RR 16 Andries repro.p65 - Africa Portal

S C H O O LG O V E R N M E N TU N I V E R S I T Y O F T H E W E S T E R N C A P E

of

Andries du Toitand Fadeela Ally

The externalisationand casualisation

of farm labourin Western Cape

horticulture

Researchreportno. 16

The externalisationand casualisation

of farm labourin Western Cape

horticulture:A survey of patterns in theagricultural labour market inkey Western Cape districts,

and their implicationsfor employment justice

Andries du Toitand Fadeela Ally

Research report no. 16

Programme for Landand Agrarian Studiesand Centre for RuralLegal StudiesDecember 2003

Hanging on a wire: A historical and socio-economic study of

Paulshoek village in the communal area of Leliefontein, Namaqualand

The externalisation and casualisation of farm labour in Western Cape horticulture: A survey ofpatterns in the agricultural labour market in key Western Cape districts, and their implications foremployment justiceAndries du Toit and Fadeela Ally

Co-published by Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies and Centre for Rural Legal Studies

Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, School of Government, University of theWestern Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535, Cape Town, South AfricaTel: +27 21 959 3733. Fax: +27 21 959 3732. E-mail: [email protected]: www.uwc.ac.za/plaas

Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies research report no. 16

ISBN 1-86808-590-2

December 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in anyform or means, without prior permission from the publisher or the authors.

Text: Andries du ToitFieldwork: Andries du Toit and Fadeela AllyCopy editor: Roelien TheronCover photograph: Disused farm worker housing submerged in a new farm dam nearWolseley in the Western Cape, by Andries du ToitMaps: Anne Westoby and John HallLayout: Designs for DevelopmentTypeset in TimesReproduction: Castle GraphicsPrinting: Hansa Reproprint

i

ContentsList of figures, tables and boxes iiAbbreviations and acronyms iiiAcknowledgements v

Chapter 1: Introduction 1Change on the farms 2

Chapter 2: Modernisation and change on commercial farms in theWestern Cape 4

Labouring without the law 4Modernising labour relations 5A backlash looms 5Key questions 6Research approach 7

Chapter 3: An overview of employment patterns in selectedWestern Cape districts 10

Providing work: permanent and temporary labour 10Make-up of the permanent labour force 12Housing 12The temporary labour force 14Use of contractors 16Changes: past and future 19Factors cited as consideration in labour policy 20Overview 22

Chapter 4: Contract labour 24A small, marginal operator 24A large operator in a buyer�s market 26A well-resourced specialist 28A labour-only contractor 32Workers� perspectives 35Unsustainable livelihoods 40

Chapter 5: Ensuring employment justice 44What changes, and what stays the same? 44New realities 46New strategies 47Conclusion 51

Bibliography 52Appendix 1: Questionnaire 55Appendix 2: The sample 56

Hanging on a wire: A historical and socio-economic study of

Paulshoek village in the communal area of Leliefontein, Namaqualand

ii

List of figures, tables and boxes

Figure 1: Year-on-year changes in regular agricultural employment 6Figure 2: Regions of the survey 8Figure 3: Percentage of houses allocated to female household heads 14Figure 4: Fluctuations in person-weeks per hectare for main farm activity types 16Figure 5: Farms using contractors (%) 17Figure 6: Main tasks performed by contractors on farms that use them 18Figure 7: Factors listed as influencing decisions about farm labour 21Figure 8: Future plans for housing 22Figure 9: Distribution of farm sizes in sample 58

Table 1: Permanent jobs, regular jobs (permanent jobs plus farm-basedtemporary workers), harvesting workers and job equivalents(person-years) per hectare, differentiated by farm size 10

Table 2: A comparison between Kritzinger and Vorster’s figures for regular andseasonal employment on fruit farms in 1995 and this study’s figures forthe same categories in 2000. 11

Table 3: Ratio between estimated amount of work (measured in person-years)done by off-farm temporary workers and that done by permanentworkers 11

Table 4: Permanent jobs per hectare – a breakdown by farm size and main activity 12Table 5: Labour use per hectare and permanent employment on farms with a

pack-house or cellar 12Table 6: Race and gender breakdown of the permanent labour force by district

and main activity 12Table 7: Housing usage by district and main activity 13Table 8: Distribution of empty houses on the 44 farms where houses stand empty 13Table 9: Main sources of temporary labour 15Table 10: Lowest monthly levels of temporary labour use for different sub-sectors 16Table 11: Breakdown of harvesting labour force by race and gender 16Table 12: Changes in permanent employment since 1997 19Table 13: Future plans for permanent labour 20Table 14: Factors influencing labour decisions – variation according to past

changes in the number of permanent workers 20Table 15: Farms planning to demolish or change the function of housing 22Table 16: The target profile of farms by main activity and district compiled from

data obtained from the Department of Sociology, University ofStellenbosch 56

Table 17: A profile of the farms surveyed by main activity 57Table 18: A more detailed typology highlighting farms focusing on single activities 57Table 19: Hectares planted to specific crops per district 58Table 20: Distribution of farm sizes (quartiles) by district and main activity 59

Box 1: The importance of providing year-round work 31Box 2: ‘I sweat for my bread’ – Interview with ‘Liena’, a worker with OutSource 38Box 3: ‘The white man is scared...’ – Interview with ‘Anna’, a worker with

OutSource 39Box 4: ‘It would be a privilege to return to a farm’ 40

iii

Abbreviations and acronyms

AgriSA Agri South AfricaCRLS Centre for Rural Legal StudiesESTA Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997ETI Ethical Trading InitiativeFLOC Farm Labour Organizing CommitteeFSC Forest Stewardship CouncilICU Industrial and Commercial Workers’ UnionNDA National Department of AgricultureNPI National Productivity InstituteRDP Reconstruction and Development ProgrammeSETA Sector Education Training AuthorityUIF Unemployment Insurance Fund

Acknowledgements

v

This report is based on a studyconducted for and funded by theCentre for Rural Legal Studies

(CRLS) and was researched and written byresearchers at the Programme for Land andAgrarian Studies (PLAAS). The opinionsexpressed in this report are those of itsauthors and do not reflect the policy of eitherPLAAS or CRLS.

Many people contributed to this report.Fadeela Ally deserves special mention forher indefatigable fieldwork. Thanks aredue to the staff at CRLS and the Womenon Farms Project for the stimulation andchallenge provided by the numerousdebates and discussions that arose during

the course of this study. Further thanks aredue to Andrienetta Kritzinger and Jan Vorsterof the Department of Sociology at theUniversity of Stellenbosch.

The most important debt is owed toAlida van der Merwe, former director ofCRLS, whose vision played a key role inthe conceptualisation of this researchproject. Her emphasis on the scope forclose co-operation between CRLS andPLAAS was what made the researchpossible in the first place. Her untimelydeath during the writing of this report is aserious and painful loss to those committedto justice for farm workers and farmdwellers in South Africa.

1

Chapter 1: IntroductionOn several Friday nights during February and March 2001, a visitor toHappiness Street1 in the Oostenberg Municipality�s newly createdWestbank housing project would have witnessed angry scenes. A smallcrowd of frustrated and enraged people would be seen squatting outside thehouse of Mrs Santie van Rooy, a prominent community member.

Mrs Van Rooy (‘Suster Van Rooy’or just ‘Van Rooy’ to herneighbours) is well respected in

her community. It was she who organiseda group of more than 200 farm workerhouseholds to apply for Reconstructionand Development Programme (RDP)funding when the township was first beingplanned – and who reputedly threatenedlegal action when the OostenbergMunicipality argued that as farm dwellersthey were not a prioritised group. She is aprominent member of the local church anda dedicated health worker who, when notat home, is in her white uniform, visitingterminally ill HIV/AIDS and tuberculosispatients as part of the local hospital’soutreach programme. Although this is notpaid work, it clearly gives her emotionaland symbolic satisfaction: ‘Met ons gesingaan dit ook maar moeilik, maar die Hereleer ons dat ons dié wat minder gelukkigas onsself is moet help en bystaan.’ (Ourfamily also has its difficulties, but the Lordteaches that we must help and assist thoseless fortunate than us.)

It is this desire to help her neighboursthat has got Van Rooy into a difficultsituation. The people squatting outside herdoor on this windy, sandblasted Fridaynight are those she referred to a labourcontracting agency, OutSource, which hadbeen looking for people to work in thevineyards around Stellenbosch during theharvesting season. To Van Rooy it seemedlike an ideal opportunity. She was acutelyaware of the unemployment problem in the

area and of residents’ chronic lack of cashand their inability to pay their children’sschool fees. Van Rooy believed that ‘virdié wat gewillig is om te werk kan daardarem nou ’n geleentheid wees’ (thosewho are willing to work will now have anopportunity to do so). After a few weeks,she even managed to get OutSource topromise that it would pay her R250 perweek for her services, which would help tosupplement her husband’s meagredisability payment. On the face of it then,OutSource seemed to offer a solution toseveral problems in the community.

OutSource is a large company andprovides temporary workers in a widerange of fields, from construction andhealth to information technology andaccountancy. Its entry into the agriculturalsector threatened to provide smaller labourcontractors with some serious competition.It promised workers fairly good daily rates(‘We will not take on work for less thanR50 per worker a day,’ said OutSource’sWestern Cape manager) and said that itmade its own money by charging aseparate fee instead of skimming workers’salaries. Speak to OutSource’s regionaldirector or its manager in charge offarming business and both will assure youthat the company does not want to getinvolved in ‘slave labour’ and aims toensure that workers get the pro ratabenefits to which they are entitled.

The people gathered in front of VanRooy’s house tell a different story. Theyare frustrated and disappointed. They

2

The externalisation and casualisation of

farm labour in Western Cape horticulture

recite a litany of problems, but on thisFriday night what matters most is money.Although they stopped work at 4.30pm,they had to wait until after 9pm to be paid.The same thing has happened week afterweek, they say. Furthermore, in spite of thepromise of decent pay, most have madevery little money. Some of them arrivehome at the end of the week with only R60or R70. Some allege that they are oftenpaid a week late and sometimes not at all.They also claim that they do not get paidwhat they are entitled to for the amount ofwork they do.

Part of the problem seems to lie in thefact that most people who work inOutSource’s agricultural division are paidpiece rates. This means that workers (asthe managers never tire of explaining)‘work for themselves’, and therefore onlyhave themselves to blame if they bringhome less pay than expected. In principle,this sounds fair. But when the harvestingof wine grapes is repeatedly interrupted byrain, or the work is halted to wait for sugarlevels to rise, and when many peoplecompete for the same limited workopportunities, the reality is that workers areoften employed for as little as one or twodays a week.

In addition, the payment of piece ratesis accompanied by serious logisticalproblems. Paying piece rates to more than600 workers per week is an organisationalnightmare. In order to deal with this,OutSource’s working week runs fromThursday to Wednesday to giveadministrators time to make the necessarycalculations and fill pay packets. Thismeans that those who could only ‘work forthemselves’ on Thursday and Friday haveto wait until the next week before beingpaid. But often OutSource – short-staffedand running on very narrow margins –cannot even get pay packets ready byFriday.

According to workers, there have beensome nasty scenes at the organisation’soffices near Stellenbosch. On oneoccasion, when angry, tired and hungry

employees, confronted with incorrect –and even empty – pay packets, tried todemand that matters be put right, theywere simply told by the staff member onduty that ‘ek werk nie met die geld nie, ekgee net die geld’ (I don’t work with themoney, I just hand out the money). Thisresulted in the workers storming the officesand the staff barricading themselves inside.After this incident, staff removed theoutside doorknobs to make the place evenmore impenetrable.

The conflict led to a change inOutSource’s payment policy. It decidedthat workers would be paid by companydrivers at Van Rooy’s house in Westbank.Though this clearly must have addressedthe safety concerns of OutSource’s office-based staff, it only made matters worse foreveryone else. Drivers were upset athaving to bring not inconsiderableamounts of money into an impoverishedand crime-infested neighbourhood.Administrative snarl-ups continued,sometimes with new complications: whilemany workers did not receive their paypackets, others received the wrong paypackets. The workers’ anger atadministrative bungling was now directedat the drivers and at Van Rooy, and bothwere powerless to do anything about it.

Van Rooy herself was not very happywith OutSource, as a week or two afterreceiving her first weekly instalment, thecompany suspended further payments.According to Van Rooy, the company wasmorally obliged to continue paying her forthe rest of the season, especially since sheworked for free during the first few weeksof the recruitment phase and the companywas still using the workers she recruitedduring that time. However, she alsorealised that she had no real bargainingpower, and was frightened of irrevocablydamaging her relationship with OutSourceif she complained.

Change on the farmsThe incidents on Happiness Street were notisolated events. Nor do they simply

3

Chapter 1: Introduction

represent another story aboutadministrative problems in South Africa’snew outsourced services sector. Theyhighlight a range of problems that extendfar beyond the streets of Westbank or eventhe vineyards of Stellenbosch. Theexperiences of workers and women likeVan Rooy and her neighbours parallelthose of workers in many other sectors ofthe South African economy (Theron &Godfrey 2000). But more concretely, theyillustrate some of the specific shifts that aretaking place in labour-intensive agriculturein South Africa as a whole and in theWestern Cape in particular. The difficultiesexperienced by OutSource and itsemployees highlight, in a particularlydramatic form, the new questions aboutresponsibility, accountability, employmentrelationships, risks and livelihoods thathave arisen as a result of these shifts.

These changes are complex anduneven, and they involve a more far-reaching transformation of the nature ofagricultural labour relations in the wine-and fruit-producing areas than has beenseen in previous decades. Ever since thetime of slavery, labour relations onWestern Cape fruit and wine farms havebeen governed by the institutions andsystems of paternalism, in terms of whichthe farmer as ‘master’ was the ultimateauthority and the law of the land gave wayat the borders of the farm to die boer sewet (the farmer’s rule). Far from beingdestroyed by commercial development andcapitalist progress, these institutions andarrangements simply modified and adaptedthemselves over time. New doctrines onmanagement swept across the WesternCape countryside in the 1990s, andfinancial and technical systems kept pacewith new developments at the end of the20th century. Despite this, the assumptionsand attitudes that govern the actions ofmany farmers in the Western Cape are stillreminiscent of past practices. So resilientand persistent were the institutions and

systems of paternalism that by the end ofthe 1990s scholars of labour and socialrelations in the Western Cape concludedthat one of the key research questionsfacing them was the survival ofpaternalism (Ewert & Hamman 1999).

This report argues that importantchanges are happening alongside thesecontinuities. Paternalist arrangements arenot being entirely abandoned, it is true –but they are being re-evaluated andrestructured in unprecedented ways. Oldarrangements and assumptions are beingquestioned, and new strategies for securingand managing labour are coming intobeing. These changes present thoseconcerned with the living and workingconditions of South African farm workersand farm dwellers with new challenges.New strategic questions have arisen, andmany of the tried-and-tested solutions nolonger seem adequate.

