jobs!

At the end of the day, however, the concentration of capital and the emergence of large food superstores allowed these retailers to go directly to suppliers, side-stepping wholesalers, and in fact to demand greater control over the distribution of products. Manufacturers became increasingly dependent on retailers for access to marketing their products. In addition retailers developed their own-label products which directly competed with manufacturers brands.

Stringent conditions of supply were also imposed on food manufacturers to match the centralised, logistically efficient, newly computerised stock control and ‘just-in-time’ warehouse-to-store distribution systems developed by retail firms in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. This allowed food retailers to reduce their inventory holdings throughout the 1980’s, and to pass more and more of the costs, including ‘uncertainty costs’, of inventory holding to the food manufacturers.

As part of the drive toward short-term profit boosts, this restructuring in the industry was coupled with a focus on reducing labour costs. These changes had the effect of reducing employment security. Since the mid to late 1980’s the number of hours worked per week per employee has been decreasing. For instance, the average weekly hours of non-supervisory workers in the US retail industry has declined from 33.3 to 28.8 from 1972 to 1987. These figures indicate an increase in part-time employment. Coupled with high turnover of part-time workers in the industry, these part-time jobs are actually more tenuous than ever before. In response to changes in supply—namely fewer young workers and fewer available voluntary part-time women workers—and intense pressure to reduce labour costs, US employers have begun to use a small group of full-time workers who take on many different jobs along side more, now involuntary, part-time work. In Britain as well, with use of new technology, labour has been significantly rationalised.

The impact of restructuring of retail capital and retail operations has then affected the organisation of work. Part-time and casual retail employment has increased. This trend has been accompanied by the increasing use of women workers in these most vulnerable jobs.

For instance, in the US, women accounted for 2/3 of employment growth in retail in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Furthermore those sub-sectors of retail employing the most women have also been those offering the lowest wages and shortest weekly hours. Food retailing had been an area employing more male workers, and was the most highly unionised sub-sector of retailing. However, by the late 1980’s employers were actively pursuing a union busting strategy by bringing in new labour, often from vulnerable social categories, including more women, in order to undercut and weaken the union’s bargaining power. By 1987, women made up almost half of grocery store workers. Weekly earnings in grocery stores had been the highest among all retail sub-sectors in 1982, but by the late 1980’s earnings had declined sharply.

In Britain, as well, while store managers remain male and have full-time, relatively secure employment, overall labour cost concern has meant a decline in full-time positions. The increase in part-time positions in retailing has occurred as more women are employed in the sector. For instance, over 45 % of all jobs in retailing in Britain are part-time. Women account for 63% of all persons employed in retail and 83% of all part-time workers.

Hence internationally, we see the pattern of retail capital consolidation, control over supply chains, the emergence of large superstores in food retailing, and the concern with short-term quick accumulation leading to increased use of so-called (feminised) flexible labour. In the following section, I examine a South African case study to explore the details of the impact of this restructuring on workers lives.

South African retail companies continue to ‘restructure’ to compete for market share in a sector with very thin profit margins, and one characterised, as internationally, by consolidation into a few large companies. Domestic markets have tightened due to rising inflation rates, growing consumer debt, falling real wages and increasing unemployment. Retail firms have responded in part by downsizing to lower wage bills. A spin-off has been the increased ordinary use of casual labour.

The retail industry has experienced an expansion of so-called casual labour over the past ten years. According to government statistics, between 1987 and 1997, full-time average employment in the Wholesale, Retail and Motor Trades fell from 88% of total employment to 81% while part-time and casual employment increased from 11.8% of total employment to over 19% in the same period, but independent research points to rates as high as 45% casualisation in some regions.

The social characteristics of casual labour combined with their more precarious labour market position make casual workers extremely vulnerable to employers. Research suggests that casual workers are more likely to be black, young and female than full-time permanent workers. Casual workers receive lower wages per hour and no benefits. They also do not have opportunities for mobility into permanent positions despite the reality that many have served as casual workers for years. They are also more vulnerable to dismissal without recourse than permanent workers. As a casual worker interviewed explained, "When [employers] deal with permanents, they demand so many things…We casuals, we just go".

Permanent workers interviewed on average tended to be older than casuals. The average age of permanents interviewed was 38 years while that of casuals interviewed was 29 years old. This also reflected the marital status of workers interviewed. 60% of permanents were married or live with their partners while only 19% of casuals did. Nevertheless, 77% of casuals had children who they supported. Hence most casuals were particularly vulnerable: many had to support family members and their children with only their wages. But as the worker quoted on page one indicates, individual workers’ wages were effectively declining as the company reduced the number of hours per week scheduled for each individual worker.

A casual employee was defined as those working three days or less per week. Most casuals in the store now worked for only one to 2 ½ days per week.

Increasing casualisation has reinforced divisions between groups of workers on the shopfloor which has posed contradictions for the union.

In 1993, the South African Commercial and Catering Workers Union (SACCAWU) negotiated a job security and flexibility agreement with Pick n’ Pay which converted certain casual workers to permanent status and gave them some of the benefits. Since this landmark agreement, however, the union has not had the same success in negotiating around the status of casual workers within other stores.

Casual workers interviewed at one store expressed disillusionment with the union. Some who had been members of the union for up to five years no longer wanted to belong: "Only permanent workers are represented". On the other hand, permanent workers felt particular antagonism towards their casual colleagues who they saw as threatening their jobs. As one permanent worker said, "We worry about our own jobs as these casuals may take our jobs, and our jobs are not guaranteed".

At a recent congress, the union took strong resolutions to organise casual workers and give them rights of representation; however, the union has done so at a moment when it is under threat of membership loss from casualisation.

Given that research suggests that both casual workers and permanent workers come from the same communities, and, in some cases, the same households, divisions between these workers rings an alarm for the labour movement. Unions must actively struggle to represent more marginal workers as part of the same working class.

The research shows that many of these young, (black) female causal workers remain in casual work for years. This means that they eke out a living in marginal jobs. It is in the interest of the union not only to organise them but to negotiate for more secure positions for these workers. Otherwise black women continue to work in the most precarious jobs trying to support their families.

The marginal status of casual labour suggests alternative organising strategies to allow casual workers to voice their own concerns. Organising strategies which use non-orthodox methods, for instance, community organising where workers from different workplaces come together through their neighbourhoods, may encourage casual workers to participate in unions. Furthermore, the union must recognise the different concerns of casual workers and show particular awareness of the gendered structure of casual work. For instance, child care and night transportation issues become critical to these workers, as does so-called ‘career pathing’.