In recent years scholars have debated whether the informalisation of work will put an end to trade unionism or lead to its transformation. Relying on a Tanzanian case study, Rizzo shows how informal workers together with their union have partly achieved employment regulation. However, little attention is paid to the Tanzanian labour movement's history and current developments within it. This could be due to the assumption that on a global level unions have a shared past and common features in the present. The debate should attach more value to the interplay between global pressures and national union structures and identities, as well as other important factors. The end of trade unionism belongs to the ‘Myths at work’, as Bradley et al. (2000) claim in their book of the same title. Using examples from the UK, they depict the ‘continuing resilience’ (157) of labour organisation in spite of changing employment structures and capital's increasing attempts at excluding unions from workplaces. In a like manner, but taking a global view, Munck (2011, 12) rebuts Castells’ (2004, 425–426) pessimistic vision that trade unions have been superseded and will most probably not ‘be part of new, transformative social dynamics’. A further contribution to this much larger debate is Matteo Rizzo's article ‘Informalisation and the end of trade unionism as we knew it? Dissenting remarks from a Tanzanian case study’ (2013), recently published in Review of African Political Economy. The author's starting point is Standing's thesis (2011) that the informalisation of work has made trade unions redundant. In particular, the growing absence of a clearly demarcated employee–employer relationship is seen as robbing trade unions of their target. Drawing upon an extensive field study of commuter bus (Swahili: daladala) workers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's largest city, Rizzo demonstrates how an association of informal actors gains support from its sectoral trade union (the Communication and Transport Workers Union, COTWU). In coalition, the association partly succeeds in struggling for employment regulation. Rizzo concludes with three general insights: first, studies of coalitions between informal workers and trade unions need an adequate time frame, since cooperation often evolves at a slow pace. COTWU's positive attitude towards reaching beyond its conventional clientele indicates that unions are not generally uninterested in such cooperation. Second, a political economy approach deepens understanding of workers' precariousness and power. Third, the lack of a clear employer–employee opposition does not automatically render efforts at organising ineffective.
Rizzo's article makes an excellent and timely contribution to the (still weak) discussion on union–informal economy relations in Tanzania. His description of how daladala workers mobilise colleagues, form an association and win support not only from the union but also from government actors – all this in a process marked by setbacks – yields important insights into informal labour in Dar es Salaam's transport sector. However, the way he frames his discussion raises certain questions. Rizzo attempts to refute Standing's overgeneralised statement about trade unions being outdated by using an example that could be better contextualised in terms of the history of the Tanzanian labour movement, as well as current discussions and developments that are taking shape within it. Details are missing that would allow for a more sophisticated picture to emerge. As a result, it remains vague how Standing's position and Rizzo's findings relate to each other. In what follows I will outline questions that could lead to a stronger contextualisation on two levels: first, questions relating to COTWU's and other Tanzanian trade unions’ attitudes and strategies towards organising in the informal economy, and second, questions in respect of Rizzo's and Standing's (implicit) assumptions about labour history.
COTWU's and other Tanzanian trade unions’ attitudes and strategies towards organising in the informal economy
COTWU has the capacity to organise informal workers. This is what Rizzo's article intends to show. However, the description focuses more on the activities of the informal workers than on the activities of the union. As a result important questions still need to be addressed: What were the initiatives of COTWU before daladala workers approached them? Did the transport workers' union have plans or strategies in place to win members in the informal economy, and if so, how successful were they? Rizzo quotes a labour representative who writes that COTWU has been trying to involve ‘these workers’ for a long time but found it difficult to reach them (2013, 296). More details are not given. Also, what were the effects on the union of the partly successful coalition? Was the cooperation between COTWU and the daladala workers a one-time issue or did it prompt unionists to pursue new recruitment strategies or forge more alliances? It would have been interesting to learn more about the discussions that took place within COTWU before, during and after the formation of a coalition with informal workers. Furthermore, this would have enabled the reader to assess COTWU's transformation, including its capacity to reach out to those precariously employed.
Linked to this point is the question as to how far COTWU is active or rather reactive in its organising efforts in the informal economy. In Rizzo's case, informal actors approached their sectoral union. Although transport constitutes one of the union's core realms, leaders were not aware of the problems daladala workers face. It is the informal actor's initiative (and later leadership) that provides the basis for successful cooperation – a point Rizzo stresses in his conclusion. This hints at obstacles unions potentially face when seeking to establish more cooperation of this kind. Only where associational power has already taken root among informal workers may unions easily gain ground – provided that unions are seen as partners and supporters and not as competitors, as was the case with the country's largest association of petty traders with regard to TUICO, Tanzania's Union of Industrial and Commercial Workers (Fischer 2013, 153). However, exactly the same union, TUICO, managed to overcome the above obstacles at other locations (Fischer 2013, 149). This provokes the question as to whether COTWU can be seen as an example for a new offensive trade union attitude towards organising in the informal economy. This question is not meant to diminish COTWU's efforts but to place them in a larger context, namely the context of gradual transformation which Tanzanian unions are currently undergoing. For instance, policy recommendations issued in 2004 by the umbrella labour organisation (Trade Union Congress of Tanzania, TUCTA) concede that although ‘many trade union leaders are still undecided about the informal sector,’ the ‘position of informal workers [should] be put at the top of the agenda’ (TUCTA 2004, 78). Studying the attitudes of labour leaders towards the above recommendation – with a focus on those unions known as being most active in this endeavour – I have reached a conclusion that differs in some respects from Rizzo's results: union efforts at stemming informalisation do exist, but are sporadic. The absence of strategies, directives and concerted action causes confusion within and among unions. Labour representatives hardly exchange information about their activities in the informal economy, nor do they disseminate it to the public. My respondents talked least about their activities and dwelled most on the problems they encountered. From this I conclude that the inclusion of informal workers is far from being at the top of the agenda. Another process is at the forefront of labour leaders' thinking: they are occupied with the organisational transformation from a corporatist socialist set-up to a liberalised union model, a process which is accompanied by struggles between old- and new-generation staff. Therefore, unions are unable to adequately address urgent economic issues (such as informalisation) that were not given importance in the socialist past (Fischer 2013). The significance of COTWU's cooperation with daladala workers could have become more evident with more insight into processes within COTWU and within the larger context of the Tanzanian labour movement.
