A reasonable negotiation? Workplace‐based unionists’ subjectivities, wage negotiations, and the day‐to‐day life of an ethical‐political project

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses how, through adopting responsibility for their co‐workers’ livelihoods, workplace‐based unionists shaped Zambian mining capitalism. I argue that union branch executives learnt that they could best assist their co‐workers through offering them financial services and through co‐operation with company HR. During wage negotiations, unionists drew strength from this understanding, encouraging them to see ever‐decreasing salaries as market‐driven, and discouraging the militancy that has on occasion raised wages. Building upon the anthropology of trade unionism, I detail how tangible solidarities within a workplace shape unions’ ethical‐political projects; and argue that subjectivation through union ideologies can discourage scrutiny of structural injustice. Linking anthropology that explores capitalism through relationships and moral norms to liberalized capital's disempowerment of unions, I claim that unionists’ moral, technical, and physical labour mitigated, yet inadvertently enabled, worsening working conditions.

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