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Zaire The Working Class
This class includes employees of public and
parastatal
(see Glossary) entities, large private companies, small
companies, rural
plantations, and lumbering enterprises. The public-sector
employees
have been the least content, principally because many are
not
covered by civil service status and have known repeated
layoffs,
delays in pay, and insecure work conditions. Turnover in
the work
force of large corporations, however, including the large
parastatal General Quarries and Mines (Générale des
Carrières et
des Mines--Gécamines), has tended to be low. Consistently
paid
salaries, company stores, and company medical services
have been
key elements in retaining the long-term loyalty of such
employees.
Turnover also appears to be rather low in rural
enterprises, where
isolation has resulted in localized recruitment patterns
and little
contact with other workers.
Workers have shown a sense of class consciousness in
launching
episodic strikes beginning as early as 1941, when at least
sixty
were killed at Élisabethville (now Lubumbashi). Unions,
however,
have been generally weak, and the postcolonial state has
generally
controlled similar episodes by coupling the offer of
limited
concessions with the jailing or intimidation of strike
leaders.
Whereas workers have shared a clearly articulated sense of
who
"they" are--namely, acquéreurs, politicians,
abacost
(see Glossary) wearers, Mercedes owners, and regime
courtiers--"we"
has been a less clear-cut category and has tended to be
defined by
place of work, city, and ethnicity. Still, the general
consciousness of inequality and of social polarization has
remained
acute; fueling it has been the dramatic decline in
workers' incomes
(see Gross
Domestic Product
, ch. 3).
Data as of December 1993
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