“Ethiopian working people’s incomes are simply so low that they cannot be pilfered very much further.”
Dr. Samuel Andreas Admasie is a researcher and archive coordinator at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. He is also the author of the new book The Ethiopian Labour Movement: Trade Unions, Collective Action, and Contestation, 1960-2020. Dr. Admasie was kind enough to answer questions about his book and also about current issues relating to labour, strikes, war, and economic “reform” in Ethiopia.
AT: In your book, you conclude (p. 309), “The history of the Ethiopian labour movement presents itself in the shape of repeated cyclical movements” – and then you summarize three main cycles. For readers who haven’t had a chance to look at your book yet, could you describe these three cycles here?
SA: These cycles represent waxing and waning levels of labour mobilisation. They are readily discernible either when looking at the trade unions as institutions – in degrees of assertiveness, activity, and membership size – or in militancy and strike action by rank-and-file workers, whether formally organised by a union or not. There have, as you mentioned, been three such cycles.
The first one began with an increase in wildcat strike activity in the late 1950s, and lasted until the mid-1970s. It resulted in the legalisation of trade unions, the emergence of a country-wide labour movement and its progressive strengthening and growth, a continuous and conspicuous growth of wages – particularly in unionised sectors – and a steady radicalisation of the movement. By the mid-1970s, it was ready to take on both employers and the government in a massive wave of strikes. It was brought to an end by massive violent repression of labour radicals by the military Derg government, and a meticulous purge of the unions.
The second cycle emerged with an uptick in strike activity in the first half of the 1990s and a struggle to reestablish an independent trade union confederation, and came to an end when the government repressed and reasserted control over the trade union movement in the mid-decade. It was thus the shortest cycle, and did not result in many lasting gains, except a re-founded trade union confederation – CETU – and a new place for trade unions in legislation.
The third cycle began in the 2010s and is still ongoing. It has been marked by a conspicuous increase in strike activity, the revival of assertive and independent trade unionism, and some major victories for the trade union movement, including in the field of legislation and opening new parts of the economy to unionisation. It has also generated the most rapid expansion of trade union membership – tripling within this decade to reach over a million members.
In each of these cycles, rank-and-file militancy and wildcat strike activity have preceded the development of higher-level trade union assertiveness at the institutional level. In between them, there have been long periods of yellow, government-controlled trade unions, combined with low levels of strike activity and stagnant trade union membership. But in each case, these periods have, over time, given rise to new cycles of mobilisation.
What is notable is that two out of three cycles have emerged in the dying days of one regime or another, and their repression has somewhat dovetailed with new governments – the Derg in the 1970s and the EPRDF in the 1990s – stabilising their rule. The vicissitudes of the labour movement have therefore sometimes been dismissed as mere outcomes of political conjunctures. But that is to make things a bit too easy for oneself. It is true that the opportunity factor has tended to be stronger when at least the repressive capacities of the state have been somewhat reduced. But given that these cycles have tended to precede changes of government by years, or even decades, the causal direction is more complex than that. What can be said with a greater level of certainty is that Ethiopian governments – of very different varieties – have been prone to vigorously repress the labour movement when circumstances and balance of forces have permitted it, and that this remains the most significant danger to the movement.
AT: What explains the uptick in strikes in Ethiopia in the 2010s? Also, I realize your account ends in 2020, but has the trend of increased strikes continued into the 2020s?
SA: Ending the account in 2020 came quite naturally. Partly because the coming of civil war and intensified repression that year ushered in a whole new political context whose long-term consequences are still very unclear, and partly because the global Covid pandemic put a sudden but temporary dent into labour mobilisation. So, it is the former set of factors that demands some caution in answering this question, given that the outcome still very much hangs in the balance.
But I think it is fair to say that, so far, the frequency of strikes remains somewhat lower than in the last years of the 2010s but significantly higher than a decade before. Two recent examples illustrate this: the successful strike of DHL workers in May – which resulted in substantial wage gains – and the strike of non-unionised health care workers that began the same month.
The latter strike has – as could probably be expected – not resulted in any substantial concessions from the main employer, which, in this case, is the government. However, I think it is undeniable that the strike has brought to the fore how unsustainable wages and working conditions have become, even for relatively privileged categories of workers, including medical doctors, and in doing so, it has also garnered widespread social solidarity and highlighted the potential of cross-national solidarities. It is an obvious social justice issue which Ethiopians from all nationalities and nearly all walks of life can easily relate to.
AT: Can you tell us about how the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions (CETU) has reacted to the conflict in Tigray?
SA: It has reacted in a quite uniquely principled way. While nearly all comparable institutions – government, religious, or civil society – lined up to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the army, rile up militarism and inflame divisions between masses of different nationalities, or even contribute resources to the war effort against fellow compatriots, CETU resisted calls to do the same. You can imagine the pressure the trade union movement came under, so resisting these calls – refusing to pit workers against workers – was no simple feat.
Instead, CETU has consistently called for peace and protection of civilians in Tigray, as well as in other regions afflicted by armed conflict. It has also called for the rebuilding of the war-shattered economy. Trade unions have also assisted members affected by the war, and, in some cases, successfully pressured employers to uphold the rights of workers whose workplaces were shut down by the war – including restoration of employment and the payment of back wages.
