SAR Report on Unskilled European Workers (1947)

South African Railways, report of committee appointed to Investigate the employment of unskilled European Workers in the railway service, 1947, hardcover, large format, original, English/Afrikaans text, 88 pages, condition: as new. 

A pivotal document examining the "poor white" problem in the South African Railways and Harbours (SAR&H). It evaluated state interventions aimed at protecting unskilled white workers from lower-wage Black competition

Prior to the report, the government historically enforced policies ensuring that state-run enterprises like the railways prioritized white workers for unskilled, manual jobs to prevent them from slipping into poverty.

By the mid-1940s, economic pressures and wartime industrialization forced a re-evaluation of these segregationist protections. The report wrestled with the high cost of maintaining a subsidized, exclusively white unskilled labor force when the economy heavily relied on the South African system of migrant labour for cheaper, more practical manpower.

The committee investigated the inefficiencies of barring Black workers from advancement while artificially subsidizing inefficient white workers. It highlighted the structural dilemma that settler capitalism faced between maintaining racial hierarchies and ensuring economic viability.

The ongoing debates surrounding this report paralleled concurrent labor crises, such as the Dalgleish Commission Report (1948) in Northern Rhodesia, which also exposed how institutionalized colour bars artificially drove up costs and caused industrial unrest. The findings ultimately informed the labor and segregationist frameworks finalized after the National Party took power in 1948, shifting state focus away from rehabilitating poor whites via manual labor toward managing the broader, highly racialized apartheid economy