ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, I advanced the argument that the apartheid government shared an interest with employers in pursuing a capital-intensive path of development which ensured that African workers were advanced into semi-skilled, operative work, but not into the skilled trades. As evidence that the government did pursue such a policy, I relied on the policy statements of National Party politicians and on the content and effects of labour laws passed by parliament. As far as evidence of how employers restructured the organisation of production, I relied on national labour statistics which demonstrated the extent to which semi-skilled machine operative employment grew at the expense of heavy, unskilled manual employment. However, evidence concerning government labour policies and employment statistics are not sufficient in themselves to demonstrate exactly how employers were able to fragment the skilled trades in order to employ more black workers on semi-skilled tasks. Nor do these statistics show how African workers were excluded from employment in the skilled trades. A detailed analysis of the ways in which production was transformed and of the strategies of white trade unions will complete the picture as to how the racial division of labour was restructured.
