Part II suggested that the contradictions generated by capitalist development, in particular the transition to monopoly capitalism, created a crisis of control in work relations. This crisis operated on two levels. On one level capital’s need to increase the productivity of labour was limited by the success of the diluted craft unions in maintaining a monopoly over certain jobs. The increasing dilution of these jobs, previously held by whites, made the opening of the ‘closed’ unions a necessity for the protection of jobs. The withdrawal of state support for the racial exclusion of blacks from the Industrial Council system provided the opportunity for the IMS to open its membership to blacks.

The more significant crisis of control over work relations in the foundry arose from the racially despotic nature of management’s control over black labour. As reliance on the white supervisor and his induna gave way to more sophisticated control through management-initiated liaison committees, growing resistance was encountered from organized black metal workers. Responding to the presence of a growing number of semi-skilled black workers in the industry, black unions emerged in the early 1970s. Yet management’s strategy of preempting the union through the liaison committee, facilitated by the tactics of ‘fear and smear’, inhibited the transition of black metal workers from phase two (the struggle for recognition) to phase three (negotiating and maintaining an agreement). It was, ultimately, the popular struggle in the townships in 1976 that widened the nature of the crisis, forcing capital and the state to search for new forms of social control in the workplace.