Abstract
Post-apartheid South Africa’s turbulent industrial relations and experience of wider social protest movements mirror the challenges confronting industrial relations systems globally, suggesting how workers’ representation could be reconfigured in the future. Traditional trade unions have so far failed to address the agenda of marginalization, inequality and poverty which might have enabled them to organize workers currently excluded from union membership. Meanwhile, globalization has been opening up opportunities for new forms of organization and institutional innovation. The outcome, the author argues, will be determined by how key actors in the world of work respond to the marginalized workers of the world.