THE WAGE COLOUR BAR

As capitalists, and with the fixed price of gold, mine-owners were concerned to keep their expenses low and production high. This section shows how the mine-owners used their power to keep black workers’ wages low while extracting as much work out of them as possible.

THE WAGE COLOUR BAR

Part II of this book has shown how the mine-owner developed a powerful system of labour control. This system enabled them to create a huge black labour force and maintain it as cheaply as possible, with minimum wages.

Soon after the Chamber of Mines was formed, the mine-owner members came to an agreement not to compete for labour. They agreed that all the mining companies would pay black workers a maximum wage-not more than two shillings and three pence (22 1/2) cents for a ten-hour shift. If any mine offered a black worker more than the maximum, the mine-owners would have to pay a fine to the Chamber. In this way, black wages were kept low, and the profits higher.

Black workers were not free to move around the towns and offer their labour for the best wages. They were forced to work under a powerful system of labour control.
It was this system of control that kept black wages so low on the mines. We can call this system the wage colour bar.

‘I as an employer of labour say it would be a good thing to have forced labour.’
-Sir George Albu, mine-owner, 1897

‘It is through the operation of the system of forced labour that the mining companies are able to keep African wages so low.’
-Transvaal Native Congress 1919.

MORE WORK FOR LOWER WAGES

The mine-owners made their profits by establishing the system of the wage colour bar. But there was another way that mine-owners could increase their profits - by getting the workers to work harder. If they worked harder, the mines would produce more gold, and more gold meant more profits.

Mine-owners and their managers found different ways of making their workers more productive. For example:

Two jobs for the price of one:

There were two important underground jobs in the mines for unskilled workers. The one job was to hammer or later, drill deep holes into the rock, so that dynamite could blow it up. The second job was to shovel the blasted rock into trucks or ‘trains’ and push these trains to the lifts to be taken above ground. This second job was called ‘lashing and tramming’.

It took strong men to do these jobs in the hot, airless tunnels underground. To save money, the mine-owners hired all underground, unskilled workers as ‘hammerboys’. But at the beginning of each shift, these men had do a few hours of lashing and mining. Only after they had done this work could they start the job that they were paid-, which was drilling.

So in each shift mine workers were doing extra work, although this was not part of the contract. This way they did more work the same wage - in other words, two jobs for the price of one.

Loafer-Ticket System:

There was another way that the mine-owners pushed the workers work harder - the loafer ticket system. This is how the system worked.

At the end of the day’s shift driller had to show that he had drilled at least 30 inches of rock. If he drilled 30 inches or more, the supervisor gave him a ticket. When the hammer man had collected 30 tickets, he was entitled to his monthly wage.

But if a hammer man did not manage to drill the 30 inches, he would get a ‘loafer’s ticket’ - for not working hard enough. A loafer’s ticket meant that a worker got no money for that ten-hour shift: he was allowed only porridge for his lunch and supper.

The loafer-ticket system gave the mine-owners extra work for no pay. Every hammer man had to do a few hours’ lashing and tramming. Then, if he was even an inch short of the 30 inches at the end of the shift, he got no pay for his work. The loafer-ticket system was very profitable for the mine-owners.

LONGER CONTRACTS

The mine-owners were anxious to keep workers on the mines for as long as possible. The longer the workers stayed, the more experienced they became and the better they worked. Profits went up, and recruiting costs stayed down.

The mine-owners used different methods to keep. Workers as long as possible on the mines.

Less money to spare:

One way to keep labourers on the mines for longer was to make sure they did not get, or save, enough money to leave. The mine-owners knew very well that as migrants, black workers would go home as soon as they had saved enough money; and that they would stay at home as long as their money lasted.

Mine-owners often used this fact as a reason for paying low wages. For example one mine manager told a government commission in 1904:

‘A large increase in wages will defeat its object, as the Native will work for a shorter period. ‘

In 1925 the Native Recruiting Corporation were still telling the government that an increase in wages was a bad thing for employers:

‘The main result would be that the native works for a shorter period than at present Mine-owners convinced the government that a low wage for black workers was necessary, or else the mines would lose their workers. Low wages forced migrant workers to work for a longer time on the mines.'[

Less money saved:

Mine-owners also encouraged mine-owners to spend their money. Trading stores were set up near the compounds.