The purpose of this study is to explorein depth the extent and nature of thechanges in the Western Cape. It provides aquantitative overview of farm employmentin the most important labour-absorptivesectors of Western Cape horticulture(viticulture, deciduous fruit production andvegetable growing) in some key districts(Stellenbosch, Paarl, Wellington, Grabouw,Ceres, Worcester/Hex River andRobertson). It also explores the issuesraised by the growth of labour contractingservices in the farming sector. Finally, itdiscusses the implications of some of thesechanges, and highlights some importantstrategies and policy options needed tosecure employment justice and sustainablelivelihoods in the commercial farming sector.

Endnote1 Names and addresses of people and organisations

have been changed. Happiness Street does exist,

however, and, contrary to popular belief, it really

is situated in Westbank. The events recounted here

have been reconstructed from the accounts of the

participants.

4



Labouring without the lawThe legal and cultural order of the Capelinked rights and power to racial identity,and created a paternalist ideology thatlegitimised and regulated the relationshipbetween ‘masters’ and servants (Worden1985; Elphick & Giliomee 1989; Crais1992; Trapido 1994). Paternalist ideologyrefused to recognise slaves and servantsas mature human beings. Although slavesand servants were morally entitled toprotection and care, they were, in mostrespects, entirely subject to the finalauthority of their white ‘masters’ (Ross1983; Dooling 1992).

The social identities and institutions thathad been shaped during more than 170years of slavery did not simply vanish.Instead, they continued to influencefarmers’ responses to their changingenvironment, enabling them to mount acentury-long rearguard action against anyreforms aimed at freeing or protecting rurallabour. Despite the abolition of slavery, thefarmers managed to introduce a series ofprogressively harsher Masters and ServantsActs which gave agrarian employerspowers over farm workers that farexceeded those of any other type ofemployer over any other category ofworker (Marincowitz 1985; Rayner 1986;

Keegan 1987; Crais 1992). Although thislegislation was finally abolished in 1974, itintroduced into South African law adistinction between farm labour and othertypes of labour, which served to excludefarm workers from the rights won by urbanworkers until the early 1990s (Bundy1979; Armstrong & Worden 1989).

In the 1980s, the Rural Foundation’sproject of modernisation infusedpaternalist discourse with a new emphasison scientific and productivity-orientedmanagement and the ‘development’ ofwhat was already being called ‘previouslydisadvantaged communities’(agtergeblewene gemeenskappe). But theseattempts at modernisation still preservedmuch of what was distinctive aboutWestern Cape paternalism (Du Toit 1995;Mayson 1990). Even progressive farmerswho accepted the modernisation of labourlaw were at pains to point out that workerswere better off in the ‘wise’ care of thefarmer, and would not be much helped bythe meddling of lawyers, trade unionists orother outsiders (Du Toit 1993). Labourrelations continued to involve much morethan the exchange of cash for labour.Above all, the institution of tied housingpersisted on Western Cape wine and fruitfarms, and farmers continued to rely on

Chapter 2: Modernisation andchange on commercial farms in theWestern CapeTo fully comprehend the nature of the shifts taking place in the farmingsector of the Western Cape at present, it is important to understand thenature of the paternalist system of labour and social relations that is beingaffected by these changes. This system has been shaped by the WesternCape�s more distant past and, in particular, by the legacy of slavery andcolonialism.

5

on-farm permanent labour. To work on afarm as a permanent employee remainedlinked to dwelling on the farm as part of abroader community whose well-being wasthe responsibility of farm management.

Modernising labour relationsGiven this history, it is hardly surprisingthat the most important idea guiding thosewho have hoped to transform farm labourrelations in the Western Cape has beenmodernisation. Many analyses of labourand social relations tended to link theprospects for what was tellingly called‘progressive’ change on the farmlands withthe supposed struggle between ‘modern’,‘businesslike’ and ‘market-oriented’approaches to farming and those that wereregarded as backward, traditional and outof touch with modern economic realities(for example Lipton 1993; Ewert 2000). Atthe core of these analyses was the insightthat Western Cape horticulture’sdependence on cheap and rightless labourinvolved comprimising productivity andefficiency. To put it crudely, ‘racism’ wasseen as ‘inefficient’. It was increasinglybeing argued that transcendence of theinequitable labour relations of the pastmade business sense: ‘empowering’workers, respecting their rights andoffering them better salaries would serve toincrease the capacity and competitivenessof the labour force, and hence of the sectoras a whole (Ewert & Hamman 1997).

In policy circles this has translated intothe widespread assumption that what isrequired to transform agricultural labourrelations is their ‘normalisation’, which hasalmost universally been taken to mean theextension into the rural areas of theinstitutions and practices of industrial-stylelabour relations and of neoliberaleconomics. The result has been that SouthAfrican agricultural restructuring hasfollowed a distinctive path: deregulation inagricultural producer markets has beenaccompanied by a significant increase inlabour market regulation (Ewert &Hamman 2000; Kritzinger & Vorster 2001;Barrientos 2000).1 Both these policy

directions are powerfully shaped by theunderlying assumptions aboutmodernisation – and by the increasingmarginality of white farmers as a politicalconstituency. The intention of labour lawreform was to take agricultural labourrelations out of the 19th century, whilederegulation was meant to remove the‘policy distortions’ that had led toovermechanisation and underemployment(NDA 1998). By exposing the SouthAfrican agricultural sector to the rigours ofcompetition through deregulation, it waswidely expected that uncompetitive,‘backward’ farmers would be shaken outand that their outdated approaches wouldmake way for ‘businesslike attitudes’ andmodern agricultural practices that couldhelp transform oppressive racial powerrelations (Lipton 1993; Ewert & Hamman1999; Ewert 2000). These changes, it wasassumed, would either force out of themarket farmers who still held on to theracist attitudes of the past or compel themto shift to more competitive – and more‘progressive’ – labour managementstrategies. It was recognised that thiswould result in the shedding of labour, butthis was seen as ‘inevitable’, a trade-offthat would ensure better conditions for theremaining workers.

A backlash loomsAs the 1990s drew to a close, it becameincreasingly evident that this trade-offwould be expensive. Farmers had beenthreatening to lay off and evict farmworkers ever since the start of agriculturallabour law reform. Just what these threatsmeant in practice was not clear. Farmemployment, it should be noted, had inany case been in decline since the late1960s, mostly in response to governmentpolicies designed to encourage andsupport large-scale, mechanised whitefarming. Evidence of the removal of these‘policy distortions’ seems to be uneven.Some national statistics indicate that job-shedding has continued. Indeed, thestatistics show some very sharp year-on-year drops in the number of permanent

Chapter 2: Modernisation and change on commercial farms

in the Western Cape

6



jobs. Official statistics record a loss of114 000 regular jobs in commercialagriculture between 1988 and 1996, withan astounding 19% decline in the numberof permanent jobs recorded in 1994 (seeFigure 1) (Statistics South Africa & NDA2000; Simbi & Aliber 2000). Agriculturalemployment as a share of ruralemployment declined from 79.4% in 1991to 74% in 1997, and the percentage offarm workers in the total rural labour forcefell from 15.2% in 1991 to 12.3% in 1996(Simbi & Aliber 2000).

Though the overall nature of the shift inagricultural labour relations is clear, theexact nature and the extent of the shift areless evident. For one thing, there are regionalvariations. Agricultural census figures for1996 showed an increase in employmentin the Western Cape and Mpumalanga.This seems to be corroborated by a studyconducted in 1997 which suggested anincrease in employment in the wine sector,with farmers estimating further increasesuntil 2002 (Ewert et al. 1998). Furthermore,it is not clear what conclusions can bedrawn from national agricultural labourstatistics: shifts in the number of casualand seasonal employees may well be theresult of measurement errors or changes inthe way in which farmers classify andconceptualise the components of their

labour force. The increase in employmentrecorded in the 1997 survey happenedduring an unprecedented increase inplantings (Ewert, pers. comm.), and it isnot clear to what extent this increase inlabour reflects a continuing and sustainedtrend. Experience on the ground suggeststhat many farm workers work on farms as‘on-farm temporary workers’, whocontinue to have long-term associationswith particular farms but with a muchgreater degree of insecurity. The realextent and nature of the shift away frompermanent on-farm employment is hard togauge. Equally important, it is not clearjust what has taken its place, and what theimplications are for employment justice.

Key questionsThe present study grew out of the need tobetter understand current trends in theagricultural labour market and theirimplications. That labour-intensivehorticulture is shedding jobs is widelyaccepted, but what is needed is a betterunderstanding of the extent to which this ishappening. This study attempts to answersome key questions in this regard:1. How much labour is used by farmers,

and what are their sources of this labour?2. What has happened to permanent

employment and permanent livelihoods

Figure 1: Year-on-year changes in regular agricultural employmentSource: Statistics South Africa & NDA 2000

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

10%

5%

0%

-5%

-10%

-15%

-20%

7

on farms? How many farms have shedpermanent jobs in the recent past, andhow many intend to do so in the future?What are the key reasons farmers givefor their strategies and decisions vis-à-vis the labour force? How different arefarmers’ strategies? Is job-sheddinghappening in a uniform manner or aredivergent strategies and approachesemerging? Do changes in strategyindicate a fundamental change infarmers’ approach to labour, or are theyonly marginal adjustments within theexisting paternalist approach?

3. How many permanent jobs are there?How many people live on farmspermanently but are only employed ona temporary basis? To what extent dofarmers make use of temporary off-farmworkers? What are the regional andindustry-specific patterns?

4. What is the make-up of the permanentand temporary labour forces? Are theresignificant differences between them,for example in their racial and gendercomposition? Are women more likely tobe drawn into agricultural labour aspermanent workers than as temporaryworkers?

5. To what extent are direct employer-employee relationships making way forlabour contracting arrangements? Howwidespread is the shift to labourcontracting? Are there significantpatterns? What kinds of contractingservice are being offered?

6. What does the shift towards labourcontracting mean for farm workers?How does it affect the conditions underwhich they work, and their livelihoodsecurity? What are the social and powerrelations of labour within thecontracting sector? What are theimplications of a shift towardscontracting for employment justice?Can the contracting sector play a validrole in rural job creation?

7. What are the practical and concreteimplications of this shift for thoseconcerned with the improvement (oreven the protection) of farm worker

livelihoods and conditions of work?What can be done to ensure that labourjustice obtains in a labour marketcharacterised by high degrees ofcasualisation and externalisation? Canthis labour market sustain labourpractices that are compliant with theminimum conditions set by labourlegislation, or provide adequatelivelihoods for farm workers? To whatextent does the reorganisation of thelabour market render existing strategiesfor enforcement and monitoringunworkable? Are new strategiesrequired?

Research approachIn order to answer the key questionsoutlined above, the research involved atwo-pronged approach. In the first place, aquantitative survey of employmentpatterns and strategies was conducted. Thissurvey was conceptualised as a baselinestudy, and basic information about theextent and nature of labour usage wascollected. The questionnaire included bothclosed and open questions (see Appendix 1).The stress fell on the collection ofnumerical information, particularly aboutthe use and sourcing of labour, thoughspace was left for qualitative informationabout farmers’ perceptions andmotivations. However, because of time andfinancial constraints, questions aboutworking conditions (pay, hours, and soforth) were excluded, except for the issueof housing, which has a close bearing onlabour-sourcing strategies. Key areas offocus therefore were the size andcomposition of the permanent labourforce; the sources, composition and week-by-week use of temporary labour; theextent of past and future changes inlabour-sourcing strategies; the extent andnature of the use of labour contractors; andhousing usage and policy. The respondentswere those who were directly responsiblefor the management of labour on the farms– owners, ‘general managers’ or, on largerfarms, human resources managers.


in the Western Cape

8



The sample was drawn from the mostimportant labour-intensive sectors inWestern Cape agriculture: deciduous fruitproduction and viticulture. Given the timeconstraints, it was impossible to survey allrural districts, and the research thusconcentrated on a random sample of farmsin the key horticultural districts ofStellenbosch, Paarl, Wellington, Worcester/Hex River, Ceres, Grabouw and Robertson(see Figure 2). A total of 77 farms,including wine, fruit and vegetable farms,were surveyed. Farms were largelyselected on the basis of producer lists – theDeciduous Fruit Producer Trust database ofproducers for fruit farms and Vinpro’s listof wine producers – in order to ensure anactivity mix representative of the differentdistricts (see Appendix 2). For the purposeof the analysis, a distinction was madebetween table grapes on the one hand andtree-grown deciduous fruit, that is, pomefruit (apples and pears) and stone fruit(peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums),on the other.

In order to gauge the implications foremployment justice, it was also necessaryto develop a qualitative understanding ofthe nature of the social relationships oflabour in the labour contracting sector. Aqualitative investigation of selected farmlabour contracting businesses, described infour case studies in this report, formed thesecond component of the research process.

A typology of contractors was constructedon the basis of information drawn from thebaseline survey, and five contractors wereselected for closer investigation. One ofthese contractors dropped out, sointerviews were held with four contractors.The interviews were semi-structured informat, lasted between one and a half andtwo hours each, and were tape-recorded.Key areas of focus involved the nature ofthe business organisation, client andworker base, cash flow and workingcapital, business strategy and labourrelations, including conditions ofemployment. In two of the cases,interviews were held with the labourcontractors only. In the other two cases,interviews were conducted with both thelabour contractors and their employees. Inthe case of one of these, an interview washeld with a group of 13 workers outside afarm before they started work. In the caseof the second contractor, interviews wereheld in a home in Westbank – once with agroup of four male workers, and once witha group of four female workers. Theseinterviews with the workers yielded basicinformation about their socio-economicsituation, including employment history,access to alternative employment, workingconditions and labour relations. Althoughthe interviews did not permit theconstruction of a profile of contract

Figure 2: Regions of the survey

9


in the Western Cape

workers, they did elicit detailed informationabout the problems and difficultiesexternalised farm workers encounter.

This report focuses on presenting some ofthe most important results of both the surveyand the case studies. After a discussion ofthe key findings, an interpretation of thenature and meaning of the shifts they seemto reflect is developed and the implicationsare examined. The report does not deal ingreat detail with the technical legal questionsraised by the restructuring of agriculturallabour. It does, however, close with a briefdiscussion of some of the strategic questions

that need to be resolved by thoseconcerned with ensuring employmentjustice in agriculture.

Endnote1 Key acts include the Extension of Security of

Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (ESTA), the Basic

Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997, the

Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995, the Employment

Equity Act 55 of 1998 and the Skills Development

Act 97 of 1998. Since the completion of this

research, in March 2003, a sectoral determination

in agriculture was introduced by the Minister of

Labour, which provides for minimum wages.

10



Providing work: permanent andtemporary labourThe figures in Table 1 are for a number ofdifferent categories of labour. The category‘permanent jobs’ refers to the jobsperformed by people who are formallycontracted as permanent employees on aparticular farm. In addition, farms also makeuse of a significant number of on-farmworkers – often the female partners ordependants of permanent male workers –who work on an ‘as needed’ basis, along withpermanent workers, in ‘regular jobs’.Although these workers are not formallyrecognised as permanent workers, they

have a permanent relationship with thefarm. The figures for ‘regular jobs’ includethe total number of on-farm ‘temporary’workers plus permanent workers.

