This article analyses how, through adopting responsibility for their co-workers’ livelihoods, workplace-based unionists shaped Zambian mining capitalism. I argue that union branch executives learnt that they could best assist their co-workers through offering them financial services and through co-operation with company HR. During wage negotiations, unionists drew strength from this understanding, encouraging them to see ever-decreasing salaries as market-driven, and discouraging the militancy that has on occasion raised wages. Building upon the anthropology of trade unionism, I detail how tangible solidarities within a workplace shape unions’ ethical-political projects; and argue that subjectivation through union ideologies can discourage scrutiny of structural injustice. Linking anthropology that explores capitalism through relationships and moral norms to liberalized capital's disempowerment of unions, I claim that unionists’ moral, technical, and physical labour mitigated, yet inadvertently enabled, worsening working conditions.

中文翻译：

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合理的谈判？基于工作场所的工会主义者的主观性、工资谈判以及道德政治项目的日常生活

本文分析了以工作场所为基础的工会主义者如何通过对同事的生计承担责任来塑造赞比亚矿业资本主义。我认为工会分支机构的高管了解到，他们可以通过向同事提供金融服务和与公司人力资源合作来最好地帮助他们。在工资谈判期间，工会成员从这种理解中汲取力量，鼓励他们将不断下降的工资视为市场驱动，并劝阻有时会提高工资的战斗性。在工会主义人类学的基础上，我详细说明了工作场所内的有形团结如何塑造工会的道德政治项目；并认为通过工会意识形态的主观化可以阻止对结构性不公正的审查。