Roses and thorns in the vineyards
Since 2012, De Doorns workers have scored wins and losses, writes CAROL PATON
TWO years after violent strikes swept through the farms of the Hex River Valley, the vineyards have returned to their quiet state of beauty and bear testimony to an unprecedented achievement.
TWO years after the wave of violent strikes that swept through the farms of the Hex River Valley, the vineyards have returned to their quiet state of beauty. Leafy and green and laden with fruit, they stand in perfect rows beneath a bright blue sky and towering mountains. Midsummer is the height of the packing season and workers in neat green overalls and green caps are scattered through the fields.
But while peace looks to have been restored, much has changed since the strikes. The 52% hike in the minimum wage that farm workers in the area won for themselves — and all farm workers in SA — was an unprecedented achievement.
In De Doorns, the village centre of the valley that was the epicentre of the uprising, the signs of the victory still linger. In the dusty township of Stofland, the largely informal settlement where most farm workers live, newly tarred streets are also newly named. There is Rob Davies Street — after the minister of trade and industry who had a constituency office in the area — and P Gordhan street, in honour of the former finance minister.
The rocky sports ground of Stofland that was the rallying point for the strikers has been transformed and is now covered with bright green grass surrounded by a fence. Stofland, which rises up an imposing rocky hillside to the vineyards above, remains true to its name (Dustland), but there are dozens of newly built government houses and signs that many more will go up.
On the farms, work has changed, too. The increase in the daily payment rate from R69 to R105 meant that workers could earn as much in one day as they once earned in almost two. But while at first it appeared from employment figures that this increase had almost no effect on employment levels, two years later it is plain to see: fewer people have farm jobs and they work for fewer hours than before.
The story of De Doorns is an instructive one for SA, which has begun to debate the merits of a single national minimum wage across the board. A national minimum wage would be a floor for all sectors, below which wages cannot fall.
At present, minimum wages are set for each sector. In sectors such as agriculture, where there is no bargaining council, the minimum wage is set by the Employment Conditions Commission, a body on which government, labour and business are represented.
The debate will raise the essential tradeoffs. How will a national minimum wage affect employment? At what level should it be set? And will fewer — but better-paid — jobs assist in reducing poverty?
The effect on employment of the new farm minimum wage introduced in March 2013 was slow to show up in the national jobs figures. This led to the triumphant conclusion by some economists and academics that “the hype over job losses had been overdone”.
But it was only a time lag. Andre Bloem, an adviser on labour matters at farmers’ organisation Agri Western Cape, regularly visits farmers and consults to many of the large operations in horticulture. As the 2013 increase became effective in March, at the height of the harvest, farmers were unable to change work practices midstream.
“There were a lot of stories that there were going to be mass retrenchments. But the wage went up when all hands are needed. So farmers did what they could to restructure the pay packet until the season ended,” he says.
Included in the “restructuring” was a new levy of 10% of the wage for housing for those who lived on farms and full charges levied for all electricity. While a provision in the wage determination had always allowed farmers to make such deductions, this was hardly done in the past.
But by the start of the next harvest, at the end of that year and into 2014, the effect on jobs became clear. Quarterly labour force statistics collected by Statistics SA show a steady decline in agricultural employment, from 739,000 in the third quarter of 2013 to 686,000 a year later.
Mr Bloem says that in the second year after the farm workers’ strike, the focus shifted to increased productivity. “While the permanent staff remained much the same, among the seasonal labour there was a big reduction in people and man hours.
“Judging from the farms I visited, the number of seasonal workers has dropped by 25%. Seasonal workers are also employed for shorter hours. Whereas before a farmer would find something to do to fill up the time when the main task was done, now he puts all the seasonal labour back on the truck and takes them straight back to town.”
While farmers are able to apply to the Department of Labour for exemption from the minimum wage, this is only granted annually on the assumption that farmers should use the year to adjust the business. While some took this route initially, such applications have now dropped off entirely, Mr Bloem says.
Paying less just doesn’t work out, says Agri Western Cape CEO Carl Opperman.
“The people you want just won’t get on your truck. A good worker has a price on his head now.”
In De Doorns, the labour market is a visible phenomenon. Trucks line up each morning from 5am at the traffic circle in Stofland, where labour is bought and sold. With the table grape season now at its peak, the circle is busy with labour brokers and foremen, checking ID documents and loading up workers to take to the farms.
Peet Els, a heavyset man in velskoen and khakis, is the main broker in town. As a labour supplier to the whole of the Hex River Valley, he has a bird’s-eye view of how labour demand has changed over the past two years.
“Before the strike, more people worked. Now, fewer people get jobs and must work harder. In my business, I would employ around 200 people between May and September. After the strikes, I employ only 40 to 50 over this time,” he says.
“During the busy time, when the packing is done, I still employ around 300. But while I used to employ them from October to the end of April, now they are only wanted from December.”
Employment statistics for the fourth quarter of last year show this to be true: numbers are up again at previous levels for December at 742,000 employees in agriculture.
Farm worker Betty Fortuin is on the receiving end of the productivity squeeze. As one of the leaders of the 2012-13 strike, Ms Fortuin says she did not find a job at all last year, and landed one for the new season only a month ago.
A small, feisty 52-year-old who has worked on farms from the age of 13, she is anxious to ensure that her new employer doesn’t see us talking.
“At the end of the 2013 season, the foreman told me to go. He said I am a troublemaker. He said it like it was a joke, but I know it wasn’t. They see me as a ‘dangerous’ person,” Ms Fortuin says.
At her new job, she keeps a low profile and, despite her success in leading the strike, is no longer a union member.
“I won’t say we didn’t win anything from the strike. We did. We got 52%. But what happens now is that we used to work from September to April, but since the year of the strike we only work for three months. We used to work for six months of the year.”
The trade unions that helped rally workers during the strike — the Bawsi Agricultural Workers Union of SA (Bawusa), the Food and Allied Workers Union, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) — are nowhere to be seen. An office Bawusa opened in town after the strike has been shut for months; the bakkie farm
Judging from the farms I visited, the number of seasonal workers has dropped by 25%. Seasonal workers are also employed for shorter hours
R69 a day rate, farm workers were very far from being able to use their wage to buy sufficient nutrition.
Only in households where two wage earners earned R150 a day — which, coincidentally, was the wage rate asked for by the strikers — could a family of four come close to providing a food basket that could meet daily energy and nutrition requirements. and what farmers were accustomed to paying (R69).
Moral arguments for a decent wage are always countered by the threat of job losses. In the new debate for a national minimum wage, Cosatu — the most vocal of all the proponents — has tried to move beyond the moral and into the economic sphere.
Minimum wages are good for the economy, Cosatu says, because they increase the amount of money that workers have to spend. So even if some jobs are lost when marginal businesses go under, others will be created as the demand for consumer goods from workers with greater disposable incomes increases, and government policies are generally supportive.
The relationship between wage increases and job losses is not mechanical, says the federation’s policy co-ordinator, Neil Coleman, and with the right policies in place it might not lead to any job losses at all.
In the UK, for example, the Low Pay Commission found no