Off-farm temporary workers were usedin a number of different ways and fordifferent tasks. The study collecteddetailed data on the off-farm labourrequirements for specific seasonal tasks,particularly harvesting. In addition,farmers were asked to provide figures onthe week-by-week use of temporary off-farm seasonal labour throughout the year.These figures allowed for the developmentof a rough estimate of the total number of

Chapter 3: An overview ofemployment patterns in selectedWestern Cape districtsTraditionally, Western Cape wine and fruit farms have secured labourfrom a variety of sources. On wine and fruit farms, work is usually doneby a core labour force of on-farm workers, supplemented during theharvest by off-farm and migrant workers from surrounding areas or theEastern Cape. One of the key tasks of the study was to establish theoverall labour intensity of farms in the sample, as well as the balancebetween permanent and temporary labour.

Table 1: Permanent jobs, regular jobs (permanent jobs plus farm-based temporary workers), harvestingworkers and job equivalents (person-years) per hectare, differentiated by farm size

Farm size Permanent jobs per Regular jobs per Harvesting Job equivalents perhectare hectare workers per hectare hectare

Mean Median Mean Median Mean Median Mean Median

Whole sample 0.53 0.36 0.79 0.55 1.25 0.62 1.1 0.81

0�28 ha 0.82 0.54 1.16 0.78 1.6 1.31 1.30 1.29

28�60 ha 0.49 0.33 0.98 0.56 1.63 1.12 1.26 1.01

60�102 ha 0.44 0.41 0.54 0.46 0.83 0.53 0.73 0.71

>102 ha 0.36 0.31 0.58 0.54 0.98 0.43 1.09 0.53

11

person-years worked by permanent andtemporary staff.

The data highlight some interestingpatterns. Comparisons are difficult, sinceofficial statistics are not disaggregated bysub-sector, and other studies of labouremployment in Western Cape horticultureuse slightly different methodologies.Kritzinger and Vorster’s 1995 study, forexample, did not include wine farms, andtheir typology of farming activities differsfrom that used in this study. Where thedata can be compared, however, this studysuggests much lower figures for ‘regularemployment’ (see Table 2).

The data clearly indicate the growingimportance of temporary workers. Firstly,more work is done by off-farm temporaryworkers than by permanent workers. Onthe basis of figures supplied by respondentson their week-by-week use of off-farmtemporary labour, the volume of work(measured in time worked) done bypermanent workers was only half as muchas that done by off-farm temporary workers(see Table 3). Secondly, off-farm temporaryworkers also predominate over regularones in absolute terms: in the sample, thetotal workforce consisted of 3 728 regularworkers (formally permanent plus farm-based temporary), supplemented by anestimated total of 6 863 off-farm temporaryworkers who were employed during peakharvesting time in February. Since not allthe harvesting workers were deployed atthe same time, the total size of the off-farm

harvest workforce on the farms in thesurvey was an even larger figure of 8 408.

A further interesting feature of the datais the relative variability of permanentemployment across farm sizes (see Table 4).The figures seem to indicate a realtendency by smaller farms to carry morepermanent labourers per hectare thanbigger farms. A closer look at the figuresshows that this is largely due to theinclusion of table grape farms in thesample. The fact that these farms tend to besmaller and more labour intensive meansthat the effect of table grape farms in thesample is exaggerated. The possibility thatsmaller table grape farms tend to be less‘efficient’ users of labour is, however, quitesuggestive and needs further investigation.

Table 2: A comparison between Kritzinger and Vorster �s figures for regular and seasonal employment onfruit farms in 1995 and this study�s figures for the same categories in 2000*

Main activity Regular Seasonal

1995 2000 1995 2000

Whole sample 1.36 0.79 1.32 1.25

Deciduous fruit 1.34 0.64 0.59 1.12(tree-grown)

Table grapes 1.95 1.43 2.79 2.17Source: Kritzinger & Vorster 1995*The figures for ‘seasonal’ employment in the Kritzinger and Vorster study have been compared with thisstudy’s figures for harvesting teams.

Table 3: Ratio between estimated amount ofwork (measured in person-years) done by off-farm temporary workers and that done bypermanent workers

Main activity Ratio between off-farmtemporary work and

permanent work

Mean

Whole sample 150.61

Deciduous fruit 178.87(tree-grown)

Mixed 115.12

Table grapes 215.04

Wine 109.77

Chapter 3: An overview of employment patterns in

selected Western Cape districts

12



The data also clearly show that thepresence of a pack-house or a cellar doesnot only increase labour use in general, butalso increases the ability of a farm tosupport permanent employment. Whilefarms with a pack-house or a cellarprovided 44.3% more employment in total,they provided an average of 80% morepermanent jobs per hectare (see Table 5).

17.27% of the permanent labour force, ischaracterised by a higher Africanpopulation than, for example, Robertson.

At the same time, local demographydoes not seem to explain the relatively lowfigures for permanent African employmentin Wellington and the higher levels ofpermanent African employment in theWorcester/Hex River sample (see Table 6).

Table 4: Permanent jobs per hectare � abreakdown by farm size and main activity

Main Permanent jobs per hectareactivity 0�28 28�60 60�102 >102

ha ha ha ha

Deciduous 0.29 0.18 0.63 0.35fruit (tree-grown)

Mixed 0.42 0.61 0.33 0.27

Table 0.88 0.78 0.77 0.68grapes

Wine 0.29 0.43 0.31 0.33

Table 5: Labour use per hectare and permanentemployment on farms with a pack-house or cellar

Job equivalents Permanent jobsper hectare per hectare

MeanMeanMeanMeanMean MedianMedianMedianMedianMedian MeanMeanMeanMeanMean MedianMedianMedianMedianMedian

Without pack- 0.88 0.73 0.35 0.27house or cellar

With pack- 1.27 1.01 0.63 0.44house or cellar

Make-up of the permanentlabour forceThe data highlight important features ofthe permanent labour force. A hugemajority – almost 89% – of the workerspermanently employed on the farmssurveyed were coloured, and more thanthree-quarters were men. Employmentlevels of African workers showed verystrong regional variation. This seems to bepartly linked to local demographic factors:Grabouw, where African workers form

Table 6: Race and gender breakdown of the per-manent labour force by district and main activity

Percentage of permanent labourforce (mean)

Coloured Coloured African Africanmale female male female

Whole sample 68.27 20.45 8.14 2.79

District

Ceres 74.57 16.77 5.67 1.97

Grabouw 63.33 18.78 16.38 0.89

Paarl 71.34 19.38 8.97 0.31

Robertson 81.19 17.67 0.29 0.15

Stellenbosch 59.84 18.41 7.21 13.31

Wellington 76.33 17.54 2.3 3.83

Worcester/ 61.39 27.25 10.86 0.51Hex River

Main activity

Deciduous 73.49 17.21 8.42 0.72fruit (tree-grown)

Table grapes 73.43 16.84 8.64 1.09

Wine 65.47 22.73 8.39 2.74

HousingAlthough the study did not explore theconditions of employment of permanentworkers, it did survey the housing situationon the selected farms. Here, a number ofinteresting patterns emerged in the use andallocation of housing. In the testing of thequestionnaire, it became evident that anumber of farmers classified houses as‘full’, ‘empty’ or ‘dead’ (see Table 7).‘Dead’ houses were houses that were

13

occupied, but which did not contribute aformal, permanent employee to the farm. Ahouse could be ‘dead’ for a number ofreasons. It could be occupied by ex-employees who have been granted securityof tenure rights under the Extension ofSecurity of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (ESTA),for example retired farm workers or peoplewho had been dismissed but not (yet)evicted. It could also be occupied by peoplewho were allowed to live there with theexpress or tacit agreement of the farmmanagement. ‘Dead’ houses could some-times provide temporary labour. On onefarm in the Stellenbosch area, for example,researchers encountered a form of informalresidential labour tenancy, with non-employees being permitted to reside in on-farm housing on condition that they agreedto be available to help bring in the harvest.

Another interesting feature of the use ofhousing was the significant number ofunoccupied houses. In all, some 11.6% of

houses on the farms surveyed werestanding empty. In some wine-growingdistricts, a quarter of all houses wereunoccupied. Even more significantly, 57%of farmers surveyed reported having at leastone empty house on the farm. This figurereached 83% in some districts. On almosthalf of these farms, there were three or morehouses standing empty (see Table 8).

These figures are particularly significantin view of the very real investment farm wor-ker housing represents, and the priority andimportance farmers have given to housingstock in the past. The existence of such alarge number of empty houses in a contextof rural unemployment seems to indicate areal reluctance on the part of farmers tohire permanent on-farm labour. Thereseems to be a strong correlation between awillingness to let houses stand empty anddistance from urban centres. Though bothPaarl and Hex River are characterised byhigh levels of table grape cultivation,Paarl’s figures for farms with empty housesis almost double that of Hex River.Another interesting feature of the samplewas the small but notable presence offemale-headed households, where thehouse, contrary to common practice, wasallocated to a female permanent worker(see Figure 3).

Table 7: Housing usage by district and main activity

Percentage of houses

Full Empty �Dead�

Whole sample 79.23 11.61 7.48

District

Ceres 85.22 9.11 5.67

Grabouw 72.32 12.60 15.08

Paarl 78.33 9.45 6.33

Robertson 66.33 24.38 10.86

Stellenbosch 82.86 13.15 8.08

Wellington 73.26 25.86 0.88

Worcester/ 86.57 2.99 5.96Hex River

Main activity

Deciduous 77.07 11.01 11.92fruit (tree-grown)

Table grapes 79.91 5.78 5.71

Wine 78.37 17.30 6.24



Table 8: Distribution of empty houses on the 44farms where houses stand empty

Number of Number Percentage Cumulativeempty houses of farms percentage

1 11 25.0 25.0

2 9 20. 5 45. 5

3 5 11.4 56.8

4 8 18.2 75.0

5 6 13.6 88.6

6 1 2.3 90.9

10 3 6.8 97.7

12 1 2.3 100.0

Total 44 100 100

14



The temporary labour forceFarmers had complex and divergentstrategies for securing temporary labour.Temporary labour is not a monolithiccategory. It is drawn from a variety ofdifferent sources, is used for differenttasks, and is engaged under differingconditions. Although there is still muchtalk of ‘casual’ and ‘seasonal’ labour inhorticulture, this typology seems to be rootedin the traditional reliance upon regular on-farm temporary workers (‘casuals’) forextra labour requirements and off-farmmigrant African workers (‘seasonals’) forthe harvest. It does not seem to be veryhelpful as a framework for understandingthe very complex and varied ways inwhich farm labour is actually deployed.For example, a farmer may use migrantworkers from the Eastern Cape for thedeciduous fruit and vegetable harvest,workers supplied by a contractor from anearby town for pruning in winter, andmove on-farm temporary female staff backand forth between packing, orchard,vineyard and cellar work.

The data show that the majority of farmssourced most of their labour from nearbytowns and surrounding areas (see Table 9). Itis interesting to note the relatively low meanfor on-farm temporary staff. This is not

surprising, although it is interesting to notethat in the pome- and stone-fruit producingareas surveyed, there was still a significantreliance on migrant labour. These differentgroups of workers are employed undervery different conditions. On-farmtemporary workers, for example, are inmany ways temporary in name only. Theyare typically the female ‘dependants’ ofmale workers with permanent status.Legally speaking, the ‘permanent’ (non-fixed) nature of their relationship with afarm means that they are eligible for thesame benefits, on a pro rata basis, as theirpermanent counterparts. In reality, they areusually denied these benefits. They mayhave occupational rights under ESTA, buttypically work on the farm on an ‘asneeded’ basis and are not paid for dayswhen they do not work.

It should also be said that on-farmtemporary workers are not the only oneswho may have a long-term relationshipwith a farm. Off-farm temporary workersmay also develop long-standingrelationships with particular farms. Thismay happen through informalrelationships, or through a formal systemwhereby workers who have completed aseason and are deemed to have done wellare listed on a database or given a

Figure 3: Percentage of houses allocated to female household heads

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Ceres Grabouw Paarl Robertson Stellenbosch Wellington Worcester /Hexrivier

Region

female headed Mean female headed MedianFemale headed mean Female headed median

Hex River

15

document that entitles them to a ‘firstoption’ on employment the next season.

Within the framework of the migrantlabour system, farms in the deciduousfruit-growing sector have over the yearsdeveloped complex and persistent spatiallinks with the hinterlands of the EasternCape. Anecdotal evidence and otherresearch seem to indicate that farmers froma particular area (for example the KoueBokkeveld near Ceres) will often tend tosource labour from a given village ordistrict (for example Sterkspruit orButterworth). The same is true fortemporary workers drawn from areascloser to home. Anecdotal interviews andremarks by farmers seem to indicate thatmany of these are ‘permatemps’, workerswho return regularly despite not havingany long-term legal guarantee that theywill be employed.

The figures highlight the very differentseasonal labour demands of differentfarming sectors. Not only did table grapefarms provide more permanent jobs thanany other sector, they also created moretemporary employment, requiring moreperson-days per hectare than any othercrop throughout almost the entire year. It isonly in the winter months that the pruningof deciduous fruit orchards provides more

temporary work per hectare than tablegrape farms (see Figure 4).

The data seem to indicate that the use oftemporary labour was not exclusivelyconfined to the harvesting season. In fact,it appears to have been a feature evenduring those times of the year whendemand for labour was at its lowest. Lowusage of temporary labour wasexperienced by both the least labour-absorptive sector – wine – and the mostlabour-absorptive sector – mixed tablegrapes (see Table 10). This may have beenbecause farms that mixed table grapeproduction with other crops were able tokeep permanent workers productivelyemployed for the entire year, and wereunder less pressure to replace permanentlabour with temporary labour.

The make-up of the temporary labourforce in the sample is markedly differentfrom that of the permanent, on-farm labourforce. In this regard, the data includedetailed information, primarily aboutharvesting teams, the most importantcomponent of the temporary labour force.While only 21% of permanent jobs wereheld by women, almost two-thirds of theharvesting labour force was female (seeTable 11). Women constituted the majorityof the harvesting labour force in almost



Table 9: Main sources of temporary labour

Districts Farm (%) Surrounding areas Elsewhere in Eastern Cape (%)(%) Western Cape (%)

Mean Median Mean Median Mean Median Mean Median

Whole sample 17.16 0 71.7 93.06 7.32 0 3.82 0

Ceres 37.5 25 27.5 5 0 0 35 20

Grabouw 0 0 80.46 100 0 0 19.54 0

Paarl 5.97 0 77.36 98.41 16.67 0 0 0

Robertson 12.12 0 87.88 100 0 0 0 0

Stellenbosch 17.88 0 73.79 90.54 8.33 0 0 0

Wellington 10 10 81.67 81.67 8.33 8.33 0 0

Worcester/ 27.65 0 66.58 91.38 5.77 0 0 0Hex River

16



Figure 4: Fluctuations in person-weeks per hectare for main farm activity types

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Deciduous Fruit Mixed Table Grapes Wine

Table 10: Lowest monthly levels of temporarylabour use for different sub-sectors

Crop Month of Maximum Minimumminimum

labour use

Deciduous September 5.08 0.12fruit (tree-grown)

Deciduous August 6.67 3.28fruit (tree-grown) andother crops

Mixed June 3.36 0.46

Table grapes June 8.82 0.32

Table grapes May 11.35 0and othercrops

Wine April�June 0.87 0

Wine August 2.93 0.31and othercrops

every district, except Grabouw, whichmade heavy use of African men for thedeciduous fruit harvest, and Robertson.

