Worker rights and the neoliberal state under Covid-19

Abstract This article traces how the South African state responded to protect workers in the formal sector during the first year of the Covid Covid-19 pandemic. It argues that the protections that the state sought to offer, in the form of the income relief from the Covid-19 Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme and its limited attempts to ensure occupational health and safety are grounded in neoliberal logics. These logics, however, are not new and were cemented into post-apartheid labour law through the Labour Relations Act and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, which enabled ‘regulated flexibility’. The ‘techniques of neoliberalism’ have also played an important role in shaping the institutions responsible for protecting and enforcing worker rights, the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration and the Department of Employment and Labour. The article details how neoliberal logics have shaped the operation of these institutions and, in turn, conditioned the state’s pandemic responses with long-term consequences for deepening inequality, access to justice and worker rights.