Exploration of the survival and competitiveness of the textile, leather and clothing industries in the Eastern Cape, RSA

摘要

In the Southern Africa Region, the textile, leather and clothing industry has undergone many structural pressures in the face of increased low cost competition from South-East Asian countries but many firms have closed. Despite wholesale firm closures, significant numbers of firms have survived. This article seeks to explore in what sense the survival areas (firms who have survived or new entrants) in the textile, leather and clothing industry in the Eastern Cape Province are continuously coping face to these low cost competition, with an? objective to explore mechanisms that may led to the sector’s modernization. It looks at two important alternative strategies used in the production process on how to help survival firms and explores the effectiveness of these survival areas to promote the textile, leather and clothing industry’s competitiveness. This paper discusses about value added production paradigm and labour repression as two alternative strategies. It then highlights some of the findings about thirty seven surveyed textile, leather and clothing firms in the Province. The findings shows the extent to which firms have been able to respond to these new low cost competition challenges by focusing on best labour practices or increasing productivity. Further results indicated that thirty one out of thirty seven firms were using value added production paradigms while nineteen out of thirty seven firms were using labour cost cutting to survive and remain competitive. In brief, the majority of the firms were using value added production paradigm and were complying to best labour practices just to remain competitive. Lastly, the findings revealed that there was no indication of labour repression and twenty two out of thirty seven firms can be called ‘survival firms’ as their profit level decreased during the period from 2005 to 2010.