Labour resistance in Cameroon : managerial strategies & labour resistance in the agro-industrial plantations of the Cameroon Development Corporation

This book, which is based on field research carried out in 1985-1987, deals with labour control and labour resistance within the largest agroindustrial enterprise of Cameroon, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), over a period of forty years (1947-1987). Chapter 1 describes the characteristics and internal dynamics of the agroindustrial sector in postcolonial Cameroon. In chapter 2 the creation, development and expansion of the CDC is examined. Chapter 3 discusses the CDC management's efforts to control the supply of labour and to minimize wages; chapter 4 reviews CDC strategies of labour control, as well as collective and informal modes of labour resistance in the CDC estates; and chapter 5 focuses on trade unionism within the CDC. Chapter 6 evaluates the State's recent policy of promoting contract farming or smallholders' schemes in the villages surrounding the CDC estates and factories. The last chapter examines how the various forms of resistance have shaped the CDC workers' political consciousness and assesses their potential for bringing about progressive changes in Cameroon's political economy in general and the agroindustrial sector in particular