The unions are the mines’ biggest partners, but they do not act like it: union ‘corruption’ and shareholder-primacy on Zambia’s copperbelt

ABSTRACT This article explores the dichotomous co-production of ‘corrupt unions’ and ‘shareholder-driven corporations’. It argues that discourses of Zambian union corruption convolved national political history, shifting moral economies and global responses to organised labour’s disempowerment; obfuscating the structural causes of low wages and under-development. Semiotically created in comparison to corrupt unions were shareholder-driven, economically rational corporations. In problematising the naturalisation of these actors’ economic choices, the article reconceptualises their actions through exploring negotiations over their responsibilities between workers, employers and the state. It argues that in these negotiations narratives of shareholder primacy and Corporate Social Responsibility emboldened claims for high profits, low wages and minimal tax takes; while a self-reinforcing perception of corruption lowered workers’ expectations of what could be achieved through collective action.