What this principled stand has meant is that the trade union movement has avoided complicity in the reprehensible crimes against civilians that these militarist enterprises entailed, that it has retained its credibility as representing all Ethiopian working people, and that it remains a rare example of an all-Ethiopian organisation that has not compromised itself by engaging in divisive demagoguery and national partisanship. It has refused to pit workers against workers, whatever their nationality. For that reason, it has also been able to operate in regions severely affected by the conflicts.
AT: Ethiopia has embarked upon a sweeping program of economic reform and liberalization, the Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda, backed by the IMF and the World Bank. To me, as someone who does not follow Ethiopia closely, the reform program looks broadly similar to the kind of economic reforms that have been implemented elsewhere, for example in Nigeria – floating the currency, cutting subsidies, increasing taxes and fees, valorizing the private sector, etc. Is the reform program just the imposition of neoliberal orthodoxy on Ethiopia? Or are there distinctive features of the reforms that set them apart from the kind of “structural adjustment” template?
SA: You are right that there is a striking resemblance. The reform agenda is, of course, anything but homegrown. One suspects that whoever coined the name had a keen sense of dark humour. This package of reforms is indeed a near carbon copy of the list of demands that the IMF and the U.S. have been making on Ethiopia since the 1990s, but which largely fell on deaf ears until recently. This includes the key question of devaluing the Birr.
One can only speculate about the real views of key decision makers with regard to this – whether they are in fact as enthusiastic to largely surrender control over the economy and follow IMF directives as they appear outwardly or not. In one sense, this represents a drastic abdication of ambition by Ethiopian ruling classes, who now appear content to function as an auxiliary rentier-comprador class. But there are identifiable structural reasons why this has occurred at this juncture. The most obvious one is that in hard currency terms, Ethiopia is, de facto, a bankrupt state. The balance of trade has long been unsustainable, leading to debt levels that can no longer be serviced without new loans. Since the Ethiopian state, in its current form, lacks both the determination and structural capacity to pursue inward-oriented solutions, that means a deal must be struck with the IMF, whatever the costs. There are also attendant political factors, but it is this factor – the economic one – that is key.
AT: In the Addis Standard in August, Samson Hailu wrote, “Ethiopia’s intensified tax collection efforts, while yielding nominal fiscal gains, are occurring amidst a rapid decline in consumer purchasing power, imposing significant real costs on households. The combination of sustained inflation and the introduction or expansion of various taxes is notably eroding the already limited incomes of the poor and those on fixed wages.” Meanwhile, Dawit Haylemariam has warned that “IMF riots” could occur in Ethiopia. What are the political implications of the economy’s trajectory? How do you see the labour movement reacting to the economic reforms and shifts, now or in the future?
SA: What Samson Hailu points out is entirely correct. It’s not just that the pressure on working people is relentless, it is a fact that incomes – wages in particular – are already wholly insufficient. We see how labour in large parts of the economy has to be subsidised by other sectors, since wages are frequently far too low to pay for even the upkeep of individual workers – never mind the cost of social reproduction. The situation was already acute before the devaluation of the birr – it is difficult to find words to describe it now.
Yet, I don’t find it likely that this will result in any “IMF riots”, or any other form of mass political protest. That is because the collective memories of how mass protests quite consistently have been met with lethal force – in, for example, 1969, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1991, 1993, 2005, 2018, and as late as 2020, security forces have fired into demonstrations. No stable Ethiopian government has accepted mass protests, and all have been ready to use whatever violence deemed necessary to end it. Those are the widely understood parameters of political space in Ethiopia, and I find it highly unlikely that the current government would expand them at this stage of its existence.
The most pertinent political implications, I find elsewhere. Ethiopian working people’s incomes are simply so low that they cannot be pilfered very much further – these additional taxes aside. This appears to be acknowledged by the ruling categories, which have meanwhile, in practice, given up on inward-oriented demand-based growth strategies. That’s one explanation why their attention has turned towards urban land for enrichment. Land in Ethiopia remains under public ownership and therefore under bureaucratic control. This makes it prone to seizure and de facto privatisation under lease agreements. People living on highly valued urban land have come to be seen less as a resource from which surplus labour is to be squeezed, and more as a nuisance. So, Ethiopia has started to exhibit traits typical of an enclave economy – with a dispossessed ‘surplus population’ – without any enclaved resource but land. If one looks past this factor, the breakneck speed of urban demolition and redevelopment – in fact a huge campaign of primitive accumulation – makes little sense. But this factor fundamentally alters the relations between rulers and ruled. One may expect, once primitive accumulation in terms of urban land is complete, that eyes will eventually be turned toward rural land. That may have more immediately combustible political effects.
How the labour movement reacts to the reforms and shift is a separate, but connected issue.
On the one hand, the trade union movement is careful not to trigger a repeat of 1994, when the government shut down and began a campaign to take over the trade union movement. The government campaign was actually triggered by CETU’s open opposition to the implementation of a structural adjustment programme. It involved harassment, arrests and exile of trade union activists, and the installation of new leaders, entirely subservient to the government. As much as mass protests are not expected to be tolerated by the government, neither is open opposition to the government. CETU needs to walk a tightrope, trying to influence government policy and legislation without appearing as opposing the government.
