Collective Bargaining as an Internal Sanction: the Rôle of U.S. Corporations in South Africa

Abstract

<jats:p><jats:sc>Foreign</jats:sc> investment in South Africa during the past 20 years has been subject to criticism form several diverse schools of thought, ranging from those who believe it has contributed to country's economic growth without improving the condition of the black workers, to those who maintain that – at best – <jats:italic>apartheid</jats:italic> has been modernised rather than fundamentally changed.</jats:p><jats:p>Today the focus of attention has shifted to collective bargaining and trade union rights, to the action that can be taken on their own behalf by the ecomomically underprivileged and the politically dispossessed, and to the assistance which foreign-owned companies have been given in improving the terms and conditions of employment of their own non-white employees by the codes of conduct that have quite recently been adopted by their own governments.</jats:p>