STATUTORY WORK RESERVATION — REQUIREMENT OF A STATIC OR OF AN EXPANDING ECONOMY?*
Authors: PIERCY MARY V. 
Published: December 2007

This article has attempted to present merely the setting of the current work reservation issue. It has briefly pointed to the different ways in which, during the growing period of South African industry, compromise has been made between the varying needs of actual and potential technological advance, and the White fear of competition in work from races at present content with a standard of living much lower than the White standard. That this process has generally been less of a compromise than it otherwise might have been, due to expansion and an urgent need for more and more non‐Whites in the economy, is implicit in the theme. On the other hand, we have the contrast between various sectors of the economy— mining, the public sector, and secondary industry—and the different ways in which they have dealt with the issue in their own sphere. Mining, where there has been no great technological change, has dealt with the matter by special statutory control, and, in addition, union‐enforced “voluntary” agreements on classification of occupation by race. The public sector has been the principal field of the “civiliscd wage policy and concentration of White employment. And in secondary industry, which has been subject to great teclinological change, work allocation has becn under tradc union and management “balance of power control, or alternately implicity dcterrnined by an indepcndent spccialist board in conformity with tricd and defincd principles.

The approach to the prcscnt turn of events includes a history of demands for revolutionary measures for statutory work reservation, representing the economic aspect of the political policy of aparthcid, part of which has subsequently been embodied in statute. Parliament has seen an emphatic relegation ofgeneraleconomic principles, if not of special cconomic issues, in conncction with this. In trade unionism, diflerences of outlook have resulted in a final split over the measurement and interpretation of the racial “problem in industry. And now. from the point of view of production and management, therc is the probability of a lessening of tlie iiiflucnces which make for harmonious industrial relations, and the possibility of forced rcorganisation in methods and workforce. To the extent that this does materialise, i t will not be in harmony with optimum economic developmcnt, which is particularly important in rclation to the long‐term matter of the Unions position in the African continent and other markets. The significance of the interdependence liere is that in so far as markets develop, reservation will be thc less nccessary. The qucstion remains, how will the legislation be used? At the moment this can be answercd only with reference to reservation orders made to date and the economic circumstances in which they were made, and by speculation on the probable long‐term objectives of the legislation and the principles with which it may be applied. This article has made some such speculation; the concluding article will consider what evidence is offered by the reservations in force and by their incidence in the economy, and will in addition sketch the character of tlie terms of the legislation itself and their theoretical implications.