ABSTRACT
Faced with a deep and prolonged economic crisis, virtually all African governments have been compelled since the 1980s by the International Monetary Funds (IMF), the World Bank and Western donors to implement a ‘neo-liberal’ reform package, in the form of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). The aim of SAPs has been to reduce the government’s role in the economy, to establish free markets and a secure environment for private capital, and to enhance Africa’s competitiveness in the global economic order. Their central demands include drastic cuts in public expenditure, such as the elimination of subsidies, dismantling of price controls, ‘rationalization’ of the public sector through privatization, lay-offs, wage cuts and company closures, liberalization of the economy guided by ‘market forces’ domestically and ‘comparative advantage’ internationally, promotion of commodity exports and foreign investment, and currency devaluation. In terms of macro-economic performance, structural adjustment has produced widely diverging results in Africa, but in terms of social consequences the outcome has been more uniformly negative. It is now generally recognized that employees have been among the most seriously affected by the economic crisis and structural adjustment. They are confronted with retrenchments and job insecurity, wage restraints and the suspension of benefits, soaring consumer prices and user charges for public services, ‘flexible’ management practices and subcontracting, and an intensification of managerial efforts to increase labour productivity.