Table 11: Breakdown of harvesting labour forceby race and gender

District Coloured Coloured African Africanmen women men women

Whole sample 25.39 44.78 10.13 19.7

Ceres 28.48 35.07 17.49 18.96

Grabouw 40.39 20.38 30.61 8.62

Paarl 11.13 58.31 4.48 26.08

Robertson 48.54 37.17 7.62 6.67

Stellenbosch 21.96 40.92 6.17 30.95

Wellington 34.78 45.7 7.23 12.29

Worcester/ 20.57 55.41 4.33 19.69Hex River

Use of contractorsAnother important set of issues thatemerged during the research was thenature of the employment relationshipbetween temporary workers and the farmswhere they worked. Here, a particularlypertinent question is the extent and natureof labour contracting arrangements.

Any attempt to survey these trendsrequires that careful attention be paid tothe definition of contracting as opposed to

Decidious fruit Table grapes

17

other relationships. The difference betweencasualisation and externalisation/labourcontracting is clear, with the keydistinguishing element being that in thelatter relationship labour is externalised.The employment relationship is notdirectly with a farmer. Instead, the farmconcludes an agreement with a third party,who is then responsible for bringingworkers onto the farm. As far as the farm isconcerned, the service is supplied in termsof a commercial contract and has nothingto do with an employment relationship. Inpractice, relationships can be much morecomplex. One example is the phenomenonof ‘virtual’ contracting, whereby workersliving on a particular farm are formallytransferred to a third party, who thenmanages them in terms of a contractingrelationship with their employer. At leastone such relationship was cited in one ofthe case studies (see page 27).

A further difficulty is that externalisationcan happen either through a labour-onlycontractor (or ‘labour broker’), or througha contractor who is brought in to completea specific task, and whose responsibilitiesinclude the management of the labour andthe completion of the task to specificquality standards. In the case of labourbrokers, the only function they provide is

the provision of workers. In someindustries, such as the metalwork andengineering industries, this relationship hasresulted in the workers themselves beingregarded as ‘independent contractors’(Theron & Godfrey 2000). Scope thereforeexists for brokers to wash their hands ofdisputes or problems that arise in thelabour process, saying that they are notemployers, but are only performing anorganisational or co-ordination function.

A less serious area of ambiguity – onethat is mostly of methodological relevance– relates to the fact that on some farmsexternal workers do not come onto thefarm as individuals. Rather, they arrive as arelatively self-organised team, under theleadership of a ‘foreman’. In this study,these arrangements were not considered‘contractor’ arrangements, because thefarm still had a direct relationship withthose who did the work. Similarly, a greyarea exists around traditional specialistcontractors who are employed by farmersfrom time to time to undertake jobs such asfencing, roofing, building, and so forth.These contractors – specialised teams whofocus on non-core functions – were nottaken into account in the study. The studyfocused on the extent to which traditionalfarming tasks were being outsourced.



Figure 5: Farms using contractors

100.0%

55.6%

56.3%

23.1%

33.3%

57.1%

40.0%

Deciduous fruit

Fruit and other crops

Mixed

Table grapes

Table grapes and other crops

Wine

Wine and other crops

0 20 40 60 80 100

100%

18



In the sample as a whole, some 53% of thefarmers interviewed said that they weremaking use of a contractor. As Figure 5indicates, this usage varied stronglyaccording to productive activity. Therewere also regional variations. For example,every Grabouw farm surveyed made use oflabour contractors, while in Ceres, anotherimportant deciduous fruit producing district,the figure was only 37.5%.

Where contractors were employed, theywere mostly used for less skilled worksuch as harvesting (see Figure 6). Somefarmers indicated that skilled work andtasks such as pruning, which affected thequality of their working orchards andvineyards, were not done by contractorsbut by permanent workers who could bebetter relied on to provide quality work. Atthe same time, it is interesting to note thaton more than half of the farms that usedcontractors, skilled tasks were also doneby contractors. There were even a few farmswhere critically important and skilled taskslike trellising, the manipulation of youngdeciduous fruit trees and even orchardestablishment were contracted out.

The data also showed that the farmssurveyed made use of relativelysophisticated contracting services. Only16.7% of the farms that used contractors

made use of labour-only contractors. Therest indicated that the contractors they usedprovided management services as well. Ofthe farms that relied on contractors formanagement services, 71% mentioned thatcontractors supplied their own lightequipment (for example pruning shears,small saws, sizing rings and evenstepladders). This tended to be the limit oftheir capitalisation, however. Of therespondents who used contractors, 65%had to supply transport for workersthemselves. In most cases (78.6%), thecontractor supplied workers who werebased in the area. The contractor was alsousually based in the same area.

Three-quarters of the respondents whoused contractors indicated that theybelieved contractors provided services ofadequate quality. Interestingly, 90.5% ofthese respondents said they were satisfiedwith the services supplied by contractors.Moreover, most said they would use thesame contractor again. One or tworespondents stated that they were notsatisfied with the services they had received,but that there was no alternative. Moreimportantly, these results suggest that thereare other factors that make contractingservices attractive to those who use them.Some 68.3% of those who employed

Figure 6: Main tasks performed by contractors on farms that use them

80.5%

64.3%

52.4%

4.8%

4.8%

7.1%

0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00% 90.00%

Harvesting

Pruning

Thinning

Trellising of vines

Manipulation of young trees

Orchard establishment

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

19

contractors indicated that the most importantadvantage of using a contractor wasconvenience, while 26.8% mentioned cost-saving measures as a factor.

Changes: past and futureThe results of the survey suggest theexistence of a real shift away frompermanent employment and cast light onthe nature and pattern of this shift. Almost60% of the farmers in the sample hadreduced the size of their permanent labourforce in the last three years (see Table 12).Some farmers indicated that they haddrastically reduced the number ofpermanent workers in their employ. Othershave followed a policy of slow attrition,with workers simply not being replacedwhen they get fired, leave, retire or die.Reliable data on the extent of thereductions were not available, but ananalysis of existing data at the time of thesurvey shows that the average number ofpermanent jobs per hectare on farms wherethe size of the permanent labour force hadbeen reduced (0.4) was half that on farmswhich reported no change in the previousthree years (0.88).

At the same time, other strategies werealso available. Permanent employmentfigures remained unchanged on asignificant number of farms. In addition, asmall number of farms had actuallyincreased permanent employment,invariably because of an increase inhectares planted to vines or fruit trees.Interestingly, the average number of jobsper hectare on labour-increasing farms waslower than the average number of jobs perhectare (0.33) on farms where the labourforce had been reduced. In other words,where farms had increased the number ofpermanent workers, this seems to havehappened off a very low base.

Variations in strategy were alsoreflected in farmers’ stated future plans inrespect of permanent labour. Once again,the most significant trend was in thedirection of the shedding of labour, withalmost half of the respondents indicating

that they planned to reduce the size of theirpermanent labour force in the immediatefuture (see Table 13). A fairly consistent10% of wine farmers across sectorsindicated that they planned to mechanisetheir harvesting process.

There were interesting relationshipsbetween past changes and future plans.More than half the respondents on farmsthat had shed labour in the past (55.6%)said they were planning to shed morelabour in the future. Among those who hadnot changed their permanent labourcomplement in the last three years, asurprisingly high number (38.1%)indicated plans to reduce the size of theirlabour force in the future. A similarnumber of farmers (42.9%) said they didnot plan to make any changes in the nearfuture. From the data, it appears that alarge number of farmers have committedthemselves to a labour-shedding path,



Table 12: Changes in permanent employmentsince 1997

Decrea- Increa- N/A Nosed sed change

Whole sample 59.7 11.7 1.3 27.3

District

Ceres 37.5 12.5 0 50

Grabouw 88.9 11.1 0 0

Paarl 70.6 11.8 0 17.6

Robertson 62.5 25 0 12.5

Stellenbosch 27.2 18.2 9.1 45.5

Wellington 66.7 0 0 33.3

Worcester/ 61.1 5.6 0 33.3Hex River

Main activity

Deciduous fruit 70.6 11.8 0 17.6(tree-grown)

Mixed 64.3 14.3 0 21.4

Table grapes 58.8 5.9 0 35.3

Vegetables 0 0 50 50

Wine 54.2 12.5 0 33.3N/A = Farms under new management

20



while an equally significant number offarmers appear to be following a labour-retentive one.

Factors cited as consideration inlabour policyFarmers had very strong views on thepolicy environment in which they employedlabour. For the most part, respondents werevery critical of government policy as awhole and labour legislation in particular,and tended to argue that these maderetaining a permanent labour forceunsustainable. Linked to this was a strongsense of alienation from government, anda sense that white farmers were generallyunder attack.

Respondents mentioned a wide range offactors that influenced labour decisions:falling prices, rising input costs, labour andtenure security legislation, the threat ofunionisation, minimum wages, and the‘inconvenience’ and ‘trouble’ of hiringlabour. An analysis of these issues revealssome interesting patterns. Socio-economicfactors (cost and price) and legislation

ranked as the most important factorsinfluencing farmers’ decisions, with costand price ranking slightly higher thanlegislation (see Figure .7). Although themargin of predominance is not very big, itis strikingly consistent: cost and pricepredominated as factors across all the mainactivity types. There was one exception:on farms where there had been no recentchanges in the number of permanent workers,legislation loomed larger than economicfactors as a consideration (see Table 14).Another striking feature of this data is therelative lack of concern about farm labourunionisation. Only in the Paarl district (anarea with a relatively strong localmanufacturing base and a history ofunionisation) did farmers articulateconcern about this issue. Paarl is also theonly district where the prospect of aminimum wage was mentioned as a factor.The relative centrality of socio-economicfactors among the factors listed by

Table 13: Future plans for permanent labour

Decrea- Increa- N/A Nosed sed change

Whole sample 47.4 11.8 1.3 39.5

District

Ceres 62.5 25 0 12.5

Grabouw 55.6 0 0 44.4

Paarl 58.8 0 0 41.2

Robertson 12.5 12.5 0 75

Stellenbosch 50 20 0 30

Wellington 16.7 16.6 0 66.7

Worcester/ 50 16.7 5.5 27.8Hex River

Main activity

Deciduous fruit 52.9 5.9 0 41.2

Mixed 42.9 14.3 0 42.9

Table grapes 52.9 0 5.9 41.2

Wine 41.7 25 33.3N/A = Farms intended to be sold

Table 14: Factors influencing labour decisions �variation according to past changes in the numberof permanent workers

Past changes Cost, price Legislation

Decrease 78% 62%

Increase 63% 25%

No change 37% 47%

respondents should not come as a surprise.Since the mid-1990s, a changed economicenvironment – increasing levels ofoversupply of deciduous fruit and whitewine, the deregulation and fragmentationof the South African fruit exportingindustry, and the consolidation of retailerpower in prime overseas markets – hasindeed tightened the economic screws inthe Western Cape. At the same time, theimportance given to these factors shouldnot simply be taken at face value. Simbiand Aliber (2000) have argued that there isno support for AgriSA’s contention thatlabour costs have risen disproportionatelyas a component of overall costs and have

21

postulated that a discourse on economicrealities may well function to hide strongpolitical and other considerations. Thismay not be so clear-cut in Western Capehorticulture where farm profitability isunder pressure and labour costs are moreeasily addressed than other major inputssuch as pesticides, packaging materialsand fuel. But Simbi and Aliber’s argumentdoes highlight an important reality. For onething, farming decisions, including labourmanagement and sourcing strategies, arenot neutral or taken for only technical,efficiency-maximising reasons. Thecalculation of efficiencies itself is alwaysthoroughly shaped by social, cultural andpolitical factors. The fact that some farmsare sticking to a labour-retentive strategyrather than an aggressively labour-shedding one seems to indicate that morethan one strategy may be economicallyviable. At the same time, economicjustifications can legitimate difficultdecisions by presenting them as inevitable,not chosen by management but forcedupon it by ‘marketplace realities’.

Another important area of futurechange is housing. Survey responsesindicate a wide range of different optionsavailable: renovating houses; demolishingdwellings; changing the function of

buildings from housing to, for example,storage; building additional housing stock,either on- or off-farm; charging workersrent for housing; and transferring ownershipto workers (see Figure 8). Once again, thedata indicate a strong shift away from thetraditional terms that informed employment.Less than a quarter of respondentsindicated that they planned to continuerenovating existing housing stock. Asignificant number of respondentsindicated that they planned to let emptyhouses remain empty (10%) – a choice thatis strongly linked to the adoption of alabour-shedding strategy. Farmers wouldrather let a significant investment go towaste than use it to house a permanentworker who may acquire strong labour andESTA rights.

Even more significant is the number ofrespondents who indicated that they woulddemolish houses (21%) or change thefunction of existing houses (12%).Together, these choices involve a realabjuration of the housing functiontraditionally taken on by farmers in theWestern Cape. There was some overlapbetween these categories (that is, somefarmers indicated that they would demolishsome houses as well as change the functionof others), but, all in all, these responses



Figure 7: Factors listed as influencing decisions about farm labour

86%89%

73%

43%45%

50%

61%

71%

56%

67%

29%

36%

56%

50%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Ceres Grabouw Paarl Robertson Stellenbosch Wellington Worcester / HexRiver

Cost and price Legislation Aggravation Minimum wage Unionisation

22



23%

21%

1%

9%

12%

1%

4%

23%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

Renovate

Demolish

Build on-farm

Build off-farm

Change use

Stand empty

Transfer ownership

Charge rent

indicate that almost a third of farmers areconsidering abandoning the traditionalobligation of Western Cape wine and fruitfarmers to provide housing (see Table 15).

The abjuration of the housing functionwas not the only important choiceregarding housing. Equally important wasthe smaller, but still significant, number ofrespondents who indicated a desire torenegotiate the paternalist ‘contract’ –either through the transition to a rentalarrangement or by embarking on a processthat puts workers in charge of their ownhousing (building houses off-farm ortransferring ownership to workers).

OverviewOn the whole, the data show a definite job-shedding and externalising trend in someof the most important districts of the keylabour-absorptive agricultural sectors ofthe Western Cape rural economy. At thesame time, it indicates the complexity ofthis trend and the variety of considerationsinfluencing it.1. Respondents surveyed indicated a real

and systematic trend away frompermanent farm employment on manyfarms. Key factors cited as influencingthis trend include not only legislation,but also basic economic factors such asprice and cost. The apparent‘objectivity’ of these reasons should,

however, not be taken at face value.Important as economic considerationsare, they appear to exist alongsidepowerful social, political and emotionalconsiderations linked to farmers’

Figure 8: Future plans for housing

Table 15: Farms planning to demolish or changethe function of housing

Percentage

Whole sample 32%

District

Ceres 50%

Grabouw 33%

Paarl 35%

Robertson 13%

Stellenbosch 55%

Wellington 17%

Worcester/Hex River 22%

Main activity

Deciduous fruit 35%(tree-grown)

Mixed 43%

Table grapes 18%

Wine 33%

Distance from urban centre

<10 km 36%

>10 km 25%

0 5 10 15 20 25

23

perceptions of themselves as amarginalised and persecuted grouping.The ‘objectivity’ of economicconsiderations certainly appears to playa role in legitimating decisions that runcounter to the employment ethic deeplyentrenched in the culture of WesternCape farmers.