One key field in which it can seek and is seeking to do so is minimum wage provisions. Whereas CETU succeeded in inserting a clause in the 2019 labour law which stipulated the formation of a board to set minimum wages, this board has not yet been founded. Consequently, no minimum wage levels have been set. But CETU has been campaigning – carefully but consistently – for this issue. It is clear that CETU enjoys widespread popular support for this demand. If and when the board is formed, it will quite likely introduce a new arena in which the labour movement can seek to champion the popular demand for higher wages.
However, there are also obvious limits of what can be achieved. Repeated applications for permission to hold rallies have been turned down by the authorities. CETU cannot be expected to assume a position of active resistance to government-IMF programmes. It simply does not have the organisation required for that, and it operates in relative isolation, in a context where no other mass organisations or popular movements have appeared as potential allies. In that context, it would not be capable of sustaining itself in the face of the repression it would surely trigger.
AT: What do you make of the recent departure of Mamo Mihretu as governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia?
SA: Without speculating about the exact causes – and whether he was pushed out or resigned of his own volition – I do not think his departure changes anything substantially. The key reforms pushed by the Washington institutions for decades have already been implemented or, at the very least, accepted. Control over key commanding heights of the economy, if one will, has been surrendered.
It speaks volumes that the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa used the occasion of his resignation to publicly thank this particular officer for his service. The obvious question that arises is: “service to whom?”. The fact that the US embassy put out this statement – a very unusual act for a diplomatic mission – highlighted this question and probably made things a bit more explicit than intended. This was probably something of an error, caused by enthusiasm.
The embassy also urged the Ethiopian government to continue pursuing the “reform path” he had championed. As a detached acknowledgement of the adverse social impact that can be taken for granted, it added that “change is never easy”. But the US embassy probably does not need to worry that Ethiopia is about to abandon this path. The most important IMF prescriptions have already been implemented. What’s left are only incremental tasks, such as further lowering the thresholds for foreign investments, removing protections, and continuing efforts to privatise state-owned enterprises (which the government is already attempting). Given that Ethiopia is entirely dependent on further loans to sustain even key imports, the IMF already has all the leverage it requires to continue prying the Ethiopian economy open.
AT: Your book opens by noting that many researchers have dismissed the role and significance of organized labour in Ethiopia. It seems to me that one could apply the same observation Africa-wide. What are some of the best histories of labour movements in other African countries?
SA: That is a very pertinent observation. I have, for some time, struggled to understand how little attention African labour movements attract in contemporary scholarship. There seems to be one major argument: that the much greater attention African labour movements got in scholarship from the 1960s and the following decade was unwarranted and the result of Eurocentric projections that the influence of African labour movements would mimic labour movements in the industrial economies of the Global North, and therefore become larger and more influential. The response – intended as a corrective – has been to largely ignore them.
While the original argument has some merit, the corrective is terrible. In fact, one can argue, this is merely the same Eurocentrism in disguise, but in reverse. For whereas European labour movements had their heyday around this time, they have since frequently declined, reducing their lure on scholarship. This has triggered a discussion on a “global decline” of trade unionism, which is nearly always rooted in examples from early-industrialised economies. To come to the conclusion that there is a global decline, one has to, for example, remove the quite pertinent example of China, but also several African cases, Ethiopia being one of them. But this idea of a “global decline” is instead projected on African cases, and when reinforced by the argument that African labour movements had in the past received unwarranted attention, it is wielded as another reason to ignore them a priori. It is very unfortunate, because the more interesting questions to be asked – why it is that trade union movements in some African countries are much more successful than others, and what they can achieve – are taken off the table, on the assumption that they must suffer from the same “global decline” as European movements.
In Ethiopia, as we have seen, that is definitely not the case. But there are other examples of trade union advances and successful strikes in recent years, such as in Ghana and Nigeria. In the latter case, a candidate – however suspect his track record and policies may be from a labour perspective – running on the trade-union-founded Labour Party’s ticket came close to winning the national elections a couple of years back. And only some days ago Nigerian unions forced the Dangote Group – one of the largest groups of companies on the continent – to commit to ending union-busting policies, after launching a successful strike against the group’s fuel distribution system across the country. This occurred just over a year after Nigerian unions launched a successful general strike, which ultimately resulted in a substantial increase in the country’s minimum wage. If one goes a bit further back, there is the role played, for example by Tunisian and Egyptian unions in the “Arab Spring” movements and, before that, the role of trade unions in the democracy struggles around the continent of the 1990s, and the liberation movements yet earlier. But returning to contemporary times, I think the situation – the dearth of in-depth investigation – warrants close studies of the situation in many countries, the mentioned ones being just a few examples. At the International Institute of Social History, we have been working hard to contribute to rectifying this situation, both in terms of research and through archival partnerships with African trade union and labour organisations.
Alex Thurston is an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati. He studies Islam and politics in Africa.
This interview was first published on Alex Thurston’s Substack.
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