LABOUR
Ugandans spend Labour Day unconsciously as simply another
public holiday. Labour Day has a long treacherous history whose commemoration
requires deeper and purposive reflections on labour. The debate
on labour has spanned generations, and yet no one ever explains the relations
of labour to capital like Marx and Engels ever did. These analyses allow us time
to place appropriate value on our everyday struggle for work, income, and a
better living, as humans. Irrespective of your qualification, political connections,
or ethnicity, we should use Labour Day to evaluate the changing meaning of
labour in this era.
To Marx, Labour, is a commodity in the market. He averred that
capitalism separates the person from his labour, and allows the person to sell
his or her labor in the open market to a bidder. In the capitalist organization
of labour, man is alienated from the product of his own labour – that is,
through differentiation and specialization, either one is hired to make parts
of a whole with no idea of the whole, or are paid very little that they hardly
afford the product of their labour (simplified).
With the hegemony of neoliberalism, many anti-statist policies
such as restructuring and deregulation have created havens for exploitative corporatists
in the private sector that bring impress upon us a lifestyle transitions and
diseases. The state has retracted from its public obligations - in funding
social services provision, while maintaining some juridical powers. Unlike in
the past where government was the main employer, in the aegis of neoliberalism,
it has relegated these roles to corporations/private sector.
Uganda is a captive of neoliberal policies allowing for
limited jobs in government, which are tightly controlled and distributed on sectarian
basis. The bureaucracy, political patronage, and corruption conspire to sabotage
rapid growth in the private sector to absorb the abundant labour.
The Museveni regime adopted structural adjustment program in
the early 1990s and have since created an economy in which the state, and not
government, maintains partial control over certain sectors – such as banking,
education, health, while allowing greater role for private investors in every
aspects of life. Unfortunately, the over dependence on foreign investors have
not yielded much to the needs of the ever growing pool of labour. This has led
to a huge gap in services (decline in quality of education, and near collapse
of healthcare system), and a huge labour pool.
Recent employment statistics demonstrates
over 80% youth unemployment, and over 90% unemployment rates among university
and college graduates. Moreover, those employed are likely to be under
employment, in precarious employment - part time, occasional employment with no
job security, benefits, and/or unsafe and stressful working conditions. Our working
conditions have a direct bearing on our living conditions, which inadvertently
affects our overall health. Capitalism produces mental health crises in its
zeal for expropriating profits wherever it is entrenched.
In its response to the sluggish private sector growth, the Ugandan
state has shifted its employment policy from contracting social service
providers to lavishing politics. The wage bill for elected and appointed
politicians surpasses the state investment in career public servants. This
should worry the left leaning labour unionists.
The relation of labour to freedom is in the control over
land. Ugandans are losing their land and control over productivity, even for
subsistence. When the regime expropriates all the land from the people, then
everybody will start to rent land they once owned for a fixed period as proposed
in Buganda recently. If you have no income to service your tenancy, you are
rendered homeless – dehumanized. Without ownership of land, everyone becomes a
tenant. That is the essence of powerlessness and loss of freedom. The way this
economy is organized and operationalized will appropriate your land and place
it in the hands of a few landowners.
A Labour Day reflection like this allows for a conscious reflection
on the meaning of labour, and a better understanding of the economy and emerging
changes in societal structures of power and class. Independent workers Unions should
emerge from every profession and field of service besides professional
associations. Evidences show that in capitalist societies, a high union density
remediates unfair labour expropriation.
The END
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