2. Another important shift lies in thecurrent use of and future policyregarding on-farm housing. Theresearch shows that there are asignificant number of farms with morethan one empty house – a situation thatreflects a reluctance to employ permanentlabour, even when it is plentiful. Moresignificantly, almost a third ofrespondents indicated an intention infuture to implement housing policiesthat would involve an abjuration of thehousing function, which hastraditionally been part of the institutionof paternalism on Western Cape farms.

3. Although significant, the shift awayfrom permanent employment is nothomogenous. The data appear to suggesta possible correlation between past andfuture decisions to lay off or retainlabour. This suggests that there mightbe a divergence in labour-shedding andlabour-retentive strategies. A significantnumber of farmers are planning to holdon to labour in the future, even thoughjobs per hectare are already higher thanthose on labour-shedding farms. Ittherefore appears that the more stableand labour-absorptive employmentrelations typical of paternalist farmingpersist on a significant number offarms. At the same time, it may well bethat Western Cape agriculture has notreached the limit of its capacity to shedjobs. Permanent jobs per hectare onmany farms that have not shed jobs inthe past are double those on farmswhere jobs have been shedded.

4. The data reflect a significantly reducedlevel of permanent employment. Formalpermanent employment has decreasedto a third of its previous levels. To some

extent, this may primarily reflect achange in people’s formal status. Manyfarm dwellers who remain on farms orwho have a permanent link to them areno longer counted as permanent labour.However, even when on-farmtemporary employment is counted in,the figures for permanent on-farmlivelihoods are down to 0.79 regularjobs per hectare.

5. Horticulture in the districts surveyedcontinues to generate a significantvolume of work. However, this work isnow increasingly being done by one ofseveral sources of temporary labour –either on-farm temporary workers oroff-farm labour. According torespondents’ estimates, temporaryworkers account for one and a halftimes the amount of work done bypermanent workers. Employment andincomes earned in the horticulturalsector are therefore becoming moreunreliable and seasonal in nature.

6. For the most part, the remainingpermanent jobs are reserved forcoloured men. Where women havebeen drawn into agriculturalemployment, it has been as seasonaland temporary employees – categoriesof labour that are usually not accordedany benefits, and which offerprecarious and insecure employment.

7. One of the most important patterns inthe use of temporary labour is thedevelopment of a labour contractingsector. Many farms appear to haveestablished relationships withcontractors whose services includetaking responsibility for both theprovision and management of labour. Insome sectors, a demand for relativelysophisticated labour contractors seemsto have developed. It is significant thatmost of these labour contractingarrangements are local in nature – inother words, they involve workers whocould easily have been sourced directlyby the farm concerned.



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A small, marginal operatorBackgroundPieterse Agricultural Contractors1 is a smallbusiness formed by Johnnie Pieterse andhis brother after Johnnie was retrenchedfrom his job as overseer on a large fruitfarm in the Simondium area in 1999. Thebusiness is registered in Johnnie’s brother’sname, but Johnnie does most of the actualmanagement.

Business focusOperating mainly in the Simondium area,the business provided specialised servicesin the deciduous fruit industry, although italso undertook some vine work. Accordingto Pieterse, many of the farmers in the areawanted to get out of the fruit industry.Pieterse’s workers did all the things that askilled deciduous fruit worker or overseerwould do: harvesting, pruning, thinning,manipulation of young trees and orchardestablishment. The business providedmanagement services as well.

Pieterse’s business depended to a largeextent on the skills he developed and thetraining he received while employed(besides undergoing technical training, heattended a number of managementcourses, including the NationalProductivity Institute’s 6M course). Thebusiness also relied on Pieterse’s networkin the area. The Pieterse brothers were wellacquainted with the local farmers, andusually approached those farmers who

they knew would require workers wellahead of time. They worked with a smallbut stable group of about five farmers,who formed the core of their client base.Their small labour force and logisticalconstraints meant that they could onlyservice about two farms at a time.

Farmers preferred to pay per task, andnot for time worked: negotiations focusedon piece rates per bin (during harvesting)or per tree (for pruning and thinning). Theorganisation of piece rates variedaccording to the tasks. At the time of theinterview, pruning was being done in two-person teams (each team was assigned arow) and keeping track of completed workwas done by physically counting thepruned trees. Harvesting was done inteams of 12 to 18 persons. Piece priceswere shared among picking teammembers. Non-picking workers (binsorters) were paid R30 to R35 per day.

Negotiations with clients werecomplicated and a fair amount of technicalknowledge and experience was called forto avoid underquoting. Pieterse paidworkers 75% of the price negotiated withthe farmer. The remainder was his cut forprofit and overheads. He said that he hadto ensure that workers received betweenR40 and R60 per day during season time,though he conceded that sometimes realwages fell below this. The cost fortransporting workers was built into the fee,unless the farmer provided transport.

Chapter 4: Contract labourThe labour contracting market in the Western Cape is diverse, with bigdifferences between sectors and between regions, and with a variety ofdifferent services offered by contractors in this market. The study did notpermit an exhaustive survey of the contracting sector. Rather, four casestudies were undertaken in 2001 to highlight the extent and nature ofthe variations and some of the problems and difficulties encountered inthe various types of contracting service.

25

In practice, margins were much narrower.This was evident in the cash flow duringthe previous week, a situation, Pietersesaid, that typified his business. He hadnegotiated an overall fee of R3 000 for ateam of 12 people to prune an orchard.The workers each earned in the region ofR40 per day during that week, leaving himwith a margin of R600 – a fifth instead ofhis projected 25%. A higher than averagenumber of trips to Stellenbosch costinghim more than R200 for fuel and a cellphone bill averaging between R60 andR120 a week meant that he cleared only alittle bit more than the workers themselves.This was even before depreciation andother costs could be taken into account. Heestimated that on average he took homeabout R300 per week. He and his brotherwould have liked more money, but theycould not cut too deeply into the workers’share: ‘Ek kan mos nie van hierdie geld vatnie, dis te min.’ (I can’t take any of thismoney, it’s too little.) Pieterse said thatthings could be better if the business werebigger, but was pessimistic about itschances of success in the contracting sector.He and his brother were thinking of movinginto other services such as cleaning.

Infrastructure and resourcesThe business utilised a small bakkie, whichwas broken down at the time of the inter-view. Workers had to use their own overallsand protective boots and were reliant onfarmers to supply them with light equipmentsuch as sizing rings and stepladders. Thebusiness had a supply of pruning shears(these had to be bought one by one becauseof cash flow problems), although workerssometimes brought their own.

Because the business could not offerany collateral, it did not have access tocredit. If it could get credit, its first prioritywould be to acquire a 3-ton truck. Thiswould enable the business to provide itsown transport, thus putting it on a strongerfooting in negotiations with farmers. Thefact that farmers were providing most ofthe transport depressed the prices Pietersecould set per task.

According to Pieterse, the most importantproblem was farmers’ insistence onnegotiating task-based contracts ratherthan longer term agreements. He said thatone alternative was to enter into contractsbased on price per hectare rather than priceper piece, since it would enable him toseparate his own earnings from workers’piece rates. He felt that it would be evenbetter to enter into a retainer-typerelationship with a client, stipulating thatthe contractor would provide services for acertain period of time, for example sixmonths or a year. Prices could still be seton the basis of tasks, but this type ofcontract would give him what his businessmost needed: a measure of certainty and areduction of risk. Without certainty aboutthe availability of work for more than aweek or two into the future, he could notget access to credit.

Labour forceThe core labour force consisted of between12 and 18 people, all former colleagueswho had been retrenched at the same timeas Pieterse. Most of the labour force wascoloured, and there was an even genderbreakdown (which did not prevent Pietersefrom collectively referring to his workersas his manne (men)). They lived in thearea and some of them, it appeared, stilllived on the farms where they used to beemployed. From time to time, Pieterseemployed workers from further afield, inwhich case they had to be housed on thefarm where they were being employed.According to Pieterse, some contractorspreferred to work with such workers, sincepeople who came from poorer areas werewilling to work for as little as R20 or R30per day. Pieterse, however, argued that inthe long run it was better to work withworkers who had their own housing andlived close by, since it reduced logisticalproblems.

Farmers’ unwillingness to enter intolong-term contracts with Pieterse alsoaffected his relationship with his workers.Pieterse said that he could not enter intoformal contractual arrangements with

Chapter 4: Contract labour

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workers without the security of longer termcontracts. He said that the only way hecould develop a reliable core group oflabourers was by offering them work of arelatively stable and predictable nature, buthe was not able to do so. Pieterse’sworkers had no guarantee of employmentbeyond the immediate task. Depending onwhen he was able to arrange employment,he always stood the risk of a workerfinding employment with someone elseand being unavailable when he neededhim or her. In practice, Pieterse’s stablecore of workers seemed to consist of aboutthree or four people, with the rest of hispool of workers being fairly flexible andunstable. His relationship with his corelabourers was based on informalarrangements and long-standingrelationships with them. He said that hehad a list of the names of most of hisworkers, though some of them did notwant to give him their ID numbers.

Pieterse’s workers could not takeadvantage of Unemployment InsuranceFund (UIF) benefits, as UIF contributionswere not subtracted from their pay, eventhough some workers had worked for himfor over four months. He said that becauseof his unstable workforce, it wasimpossible to administer the subtraction ofUIF contributions. Pieterse was well awareof labour law provisions and was quick tosay that he tried to ensure that working hourscomplied with the provisions of the BasicConditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997.

Pieterse also made no provision for anypro rata benefits beyond the actual cashwage. He stated that ‘ek probeer ietsieinbou vir as ’n man siek is, om so ’n bietjiegeld te kan gee’ (I try to keep some moneyfor when a guy is ill, to be able to give hima bit of money). It was not clear whetherthis was merely an intention, or whether hehad in fact ever provided such extramoneys. When asked whether he wasregistered as an employer with theDepartment of Labour, Pieterse replied inthe affirmative, although he seemed tohave meant that he was a registeredtaxpayer.

A large operator in a buyer �smarketBackgroundLike Pieterse, Isak Linnie has abackground in the fruit industry – as afork-lift truck driver and an overseer andmanager on a large fruit farm in theGrabouw area. It appears he left this job in1996 when he realised ‘die maatskappyhet nie geld nie en ek het gesien ek sal gousonder werk sit’ (the business did not havemoney and I realised I would soon be outof a job). After that, he began working as alabour contractor in the Ceres, Wolseleyand Stellenbosch areas. Like Pieterse, hedid not seem to be registered as anemployer with the Department of Labour,although he too had recently registered asa taxpayer.

Business focusAlthough Linnie’s business was significantlybigger than Pieterse Agricultural Contractors,there were many similarities. Like Pieterse,he operated mostly on deciduous fruitfarms and provided the standard range ofspecialised services, although he did dosome work on wine farms as well. He alsooffered management services. Paymentwas strictly negotiated on a task basis,although a daily rate was charged for sometasks (for example bin sorting in theorchard). During the 2000 harvestingseason, his overall fee was typicallycomposed of mutually agreed piece rates(between R23 and R35 per bin), the dailyrate for sorters, tractor drivers and othersupplementary workers (usually R35 perday), and his own management fee of R65per day. Workers who were paid the dailyrate were given the whole R35, butbetween R3 and R5 per bin was beingskimmed off the piece rate and added toLinnie’s daily fee of R65. This meant that ona good day he was able to secure an incomeof between R120 and R150 per farm.

The recent economic crisis in the Ceresarea has impacted heavily on Linnie’sbusiness. At the time of the interview,farmers were cutting back on costs, whichplaced heavy pressure on Linnie’s

27

margins. Farmers were no longer willing topay a specific daily rate for workers notdirectly involved in piece work, and allwages – including Linnie’s own fee – hadto be recovered from the task fee. Evenfarms that were still willing to pay dailyrates were now paying less. While theaccepted daily rate in the Ceres area hadbeen R35 per day, it was now closer toR25 per day, and on the one farm whereLinnie had been able to negotiate amanagement fee for himself, this had gonedown to R40 per day.

In addition to the problem of tightermargins, farmers’ approach to relationshipswith contractors was also a matter ofconcern. Like Pieterse, Linnie highlightedthe unpredictability and credit constraintsresulting from farmers’ unwillingness toenter into longer term retainer agreements.Bidding and quotation procedures werealso problematic. It appeared that somefarmers employed a strategy of callingseveral contractors who offered similarrates and then simply using the one whoshowed up first. Linnie explained thatthere had been several occasions when hewould arrive at a farm only to find anothercontractor working there, despite havingreached a prior, in-principle agreementabout bin rates and daily rates with thefarmer over the telephone. Linnie statedthat there were farms where four differentcontractors had been employed in thespace of one month.

Resources and infrastructureLinnie provided some light equipment,such as sizing rings, pruning shears andsaws. Like Pieterse, he lacked reliabletransport (he owned a car, but it was notfunctioning at the time of the interview).Linnie relied on the farmers to transportthe workers themselves. His mostimportant piece of ‘capital equipment’ washis cell phone, which, at the time of theinterview, was faulty.

Linnie’s operation had managed toavoid the cash flow problems that plaguedPieterse’s business. This was mostlybecause his clients paid his workers

directly. On one farm, for example,Linnie’s invoice book was kept by the farmsecretary, and it was the farm administratorwho calculated piece rates and made upwages. For all practical purposes, the flowof money through Linnie’s business wassimply a book transaction. Like Pieterse,Linnie had almost no chance of gainingaccess to credit, and he said that the bankswere simply not willing to take the risk.

Labour and labour relationsThe most important difference betweenLinnie’s and Pieterse’s business was size.In 2000, the year prior to the interview,Linnie worked on about five farms at atime and had as many as 150 peoplescattered on farms between Ceres andStellenbosch, though the average was closerto 60. Most of these workers were drawnfrom Nduli and Bella Vista, the African andcoloured residential areas in Ceres.

The core of his employee baseconsisted of about 20 steunpilare(stalwarts) – highly skilled workers, withwhom he had a strong relationship, and forwhom he could find work throughout mostof the year. The majority of these workerswere men, although, according to Linnie,women made better workers, because ‘’nman laat nie vir hom sê nie’ (a man won’tlet anyone tell him what to do). His labourforce was almost entirely coloured and hehad one Xhosa-speaking man workingwith him. Linnie said that it was impossibleto work with ‘Bantoes’ on fruit farms,because they ‘handled fruit roughly’ andbecause of language problems.

On at least one of the farms whereLinnie worked, some of the farm’spermanent on-farm workers were formallytransferred to Linnie’s authority – andpayroll – for the duration of the 2000harvesting season. In terms of thisarrangement, Linnie was responsible forpaying these workers the agreed piece ratefor the harvest. Workers continued to livein their on-farm houses, and the farmmanagement continued to makecontributions to the workers’ provident


28



fund, although it invoiced Linnie for thesecosts. In effect, temporary workers wereindirectly contributing to the payment of thefarmer’s permanent labour costs through theportion of their fee that Linnie was skimmingoff the bin rate.

