Plantation labour and economic crisis in Cameroon

The few existing studies on the response of labour to the economic crisis and structural adjustment in African countries tend to focus on the (oppositional) relations between the State and central labour organizations. They largely ignore the response of workers and unions at the workplace. This article describes how workers and unions in the tea estates of Cameroon have dealt with the economic crisis and structural adjusment. It shows that the workers have adopted various strategies to cope with the structural adjustment measures planned and implemented by the management in close cooperation with the State-controlled unions. Two striking facts emerging from the analysis are that the majority of the estate workers have never completely abandoned their 'traditional' militancy, and that gender differences in the degree and modes of labour resistance tend to be slight. The data are derived from fieldwork carried out in 1991-1993 in the tea estates of the Cameroon Development Corporation, the largest agro-industrial parastatal in Cameroon. Bibliogr., note, ref., sum