Peasants and workers unite: Labour fragmentation and strategic alliances in cotton production in Burkina Faso

Abstract

Capital’s strive for maximising profit by exploiting labour goes beyond national scales. This is by far not a solely recent phenomenon; yet in recent times of globalisation, capital’s operation on transnational and global scales have intensified, with relevant implications for labour, such as increasing fragmentation alongside global value chains, outsourcing, casualisation and various forms of informalisation of labour. This comes along with challenges to labour organization. In this light, it has been argued in global labour studies that labour needs to mobilize and campaign on the transnational and global scale, too. In this paper, I investigate which conditions impact what scales are useful for labour organizing and struggles. I argue that besides transnational networking and campaigns, intra- and inter-class solidarity and collaboration at the local and national scale are central to claim workers’ rights and needs, even in highly transnationalized sectors.

By taking the cotton sector in Burkina Faso as a case study, it is analyzed how various groups along the chain of production in the country organize and mobilize for collective action to raise their claims: smallholder cotton producers, and formal, informal and precarious workers in the cotton factories. It is argued that the fragmentation of labour and reproduction between agrarian and non-agrarian, rural and urban, formal and informal hampers organizing and collective action. Inter-class collaboration, solidarity and strategic alliances potentially can bridge this fragmentation and thus strengthen workers’ power. To achieve better conditions of work and life for the variety of workers in the sector, it is crucial to overcome the fragmentation of labour and strive for solidarity between small-holder producers and factory workers. This means that even though the sector is highly transnationalized, in Burkinabé cotton production, collaboration between the various groups on the local and national scale for now turns out to be more important than transnational campaigning. The principal reason for this is that smallholders and workers have distinct interests but a common opponent, which is the cotton industry. As long as peasants and workers do not join forces, they risk being pitted against each other, in favour of capital’s interests.

However, in the light of the embeddedness of the sector in global production networks, transnational networking might still be a promising strategy but comes along with substantial challenges that are distinct for various actors. I discuss possible obstacles for transnational networking for the smallholders and informal and casual workers, and show how local and national cooperation may be a prerequisite for such approaches.