The unpredictability and uncertaintyresulting from the farmers’ approach tocontractors impacted strongly on Linnie’srelationship with his employees. He foundit very difficult to get workers to agree towork for such low pay. According toLinnie, many unemployed people in theBella Vista area were simply refusing towork, saying that they would rather sit athome than harvest at R25 per day. ‘Dit kosgeld om te werk. Jy moet kos saamvat ensorg dat daar darem ietsie oorbly vir joukinders om ook van te eet. Op die ou endwerk jy jou moeg en jy kom uit met minderas wat jy mee begin het.’ (It costs money towork. You must take food with you andstill make sure that there is a littlesomething left over for your children forfood. And at the end of it, you’re exhaustedand you end up with less than when youstarted.) Many other contractors in theCeres area responded to these pressures bysourcing labour from further away, in theKaroo, where people were desperate forwork. Because of the uncertainty createdby farmers’ practices and also because ofpressure on his margins, Linnie found itincreasingly difficult to hold on to his coreworkers: ‘Mense vertrou my nie meer nie.Hulle dink dis ek wat die geld vat.’ (Peopledon’t trust me any more. They think it’sme who takes the money.)

As with Pieterse, there was no contractbetween Linnie and his workers, not evenwith those who made up his stable core. NoUIF was subtracted and no benefits werepaid. Linnie lent his workers money to buyfood for lunch during work time andsubtracted this broodgeld (bread money)from their pay at the end of the week. Thebusiness was highly informal andundocumented: after five years in business,he did not even have a complete list ofpeople who formed part of his workforce.

Linnie was evasive on the subject ofcompliance with labour legislation, andstated that the client dictated workingconditions. Participant observation anddiscussions with members of Linnie’slabour force in 2000 revealed that workersregularly worked on public holidays andweekends. This work was done on avoluntary basis and workers were not paidovertime rates. Linnie blamed the clientsfor this: ‘Hy weet hy moet meer betaal,maar ek is die een wat verleë is.’ (Heknows he must pay extra, but I am the onewho is in a weak position.) Although thechances that a trade union would succeedin organising his workers were slim, Linniewas strongly opposed to the idea of a tradeunionist speaking to workers. He said thathe was ‘not interested’ in dealing with‘such people’.

A well-resourced specialistBackgroundJan-Hendrik du Preez’s operation differs ina number of ways from the businesses ofLinnie and Pieterse. While Du Preez, too,comes from a farm, his experience is infarm ownership and management. Hisfather owned a table grape and wine farmin the Robertson area, which was sold in1997. Although he has no formaleducation in agriculture, Du Preez said thatthe time (six years) he spent working withhis father gave him a good, practicalunderstanding of the business. After thesale of the farm, Du Preez worked foranother contractor, but the hours were longand the pay was poor. He recruited eightworkers and started out on his own,developing a business as a specialistcontractor in the Stellenbosch area. At thetime of the interview, he had been involvedin the business for almost four years.

Business focusDu Preez, whose business involved him,his wife and a core workforce of some 30to 50 workers, described himself as ‘smallfry’. The aim of his business was toprovide wine farms with comprehensiveand specialised quality services. Theseservices included harvesting, pruning,

29

trellising, thinning, installation of irrigationsystems, fencing, pole planting andvineyard establishment. Although he hadsome experience in working on deciduousfruit farms, his focus was on the wineindustry. He said that that he ‘did not havetime for fruit’ at this stage in his business.

As with the other contractors, work wasdone on a task basis. Du Preez quotedstrictly per piece, and, in order to paywages and overheads and make money forhimself, he took a third of the piece rate.Calculating piece rates required significantexperience and depended on a very carefulassessment of conditions in the vineyard.He said that he kept abreast of what othercontractors quoted and was usually able tomatch or beat their rates. However, he saidthat he would rather refuse work thanaccept a low price. He claimed that hewould not take on work that would pay hisworkers less than R50 per day. Accordingto Du Preez, the average daily rate forgeneral farm workers in the region wasR30, but paying such low rates would becounterproductive to his business: ‘Ekbetaal goed, en dan kan ek vol nonsenswees oor kwaliteit.’ (I pay well and cantherefore demand quality.) While his timewas spent on overall management, actualsupervision was done by overseers in theteam, whom he said he paid R70 per day.This allowed him to service several farmsat the same time, travelling between themand dealing with overall logistics.

A good and reliable network amongfarmers was an essential part of Du Preez’sbusiness survival strategy. Being the son ofa farmer helped too. In at least one case, agood client also happened to be a long-standing friend. While he was starting up,he drummed up business by physicallygoing from door-to-door rather thanadvertising his services in the print media.He was initially forced to quote rock-bottom prices in order to compete, but nowthat he had established a reputation forreliability and quality, business wassnowballing. New business came to himthrough word of mouth and recommenda-tions from existing clients. Although he

had more work than he could take on, hebelieved it would be a mistake to increasethe size of his labour force to cope withdemand. He argued that his businessneeded to stay relatively small for the timebeing so that he could stay in touch withclients and workers. In order to do well inany particular year, he needed to develop abase of between 10 and 20 regular clients.Any more than that and he would beoverstretching himself. Logisticalconsiderations also meant that he could nothandle more than five or six farms per day,and he thus had to work in a relativelysmall geographic area.

According to Du Preez, there had beenan explosion in the number of contractors,and competition was stiff. He explainedthat most of these contractors had othersources of income and were gettinginvolved in contracting as a supplementaryactivity. For this reason, he was in favourof labour legislation that would clampdown on contracting services andsupported the idea that labour contractorsbe registered as employers. It was easier,he said, for competitors to compete withhim on price if they could flout labour lawwith impunity. He also believed that ifcontractors had to pay UIF and complywith other labour laws, part-timecontractors would find it more difficult tostay in business. Large, well-resourced,labour-only contractors, such asOutSource, were a more serious threat,although, he claimed, he could beat themon quality. Although some farmers wouldfind their low rates attractive, he believedtheir inability to provide managementservices and light equipment, and the lackof experience of the workers they broughtin, counted against them.

He argued that the sustainability of hisbusiness depended on his ability to buildup and maintain a reliable base ofreturning clients, and observed that ‘dit vatdrie maande om ’n goeie kliënt op te bouen drie sekondes om hom weg te gooi’ (ittakes three months to build a goodrelationship with a client and three secondsto lose him). Being able to guarantee


30



quality was therefore of centralimportance. For this he relied on closecontrol and supervision by the teamleaders, who kept careful records not onlyof the amount of work done by workers,but also of levels of quality andthoroughness. This enabled him to adjustpiece rates: while a worker may work for abasic piece rate of 14c per vine forthinning, she or he may be penalised 5cper vine if the work was not done properly,or rewarded 1c per vine in recognition ofgood work. Du Preez made a point ofconducting personal visits and spotchecking the work himself. The visits alsohelped him stay in touch with bothworkers and clients.

ResourcesThe business was fairly well capitalised: hehad almost finished paying off a 3-tontruck, and workers were provided withlight equipment such as pruning shears,harvesting shears, spades and other task-related equipment. Du Preez said heplanned to provide core workers withoveralls as well in the near future, and hestayed abreast of new products on themarket. At the time of the interview, hewas speculating about the possibility ofacquiring pneumatic pruning shearspowered with a back-pack mountedbattery. Though they were expensive,retailing at R6 500 each, he calculated thatthey would be able to double the numberof old vines a single worker would be ableto cut in a day.

Administrative infrastructure compriseda home office with a computer, a fax, alandline and cell phones for him and hiswife. The computer was mainly used forthe administration of wages, though headded that over time he would be able to usethe data to calculate piece rates and compareprices, wages and piece rates for particularfarms with data from previous years.

As with the other contractors, marginswere tight. Du Preez stated that in additionto the calculation of piece rates, themanagement of cash flow and credit wasthe most difficult aspect of the business.

The absence of collateral and the lack oflong-term contracts meant that banks werereluctant to offer credit. Du Preez had toborrow a bakkie from his father when hestarted his business, and his father alsostood surety for the loan on the 3-tontruck. He calculated that between July andFebruary – his busiest time – he had tomake an average of R18 000 per week.His expenses included R12 000 per weekfor wages, R700 per week for diesel, and afurther R3 500 per month for payments forthe truck.

Labour forceAlthough the core of Du Preez’s labourforce was composed of 30 male and 20female workers, the total number of peoplehe employed fluctuated. During peak timeshis labour force grew to between 80 and 90people. These were mostly colouredworkers. Women tended to predominate inthis larger team. In Du Preez’s view,African workers were less experienced invineyard work, and there were majorcommunication problems. He noted thatsome farmers – particularly on smallerfamily farms – stipulated that they onlywanted coloured workers to work on theirfarms. Although he said that he did notapprove of racial discrimination, he did notargue with these farmers and simplymoved the African workers to other farms.

Most of the workers used by Du Preezwere people who had lost jobs on farmsand who now lived in informal peri-urbansettlements or on farms around theKlapmuts area. Du Preez stated that he didnot agree with the fairly widespreadpractice of using workers from far-flungplaces and housing them on clients’ farms.Workers from outlying areas in theWestern Cape were willing to accept lowerwages, and workers living far from homein temporary quarters on a farm were alsoheld to be more controllable. But therewere disadvantages: ‘Hoekom moet ek nouso ver ry as ek ’n ou hier kan kry? Diskorter om te ry en ek gee nie om hom meerte betaal nie. Hy kom uit die wynlande uit

31

en hy het praktiese ondervinding.’ (Whyshould I travel far if I can get a guy righthere? It’s a shorter journey and I don’tmind paying more. He comes from thewinelands and has practical experience.)According to Du Preez, outside workerswere always blamed for any ‘problems’that developed and he did not want to beinvolved in such tensions.

Labour relationsIn addition to a stable client base, Du Preezargued that he also needed to ensure thathe had a stable workforce. Athough acompetitive wage was essential, the abilityto provide people with stable livelihoodswas a key requirement (see Box 1).Equally important was having goodrelationships with the members of his corelabour force. He prided himself on hisability to work with people: he stated thathis job required him to motivate people, tosolve problems and to resolve disputesbetween workers. He mentioned thatworkers called him by his first name ratherthan the meneer (sir) even ‘liberal’ farmersoften still expected.

Du Preez used a labour consultantbased in the Paarl area, who helped himdraw up contracts. He had signed annualcontracts with some of his core workers.This was made possible by the fact that he

had an agreement with a client who tookon workers on a fixed basis for the entireyear. With most of the other workers hesigned seasonal contracts for harvesting,pruning and thinning. He emphasised thefact that he was legally obliged to givecontractual workers paid leave, eventhough they were paid per piece. Workershad to apply for leave formally, and werepaid the average daily rate. He said that ashis business became more established, heplanned to sign more annual contracts.Interviews with workers (see page 35)confirmed his statements about basicconditions of employment.

Du Preez stated that he thought labourlegislation was a ‘good thing’. Hedistanced himself from contractors whoexploited their labour, although he clearlybelieved that current labour laws were toorigid. He said that he did not allow clientsto dictate to him how many hours hisworkers must work. In cases where hisworkers had to work overtime as a resultof the demands of a specific job, Du Preezadjusted his price accordingly, or usedmore people. He refused to do work onpublic holidays: according to him, it wascounterproductive. In any case, he said,workers do not work well if they have ‘thatholiday feeling’. Contract workers were


Box 1: The importance of providing year-round work

One has to pay good salaries. And one must treat him like a human being. It doesn’thelp I pay him R100 a day and I swear and scream and scold him and I’m on his caseall day long. It’s my task to let him feel he has human dignity. He must feel he enjoysworking with me. His working conditions must be pleasant. I mustn’t play policemanall day long.

I specialise in providing stable work. For example, many contractors will providework during the pruning time. When pruning time is over, he sends them home. Theysit at home for two or three weeks and then they don’t know what to do. I providework throughout the year. I provide work for my people. Except during holidays. I tryto provide work for everyone, because the more people I have in the field the biggermy profit. Of course there are times when it is quiet. It is mostly after the vintage thatthe farms are quiet. Then the work consists mainly of planting poles. Then I can atleast provide work for the men.2

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entitled to pro rata leave, and UIF andskills development levies were subtracted.He stated that he was ‘not worried’ abouttrade unionism – most of the workers heworked with were ‘old farm people’ whogrew up on farms and were likely tomistrust trade unions.

He saw training as an important issue,and said he wished he could access SectorEducation Training Authority (SETA)funds for his own workers. He would haveliked to improve the skills of ordinaryworkers, but, more importantly, he wantedto provide training for overseers. Knowingthat he could rely on the effective andimpartial supervision of his overseersduring his absence was essential to his wayof working. Furthermore, the link betweenquality monitoring and piece rates meantthat supervisors were often under pressurefrom the team to be lenient in theirjudgement. He was reluctant to cover thefull cost of training himself, because hewould lose the investment if a worker wereto leave. He said that his most importantpersonal training need was to becomefluent in Xhosa, since he needed to be ableto take on and communicate effectivelywith African workers.

A labour-only contractorBackgroundOutSource is a temporary placementagency which originated in the 1970s as asource of alternative labour for companiesfacing industrial action. Since then, it hasgrown into a large organisation operatingin the mainstream labour market. It hasmore than 50 offices and several divisions(for example, ConstructionSource,MediSource and ITSource) that deal withthe provision of skilled labour inspecialised areas. Its foray into agriculturewas the brainchild of the Western Capedirector, Suzi King, who became involvedin agricultural labour contracting whilerunning OutSource in the Eastern Cape.The agricultural labour contracting is donemostly in the Grabouw, Paarl andStellenbosch regions. In Stellenbosch,

OutSource already has extensive links withthe wine industry through its work with amajor co-operative cellar in the region.

Business focusOutSource provided temporary labour forharvesting and performed other seasonalagricultural tasks on farms in peri-urbanregions in the Western Cape. Unlike theother cases studied, OutSource was alabour-only contracting service. Theagency did not take responsibility formanaging the completion of tasks, butfunctioned only as a source of labour.According to its chief executive officer,Simon Kaplan, this was a matter ofcompany policy. Farmers were supposedto take responsibility for the managementof the task themselves as it would be toogreat a risk for OutSource to do this.

This also meant that OutSource did notmake business on the basis of piece rates.Kaplan and King stated that, at the time,this was too risky and difficult, and thatthere was a danger of getting involved indisputes about productivity and qualityissues over which they would have had nocontrol. In addition, piece rate bargainingposed important systems challenges.According to Kaplan, OutSource plannedto overcome this gap. The company’sJohannesburg office would be tasked withdeveloping software that would allow therecording of piece rate records, as well asthe linking of fees to quality. (It is not clearwhether this was just an intention or whetherit had actually been put into operation.)