Assumptions about labour history
One difficulty I faced when reading Rizzo's otherwise largely explicit discussion is the question as to what his dissenting remarks actually oppose. I noticed this initially in the title, which refers to ‘the end of trade unionism as we knew it’. Tanzanian trade unions are not obsolete in times of informalisation, as Rizzo shows. But was there ever a common trade unionism, known to all, that could be said to have ended? And if so, what features did it have? Did the Tanzanian labour movement, or more specifically COTWU, have the characteristics of ‘trade unionism as we knew it’, so that it can be cited as an example of renewal or continuing significance? All in all, it remains vague who is meant by ‘we’. Does Rizzo refer to the experience of countries in the North or the South, or even on a global scale? It is the last point, the idea of a global trade union experience, that Munck (2011, 13) cautioned against. He argues that the analysis of capitalist development needs to go beyond the North/South divide, but trade unionism has taken various, in part contradictory, forms on the national level. A glance at Tanzanian labour history reveals that relations between unions and informal workers are in no way new. Iliffe's (1970) case study of dockworkers or Bujra's study (2000) of domestic workers suggest that the pre-independence labour movement's concepts of ‘worker’ and ‘union’ were inclusive (more than one might expect). In their struggles for better labour conditions, some unions were able to join hands with informal workers – or even recruit them as members. These insights demonstrate that informality does not necessarily threaten the existence of Tanzanian unions. Later, under ujamaa socialism (starting in the 1960s), the labour movement was incorporated into the single political party and adopted its attitude of negating or ignoring precarious workers, since they did not fit into the ideology of a caring state (Fischer 2013). Since their liberalisation in the 1990s, the Tanzanian unions' power potential and repertoire of collective action have shifted. Voting power or strikes – the latter severely restricted over decades – constitute new means (Fischer 2011). How do these specific developments relate to ‘trade unionism as we knew it’? To avoid misunderstanding: I do not believe in the uniqueness and incomparability of labour movements across regions or historical periods. Global entanglements speak to the contrary. But I would argue for more historical depth in the analysis of union transformation. Labour leaders' attitudes to reaching out to the informal economy are not forged overnight, but develop over long periods of time. Workers not only need to be located within their economic structure, as Rizzo wrote in his abstract. They also need to be located in their labour history. This history could have helped to understand COTWU's role in the coalition.
With regard to Standing's (2011) position which Rizzo seeks to oppose, I cannot see how Standing's claims about the future of trade unions could apply to Tanzania. In his definition of the precariat, Standing delineates representation security as one form of labour-related security that became part of an ‘“industrial citizenship” agenda after the Second World War’ (2011, 10–11). He defines representation security as having ‘a collective voice in the labour market, through, for example, independent trade unions, with a right to strike’ (Ibid.). The precariat lacks this. Other workers' representation security seems to be dwindling. Ironically, liberalisation made Tanzanian trade unions independent and re-established their right to strike. Representation security (as defined by Standing) has increased as part of deregulation. New labour laws and less ideological control have granted trade unions room for manoeuvre that they do not exhaust. Caught up in their own organisational transformation, they may not yet address other consequences of liberalisation in their environment (Fischer 2011, 2013). This shows again that there is no uniform trade union experience on a global scale. As Munck (2013, 752) recently wrote, the precariat as an umbrella concept with its generalisations ‘at best describes a certain phase of Europe's post-Fordist working class history’ that Standing sees as a norm and extends to everywhere else in ‘Northern-centric’ fashion. In my eyes, Standing does not lend himself as a reference point to discuss trade union–informal economy relations in Tanzania.
Although shaken by the conflicting outcomes of liberalisation, Tanzanian trade unions are not on their deathbed. Some unions engage with informal workers, albeit on a low level. Rizzo's article depicts one largely successful cooperation in this field. The description and analysis of his case are insightful and stand out through their empirical groundedness. In the choice of his title and frame of discussion, a more critical distance from all too generalising tendencies would have sharpened his argument. Globally, trade unions might face similar pressures, yet their responses are still marked by national differences (Phelan 2007, 15). Important clues to understanding these responses (and in this transformation) lie in the interplay between socio-economic conditions and changes (such as informalisation) and union structures and identities as well as other important factors (cf. Frege and Kelly 2003). Labour history documents this interplay over time. This is where the debate about union transformation has to dig deeper.