These stores sold a wide variety of goods. They sold meat and other food for workers who were still hungry at the end of a hard day’s work. They sold the boots, which every worker had to buy for his work. They sold the everyday things to make life in the compound a little easier -soap, cigarettes, blankets, clothes, cards, musical instruments. They sold drink, too, until alcohol was banned to Africans in 1901.

The trading store was usually the only store near enough to the mineworker. He was therefore forced to buy his goods there, usually at higher prices than the prices in town.
The trading stores benefited two groups of people:

1. the store-keepers made good profits from their customers;
2. the mine-owners kept their workers for a longer time. The more money the workers spent while they were working on the mines, the less money they would save.

Many workers stayed working on the mines after their contracts were finished, because they had not saved enough money to take home.

EXTENDED CONTRACTS

By about 1910, most South African black mine-workers were being hired under six-month contracts. ‘Foreigners’ had to work for 12-month contracts.
But these contracts too longer than six and twelve months to complete. Most workers found that they were working for seven or 14 month In other words, their contracts were extended. How did this happen?

• Firstly, the Chamber of Mine laid down that 30 shifts must b counted as a month of work. I other words, a worker had t work 30 shifts before he could get his monthly wage. But took longer than a month to finish 30 shifts because workers had to have days of rest occasionally.
  So mine labourers had to work over a period of 34 or 35 days t work off one month of the contract.
  In this way, mine-labourers were paid only for their labour not for their days of rest. At the same time, the mine-owners get longer contracts, and more won from each worker.
• There was another way the contracts were extended. As we have seen, each worker had to ‘earn’ 30 tickets before he collected his monthly wage When a worker got a loafer ticket he lost a day’s work. loafer’s ticket extended his contract by yet another day. So, f example, if a worker got 1 loafer’s tickets during his contract on the mines, he would have to stay on and work for a extra 12 shifts before he completed his contract.
  The loafer ticket system was a double punishment’, said one mineworker to a government commission in 1913. ‘They do not get their tickets marked and they are not paid for that day the contract is not going on. The system of 30 shifts a month therefore combined with loafer ticket system to keep workers for weeks, or even months longer than they expected.

A SYSTEM OF FORCED LABOUR

As the years went by, more and more migrant workers were working for longer periods on mines. Most Mozambique workers were staying for nearly months.

Workers were staying for longer periods because the reserves were getting poorer and cost of living was going up. Yet the wages did not go up correspondingly - on the contrary, they went down.

In 1895, for example, the average wage for the unskilled worker on the gold mines was more than R6,35 a month.

Ten years later, the unskilled worker’s wage had dropped to R5,20
Yet we know that there was a continuous shortage of labour in the mines.- Usually when labour is short, workers’ wages go up. But in the South African gold mines, wages went down in the first ten years and remained the same for the next 40 years, even though the cost of living rose higher and higher through two world wars.

Meantime, migrant workers were forced to leave home and work for longer and longer periods to save the money they needed to support their families. As they entered the wage market on the mines, they became part of a system designed to keep the wages down - the migrant labour system, the pass laws, the compound and contract systems and WNLA’s methods of recruitment all added up to the wage colour bar - and served the need for profits from the gold mines.

In addition, the system of exploitation in the mines managed to squeeze even more work from unskilled workers, without extra pay.

Black workers were caught in the grip of a powerful system of labour control; so powerful that it became, in the words of the mine-owners themselves, a system of forced labour.

THE POWER OF THE MINE-OWNERS

The mining companies had become so powerful and important that they controlled the labour system in southern Africa, and even beyond. How did they do this?
One answer lies in the power of the mine-owners.

• They had power through the vast amounts of capital which they controlled.
• They had power through their ‘union’, the Chamber of Mines.
• And, after the Anglo-Boer War, they had power through the support of the government.

The Anglo-Boer War marks the turning point in the history of the mine-owners. After the war, from 1902, the needs of the mines dominated the country as a whole and changed the political and economic set-up of South Africa.

The following deasl with the Anglo-Boer War and its significance to the mine-owners.