According to Kaplan and King,OutSource charged workers out at anhourly rate and the full fee was paiddirectly to the worker. OutSource alsocharged an additional daily fee of betweenR7 and R12 per head. King insisted thatOutSource did not take a cut of theworkers’ pay. In addition, clients wereinvoiced for workers’ transport to and fromthe farm. According to King and Kaplan,the value of the service OutSourceprovided to farmers lay not only in thequick and reliable provision of labour, butalso in the ability to relieve farmers from

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the administrative burden of employment,including ensuring that all employmentprocedures comply with the law.

Kaplan also pointed out that OutSourceinvoiced after delivery. This meant that itwas effectively a supplier of credit, sincethe client did not have to handle thesignificant cash flow problems resultingfrom having to pay a large number ofworkers. King argued that Outsourceoffered workers many opportunities – its sizemeant that it could potentially provide year-round work for workers and give them accessto training and opportunities to enter othersectors.

At the time of the research, OutSourcehad only been involved in agriculture for ayear, but the business was growingquickly. At the Stellenbosch office, thenumber of farm workers supplied in theearly days of the 2001 harvesting seasonexceeded 200 people; by the middle of theseason this figure had more than tripled.King projected that by the end of the 2001harvest the total number of workersemployed in the fields would haveamounted to approximately 2 500.

There appeared to be somedisagreement in the company about itsfuture role in the agricultural sector.According to King, OutSource might wellbe able to dominate the provision ofcontract labour to farmers in the WesternCape, and she planned to get involved notonly in harvesting, but also in pruning,bottling and fruit packing. Kaplan seemedto think that margins were too small tojustify involvement in this sector.

InfrastructureCompared to some of the other contractorsin the business, OutSource was a well-resourced organisation. It had regionaloffices, administrative staff, vehicles,telephones, faxes, computers and cellphones. These resources were, however,thinly spread, and the threadbare, evenbleak, appearance of both its regionalheadquarters and its Stellenbosch office,just outside Khayamandi, seemed toindicate that overheads were kept very

low. Three managers were responsible forall the organisation’s work in that district.None of them had any experience inagriculture (one of the two managersinterviewed had experience in sellinginsurance while the other had an MBAfrom the University of Stellenbosch). Avery important infrastructural advantagefor OutSource was, of course, its overallsize, which meant that the agriculturaloperation was shielded from cash flowproblems. The organisation also had nodifficulty in obtaining credit.

Sources of labourOutSource appeared to employ a numberof strategies in sourcing labour. Accordingto King, the company recruited staffthrough advertising, and job-seekers’details were captured and stored in adatabase. In practice – in the Stellenboschoffice at least – the company relied onmore informal methods. One suchrecruitment method involved theestablishment of a network of contacts inthe various residential areas from whichlabour was drawn. Most workers employedby OutSource in Stellenbosch came fromKhayamandi, Khayelitsha, Blackheath,Westbank, Eersterivier, Ida’s Valley,Cloetesville and Kylemore. Contacts inthese areas were informed when labourwas required; they were asked to identifyand select the specified number of recruits.OutSource then picked up the new workersat pre-arranged points and transportedthem to and from work. In theory, thisshould have been done on a week-by-week basis, but the technical requirementsof wine harvesting are such that labourrequirements change on a day-by-daybasis with decisions often made at the lastminute on the day before.

OutSource’s employee base ofagricultural workers was overwhelminglycoloured. Aside from the fact that mostfarmers were said to prefer colouredworkers, one of OutSource’s Stellenboschmanagers also preferred working withthem, saying that ‘Bantoes kyk te veelrond’ (African workers look around too


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much) – the implication being that theywere likely to steal. The labour force wasestimated to be between 70% and 75%female. Women, said King, were moremeticulous and also more reliable.According to King and OutSource staff atthe Stellenbosch office, most of theworkers were ex-farm workers who hadended up in peri-urban settlements afterbeing retrenched, dismissed or evicted.Most of the workers who were interviewed(see page 36) conformed to this profile,although a visit to one of OutSource’sclient farms revealed that almost all theworkers on that farm were matriculantswho had just finished school. Many ofthem had never been on a wine farm before.

Workers� conditionsKing stressed that it was of key importanceto OutSource that workers were treatedwell. ‘We are not in the slave-drivingbusiness,’ she said more than once duringthe interview. Like Du Preez, she statedthat the company would rather refuse workthan have workers earn less than R50 perday. In addition, she stressed that onceworkers were on OutSource’s books, theyhad access to employment opportunities inother sectors (for example in the buildingsector, or as drivers). OutSource stated thatit had provided workers with sometraining, (apparently showing them videoson pruning techniques).

King and Kaplan stressed thatOutSource would not compromise on theissue of compliance with the law. Allworkers had contracts, UIF was subtracted,and workers were entitled to prorated leaveand sick leave. Furthermore, if a job wastoo big, OutSource would rather bring inan extra shift of workers than have peopleworking overtime without extra pay.OutSource preferred to pay workers bycheque. Even if they were paid in cash,they got detailed payment slips. A managerin the Stellenbosch office said that workerswere provided with overalls, though thecost was subtracted from their wages.None of the workers who were interviewedconfirmed this (see page 36).

A visit to OutSource’s Stellenbosch officeshowed that the reality was more complex.The staff had discovered what othercontractors already knew: farmers did notnegotiate daily rates and insisted on task-based rates. Managers in the organisationhad been on a steep learning curve andhad been forced to do research on typicalpiece rates within the sector. At the time ofharvesting, OutSource was taking on wine-grape harvesting work at rates of betweenR1 and R1.30 per basket, which meant thatthe likely level of daily earnings was closerto R35 than R50. Although official policywas that workers were entitled to proratedfamily responsibility and sick leavebenefits, in practice this was not granted‘because the farmers have to agree to pay’.

Risk and uncertaintyLegal and contractual relationships withinOutSource appeared to reflect the highlychangeable and unpredictable environmentin which the organisation operated.OutSource’s relationship with farmers wasgoverned by ‘order confirmation sheets’,which stipulated the farmer’s labourrequirements in extremely general terms.Often the sheets only provided informationabout the upper limit of the number ofpeople needed, while essential details,such as the time frame of the agreement,were deliberately not recorded. Thisallowed farmers to secure the total numberof workers they needed, while not beingunder any obligation to take on a specifiednumber of workers on any given day.OutSource’s contracts with workersappeared to be similarly flexible and open-ended. Staff at the Stellenbosch office wereunwilling to provide copies of workers’contracts, so details about the nature ofthese contracts could not be ascertained.

Interviews with OutSource workersindicated a high degree of unhappinessabout this aspect of the organisation’swork. Although it was clear that OutSourcewas able to provide labour that wasformally in line with the requirements oflabour law, the uncertainty about

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employment impacted very negatively onworkers’ livelihoods. Very few workersinterviewed had ever managed to work afull week. They said that typically they hadmanaged to get two or three days’employment per week. The way in whichpiecework was set up also made it hard forworkers to pick enough baskets per day toearn high rates. The logistical complexityof keeping track of piece rates forhundreds of workers working on 10 or 12different farms during a single week wasalso clearly causing problems. Workerstended to agree that they would prefer towork on a permanent basis for a particularfarmer, and appeared to have fairlyidealised memories of working conditionson farms.

Workers� perspectivesThe research also enabled contact withworkers. This access was limited, partlybecause of the relative difficulty inreaching workers dispersed across a widegeographic area and partly because of theconstraining conditions under which theinterviews were held. At the same time, theinterviews threw valuable light on theexperiences of workers within the systemof contracting.

Three groups of workers wereinterviewed. The first was a group ofworkers (six coloured women, one Africanwoman, one African man and sevencoloured men) who worked for Du Preezon a farm near Klapmuts. The other twointerviews were held in Westbank, onewith a group of four coloured men and theother with a group of women (threecoloured, one African), all of whomworked for OutSource.

Interviews were highly informal, andtook the form of group discussions withina semi-structured interview format.Questions were aimed at eliciting somesense of workers’ employment histories,their conditions of work, otheremployment opportunities and their viewson the comparative advantages anddisadvantages of regular farm employmentand contract work. The interviews were all

subjected to significant time pressures –the interview with the Klapmuts workersbecause they were in a hurry to start theday’s work, and the interview with theWestbank workers because the meetingswere held at night, after work.

Group 1: Farm-based contract workersin KlapmutsThe workers who worked for Du Preezcame from both on-farm and off-farmcommunities. Five of the women, three ofthe coloured men and the African manwere still living on nearby farms. Some ofthem were permanent workers who hadlost their jobs, while some of the youngerworkers had not been able to findpermanent employment after finishingschool. One of the coloured women andthe African man were living with workingfamily members (the African man stated hewas living ‘in his wife’s house’). Onecoloured woman was paying rent and onewas awaiting eviction after having beenfired. The rest all came from a nearby farmwhere they were told that they could liveon the farm but would only be employedon a temporary basis. The other workerswere living in informal settlements in andaround the area – the African woman inKraaifontein, and the others closer by, inKlapmuts. Interestingly, these workers hadpreviously lived and worked on the samefarms as their on-farm colleagues. Theworkers were clearly also connected toeach other in other ways besides theircommon employment by Du Preez.

The workers broadly corroborated DuPreez’s account of their workingconditions. They confirmed that they hadrecently signed three-month contracts, thatthey had received detailed pay-slips, thatUIF was being subtracted, and that theycould get sick leave if they brought adoctor’s certificate, in which case theywould be paid R50 per day for theduration of the sick leave. The workerssaid Du Preez paid comparatively goodpiece rates. For example, for thinning hepaid 8c a vine, while a very large andprominent wine farm just north of


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Klapmuts, where one of the intervieweesresided, paid just 2c a vine.

Du Preez’s workers were earningbetween R238 and R250 per week.Although this wage was based on a piecerate, they said that there was also a dailyattendance bonus of R5 per day payable atthe end of the season. They stated that theyworked about nine hours a day during theharvest season, and considerably less inwinter. They never worked on publicholidays.

The workers all said that they knewwine farm work well. They had not hadmuch formal training, and had learnedtheir skills on the job. They articulated astrong interest in further training,particularly in pruning fruit trees and inacquiring driving licences.

The workers were divided about themerits of working for a contractor asopposed to having a permanent job as anon-farm worker. Most of them agreed inprinciple that it would be better to havestable and secure employment. Agriculturalwork was the only employment available,though some of the men said they didpainting jobs from time to time. Most saidthat if they were offered a stable job with ahouse on a farm they would ‘go back’. Atthe same time, the workers were verynegative about the conditions that prevailedon at least one of the farms where theystayed. This particular farmer was bothexploitative (he charged farm workers rentfor grown-up children who were stayingwith them but not working on the farm) andabusive. According to one of the workers onthis farm, employment with Du Preez waspreferable: ‘Jan-Hendrik is okay – hy betaalolraait en hy praat mooi met jou. En onswerk heeljaar vir hom, en in Desember hethy ’n bonus gegee.’ (Jan-Hendrik is okay –he pays all right and he talks nicely to you.And we work for him year-round, and inDecember he gave us a bonus.)

Group 2: Women workers forOutSource in WestbankTwo hour-long group interviewdiscussions were held with employees of

OutSource in Van Rooy’s house inWestbank – one interview with a group ofwomen, and the other with a group ofmen.

All of the women were coloured, exceptfor one who was African. Until recently, allof them had lived on farms in theStellenbosch region, although one hadnever been a farm worker before. Theyhad very different reasons for leaving thefarms and ending up in Westbank. DorisMncedane had been retrenched from herjob on a large fruit farm in theFranschhoek area, Liena Yon hadvoluntarily left her employment after aquarrel with a manager, and two otherwomen, Anna Loedolff and Leila Adonis,had joined the development scheme atWestbank in order to have access to securehousing. Says Anna: ‘My man werk nog opdie plaas. Die witman daar het verskuif, entoe trek my man agter die werk aan. Hywerk nou nog daar op ’n plaas anderkantBlackheath. Ek het Wesbank toe gekomsodat ons ’n huis kon kry, en sodat diekindertjies darem kan skoolgaan.’ (Myhusband still works on the farm. The whiteman who lived there moved, and myhusband followed the work. He still workson a farm on the other side of Blackheath.I came to Westbank so that we could get ahouse, and so that the kids can go to school.)

The women agreed that there weresome important advantages to living off-farm – most crucially, the fact that theyhad their own houses. On the other hand,they clearly missed the cushioning effectsof inclusion offered in the ‘implicitcontract’ of paternalism. As Anna said: ‘Ditis waar – dit is jou huis en so aan – maarjou verdienste moet daar wees dat jy jouhuis kan onderhou. As jy huur dan is daarnie brood nie, daar is nie kos nie. Maar asjy op die plaas is dan is daar darem elkedag ’n stukkie.’ (It is true. It is your houseand so on – but there must be income sothat you can maintain your house. If yourent, there isn’t bread, there isn’t food. Butif you are on the farm, then there is a littlesomething every day.)

Working for OutSource was one of thefew employment options open to people at

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Westbank. The only alternatives were totry to find work as a domestic worker, tomake a living as a vendor, or to work forother agricultural contractors. Lienaindicated that a large contractor was takingworkers out to Grabouw each week, but thatonly people with extensive experience withfruit were being employed. Furthermore,one had to be willing to stay in Grabouwfor the week. Unemployment in Westbankwas high, and there were many morepeople who wanted to work for OutSourcebut who could not be accommodated.

The women’s incomes varied in relationto the farms they worked on. The womenwere all druiwesnyers (grape cutters), andmost of them earned in the region of R1.30to R1.50 per basket of grapes harvested (arelatively high rate for the sector, and evenfor the Stellenbosch region). The onlyexception was Doris, who worked at amajor wine estate in the Somerset Westregion. The estate paid a guaranteed dailyrate of R45 and a productivity bonus of60c per basket beyond the daily thresholdof 20 baskets.

Piece rates were, of course, a mixedblessing. Often adverse weather conditionsmeant that workers could only work two orthree days in the week, and the income theyderived from these piece rates (which werebetter than normal) was small and insecure.

Mandjies dra (carrying baskets) wasseen as a male activity. One reason for thiswas that it was very hard work – basketswere heavy and had to be carried a longway. Carrying baskets was also perceivedas a particularly thankless task. The workerwas continually under pressure from otherworkers who wanted to have their basketsemptied so that they could start a new‘piece’. Added to this was the fact thatthis task was not paid at a piece rate:mandjiedraers (basket carriers) were paida straight R45 per day, no matter howmany baskets they carried.

The women also complained that workwas not organised in a way that allowedthem to pack baskets at optimal efficiency.It was rare that anyone was able to reachtheir maximum earning levels. Because

OutSource employed only a small numberof mandjiedraers, teams were kept large,which meant that a druiwesnyer who hadcompleted her or his ‘lot’ of vines oftenhad to walk a long way – carrying a half-full basket of grapes – to get past the teamand to start cutting again. On an averageday they would cut between 30 and35 baskets, and they had to work veryhard to make more than R45.

The women interviewed seemed toaccept these conditions as simple realitiesof life. As they saw it, the choice waseither to work and make some money, orto starve. As Anna said laconically:‘Niemand gaan na my toe kom en sommersê, dé, hier is vir jou ’n R50, hoekom gaankoop jy nie vir jou ietsie nie.’ (No one isgoing to come up to me and say, here’sR50, why don’t you go buy yourselfsomething.) Some of them seemed to takereal pride in their role as breadwinner, inthe fact that they succeeded in feedingthemselves and their children throughhonest, hard work, and in their belief thatthey could do this as well as, if not better,than any man (see Box 2).

