Together with academics from the Copperbelt University and University of Zambia, team members presented research they have been carrying out since 2017 on employment dynamics in the copper mines of Zambia and Congo.
In a first session on linkages and brokering between foreign investors and local workers and suppliers, WiM Project PI Benjamin Rubbers presented his study of human resource managers in the Congo, looking at how HR managers mediate between foreign management teams and Congolese employees, facing the pressure of maintaining the trust of top management while implementing managerial decisions that often heighten the precarity of local employees. Wisdom Kaleng’a from the Department of Development Studies at the University of Zambia presented his doctoral work on the constraints facing Zambian sub-contracting companies since the 2000s as they try to build their businesses’ capacity and compete for contracts to supply mining houses.
A second panel focused on the politics of employment. WiM team member Emma Lochery presented her research on the regulation of labour in Zambia and the fragility of legal norms guiding the termination of employment and other aspects of work in the mining sector. Robby Kapesa, who recently completed his PhD at the Copperbelt University, gave an overview of his work on the effects of mining in Zambia’s North-Western Province, people’s disappointment at the scarcity of jobs created by the mines, and the effects the mines have had on chiefly authority and ethnic mobilization.
In a third panel, WiM team members James Musonda and Francesca Pugliese spoke about the social worlds of contemporary mineworkers. James traced how, because of the multilayered subcontracting arrangements in Zambia’s copper mining sector, miners have to navigate great uncertainty, which affects both their livelihoods and family relations. Francesca described the experience of female workers in the industrial mining sector in Congo, discussing how these women narrated their position in a masculine world of work.
Finally, team members Kristien Geenen and Thomas McNamara discussed dynamics of contemporary trade unionism in the two countries’ copper mines. Kristien focused on trade union elections at a mine in Kolwezi, DR Congo, comparing the large number of unions and automatic enrolment of workers into unions to the Zambian context, where there are fewer unions and workers have to request to join a union. Tom provided an overview of his work on new challenges facing Zambian unions, looking at the ongoing challenges presented by multi-unionism and subcontracting, the comparison between Chinese and Western companies, and discussions of tribalism in the union movement. The workshop closed with a reflection from Dr. Rosemary Chilufya, Senior Lecturer at the Dag Hammarskjold Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Copperbelt University.
The workshop program is available here.