Their main concern was with theinefficiency of OutSource’s systems. Lienaindicated that she and two fellow workerswere owed two days’ back pay – anamount of R99 each – and that thecompany was already a month late withthe payment: ‘Hulle sê net elke week, “diéweek, dié week”. Maar hulle gee nie diegeld nie. Dis nou al vier weke wat hulledaai geld skuld. Ek weet nie wat dieprobleem is nie – hoe hulle noudeurmekaar raak daar onder [theStellenbosch office]. Soos daai vrou vir mygesê het, hulle gee maar net die geld, hullewerk nie met die geld nie.’ (They say everyweek, ‘this week, this week’. But theydon’t give the money. The pay is alreadyfour weeks overdue. I don’t know what theproblem is, or why they get so confuseddown there [the Stellenbosch office]. Asthat woman said to me, they just hand outthe money, they don’t work with themoney.)


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This situation had already led to conflictwith OutSource’s management (the womenindicated that they were not afraid ofopenly challenging the management), butthe matter had not been resolved. Otherworkers also claimed that their pay-slipswere based on incorrect assessments of thenumber of baskets they had filled. This,too, could not be rectified. As far asOutSource management was concerned, ifthe farmer recorded a certain number ofbaskets for a particular worker, that wasthe end of the matter.

The women agreed that in spite of allthese difficulties they would probablywork for OutSource again the followingseason. It was more than likely that theywould not have found an alternative sourceof income by then. They were aware oftheir relative lack of power – and clearlysaw how useful this was to the farmers.Permanent workers on the farms had ‘toomany rights’, Anna reasoned, and the‘white man’ would rather work withcontracted workers, whom he owed

nothing and who could not hold himaccountable for anything (see Box 3).

In spite of this, they still hoped for amore stable relationship with a singleclient. According to them, some OutSourceworkers who had proved that they‘understood farm work’ and could berelied upon, were allocated work year-round on a specific farm. ‘Dan is jy“permanent”’ (then you are ‘permanent’),they said, and then you could count onthere being a stable income for your familythroughout the year.

Male workers for OutSource in WestbankThe men who were interviewed hadsimilarly diverse histories. Like thewomen, they had come to Westbank fromfarms in the surrounding area, and, likethem, they had left the farms for differentreasons. Karolus Lemmer was retrenchedfrom his job on a nearby wine farm at theend of 2000. He earned R270 per week atthe time. Philip Andreas left the Koelenhof

Box 2: �I sweat for my bread� � Interview with �Liena�, a worker with OutSource

[Some people do not want to do farm work.] ‘Oooo,’ they say, ‘are you crazy, in avineyard, me?’ But when you arrive home with grapes, they ask you for some grapes.And you haven’t even put your bag down, then they say, ‘lend me R2’, and these arepeople who say they’ll never work in a vineyard. These are people who were born ona farm, who are trying to be haitie petaitie [hoity-toity]. They tell you, ‘I know how towork, I can do that’, but they are not prepared in the evening to … I get so angry.Then on the farm they say, ‘No, I must first wash my feet, I must wash my this and Imust wash my that. I can’t go home like this.’ Why do you work if you don’t wantpeople to see you’ve been working? I want to be seen to be working. I must sweat formy scraps of bread. I am used to working in the vineyard. They don’t want to do dirtywork. I do dirty work, because this stomach of mine is important. What will I eat if Idon’t have bread? I must eat. I am the sole breadwinner. My kids want to eat.

Who works better – men or women?There are many men who earn R70 or R50, while the women get paid R150, R159,R149. Speaking from experience, by the time some of these men would have filled15, 13 baskets, I would already have filled 45 baskets. Then there are the men who,after filling only 15 baskets, say they are more exhausted than you and can’t carrytheir baskets. And here I am, a woman, and I’m prepared to carry my basket. It’s noteven breakfast time yet and you hear them say, ‘I’m tired’. Most of the men choose tocarry baskets. They don’t want to harvest the grapes because they know they can’t cutthe grapes. Most men cut off their own fingers. [Laughter.] It’s the truth!3

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farm where he worked in 1990, becausethe pay was poor. He has beenunemployed ever since. Paul Julies wasdismissed from his R2 000-per-month jobas supervisor and driver for an estatebetween Stellenbosch and Paarl. GabriëlHartenberg grew up on a farm, but left thefarm at a young age. He had never workedon a farm before, and drifted intoemployment with Workforce after thegarage door installation company heworked for folded. They were a fairlyskilled group: Gabriël had had severalyears’ experience as a middle-levelmanager at a fruit-packing plant inStellenbosch, while Paul had done a numberof courses at Elsenburg, including anintroductory course in winemaking. Bothof them had heavy vehicle drivers’ licences.

Unlike the women, the men had anumber of different functions in thecompany. Paul was a driver, and did not dofarm work. He took workers to and fromthe farms as well as doing other transportand driving work for OutSource. He couldthus count on fairly steady employment.Even so, his wages of R450 per week wereless than what he managed to pull in whenliving on the farm. Philip and Karolus weremandjiedraers, while Gabriël was adruiwesnyer.

Like the women, the men earned muchless than the daily and piece rates theiremployers claimed they earned. Gabriëlsaid that there were many weeks when hehad only been able to work for two daysout of five – a case in point was the

previous week, when he earned R70 (theweather was poor, and illness preventedhim from working well on the two dayswhen he could get onto the farm).Karolus’s highest weekly salary had beenR135 for three days in a row as amandjiedraer.

The men were also fairly equivocalabout the benefits and disadvantages ofoff-farm life, although they tended to putfar greater emphasis on the implications ofthe loss of permanent and steadyemployment than the women. For them,the core issue was the loss of a job, and thestability and self-identity associated with it.As Paul put it: ‘By OutSource is jy nie elkedag in die werk nie. Jy het nie elke dag ’nwerk, wat jy dan kan sê jy dit is jou werk,dan gaan jy uit jou huis uit na die werk toenie. Jy werk twee dae en die ander tweedae is jy by die huis en wag. Dis nie ’ngoeie ding nie. Dis beter om op die plaaste bly.’ (With OutSource you are not atwork every day. You don’t have a job thatyou can go to every day, a job that youcan say is ‘your job’. You work two daysand the other two days you’re sitting athome, waiting. It’s not a good thing. It’sbetter to stay on the farm.) Some of them,particularly Gabriël, tended to idealisefarm life, an idealisation clearly shaped bythe men’s loss of their central role asbreadwinners (see Box 4).

The men shared the women’sdissatisfaction with the logistical problemsexperienced with payment. Paul wasparticularly angry. As a driver he wasresponsible for handing out pay-packets

Box 3: �The white man is scared...� � Interview with �Anna�, a worker with OutSource

The farmer pays me R1.20. If I don’t like it, the farmer can easily tell me to go,especially since I’ve been hired by OutSource. Farmers don’t want to have people onthe farms. They don’t want to bother with people on their farms. This is because thefarmers have fewer rights on the farms. If I do something that the white man doesn’tlike, he will have to leave me alone, because I have too many rights. Therefore hewould rather not take you on. The farmers would rather get contractors than have todeal with people on the farms. Many people have lost their homes. And there aremany people who can’t afford to get a little place in town. They would prefer to havea little place on the farm. But now the white man is scared of these things. He wouldrather employ a contractor.4


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and had to face workers’ anger when themoney was not correct. He believed it wasunfair of OutSource to make itsadministrative problem the driver’sproblem. He believed that the source of theproblem was that OutSource had under-invested in infrastructure, and he wascritical of its inability to work out acoherent system.

At the same time, they were also awarethat there was precious little they could do.As Paul pointed out, the alternatives wereeven more insecure: ‘So nou en danprobeer ek maar hier ’n kontrakkie doenen daar ’n kontrakkie doen. Ry maar hierso ’n trippie en daar so ’n trippie. Ek hetlisensie en alle die. Maar okay, mense stelnie meer belang om ’n kontrakteur asbestuurder op die plaas aan te neem nie.Die inkomste by OutSource is iets om meeaan te gaan. Dit hou die gesin aan dielewe.’ (Every now and then I do a littlecontracting. Or I do a little trip here and alittle trip there. I have a licence and all that.But okay, people on farms are notinterested in contracting a driver. Theincome from OutSource is something toget by on. It keeps the family alive.)

Unsustainable livelihoodsThese four case studies are by no meansexhaustive or representative of the entirerange of labour contracting relationships

found in Western Cape agriculture. Withthe exception of Linnie’s business, thebusinesses are all from the Stellenboscharea, and some important and sophisticatedcontracting enterprises have been left out.At the same time, the case studies illustratethe wide range of variation in labourcontractors’ strategies and highlightsimilarities and common problems. Fromthe point of view of those concerned withemployment justice in Western Capeagriculture, the case studies raise somealarming issues, for they shed bleak lighton the capacity of the agricultural labourcontracting sector to provide people withadequate livelihoods under non-exploitative conditions.

From the point of view of farmers,whose margins are constantly underpressure, there are of course majoradvantages to the proliferation ofcontracting operations. And given thatworkers who are knowledgeable andexperienced in skilled areas of workcontinue to swell the ranks of theunemployed in the rural areas of theWestern Cape, the growth in contractingservices can be viewed as a major movetowards an agricultural labour market that,in economic terms, is highly efficient.Farmers’ success in insisting on task-basedinstead of time-based rates means that theyare able to have high degrees of control

Box 4: �It would be a privilege to return to a farm�

In my opinion, it’s a privilege to be on a farm. Given the conditions under which welive here in Westbank today, I believe it would be a privilege to return to a farm. Youhave peace and quiet on a farm. There you can lead an exemplary life and raise yourchildren in [an exemplary way].

I would return to a farm, because on a farm you get a house, electricity, water,education for your kids, transport. Here in Westbank – I don’t mean only Westbank,but in a place like it – there is danger, transport, electricity, rent. And all thoseobligations that accompany them. It is difficult for me, because I can’t afford all of it.

I think it would be better for me if I could return to farm labour. On a farm, I can gostraight home on a Friday evening with my R200 pay, and I can say to my wife,‘Look, here’s R200’. But if I stay here, I can only give my wife R70, which she mustuse to buy food and all the other things too.’5

41

over the overall cost of work done, whilethe payment of piece rates also builds acrude but effective productivity incentiveinto the labour process. More importantly,the externalisation of labour relationsmeans that farmers are protected fromsome of the risks involved in taking onlabour in a sector exposed to naturalfactors that are beyond human control. Ifweather conditions, or other considerations,make harvesting impossible, it is thecontractor’s problem, not the farmer’s.

This efficiency, however, comes at areal cost to both contractors and workers.In the first place, in a context where manyskilled and experienced farm workers arelooking for jobs, the reality is that farmers’insistence on quality is more or less agiven. Contractors are under great pressureto supply quality services and still becompetitive. Task-based rates are likely tobe influenced above all by the lowestpossible rate a desperate worker isprepared to accept in exchange for work.In the case of Pieterse’s contractingbusiness, it was also clear that thesepressures were forcing him to take onwork at rates that made it impossible forhim to cover hidden costs such asdepreciation, with major implications forthe long-term survival of his business.Secondly, the ability of farmers to pass onrisk to contractors makes it difficult forcontractors to build up a stable body ofskilled workers. They cannot offer stableemployment in a context where contractscannot be secured well in advance and areopen to adjustment or suspension at veryshort notice. The effects of this uncertaintycascade through the system, preventing thecreation of sustained social relations oflabour further down the line. Farm workersthemselves will spread their risks bykeeping their options open, working withwhichever contractor offers them work in agiven week. But, by having to accept theinsecurity and unpredictability of theirlivelihoods, it is they who ultimately bearthe costs of this new efficiency.

The implications for employmentjustice are discouraging. The contractingsector depends upon and perpetuateshighly fluid and informal relationships thatmake both compliance and monitoringvery difficult. In the context of a constantlabour turnover, and where comprehensiverecords of workers’ names and ID numbersare almost unheard of, the payment of UIFcontributions, let alone the development offormal, mutually agreed labour contracts,is difficult. And amidst stiff competition inthe sector, demands that involve the violationof the provisions of basic employmentlegislation become difficult to resist.

The most serious implications, however,are for rural livelihoods and income. Oneof the attractions that the payment of piecerates holds for both farmers andcontractors is the way in which it functionsto legitimate workers’ incomes by creatingthe fiction that they are ‘working forthemselves’. In reality, many of the factorsthat determine workers’ incomes arebeyond their control. Not only are earningsinfluenced by weather and otherunpredictable and uncontrollableconditions, they are also constrained bythe way work itself is organised, that is,not to maximise workers’ ‘pieces’ but tocut overhead costs and supplementaryfunctions. Where unemployment is rife,workers who are not willing to work forpaltry wages will all too often beshouldered aside by those who are. Forthis reason, worker organisation facessignificant obstacles.

Notwithstanding the importance of thesevering of the paternalist bonds that tiedfarmer to worker, the externalisation oflabour and of labour relationships does notherald the coming of a free market, wherethe contract goes to the contractor who canoffer the most effective service for the bestprice. Culture, identity and social networkscontinue to play a huge role in this market.For contractors, as well as workers,survival depends on the development ofstable relationships in which past


42



associations, moral claims, and ties tofamilies and neighbourhoods continue toplay an important role. Anecdotal accountssuggest that contractors try to bind workersto themselves through, for example, debtand even relationships of dependencysimilar to those used in the past by farmers.

Important exceptions exist. As theaccount of Du Preez’s business indicates, itis possible for a labour contractor to run abusiness which pays wages that arerelatively good by sector standards,provides reasonably stable, year-roundemployment for skilled and competitiveworkers, and at least strives to comply withkey minimum provisions of labour law.But the scope for such businesses shouldnot be exaggerated. For one thing, eventhese ‘quality focused’ contractors areexposed to fluctuating demand: thoughthey may develop a ‘core’ of itinerantagricultural specialists, they, too, have totake on and lay off labour in unpredictableways. In this regard, it is interesting to notethat in Du Preez’s case, the relativelyprivileged ‘core contract workers’ are maleworkers, while the supplementary labourforce is largely female.

Furthermore, Du Preez’s businessmodel will not be useful to any but a few.Firstly, it relies on servicing a relativelysmall number of farmers who aregenuinely willing to pay a little above theaverage for quality work, and who areprepared to enter into longer termrelationships. Secondly, even within thisrelatively niche market, conditions arevery tough and competition is stiff.Success depends on being able to competeon price without compromising long-termand hidden cost recovery, offering clientsquality and competitive prices despite thelogistical and organisational challenges ofworking with a fluctuating labour force,and providing workers with stableemployment within the uncertainenvironment of a contracting business.Clearly Du Preez’s skills – and hisconsiderable ability to think conceptually

and strategically about the challengesfacing his business – are an important partof his success thus far. But these would beuseless without his significantly betteraccess to resources, an advantage that isinextricably linked with his identity as atable and wine grape grower’s son. UnlikeLinnie and Pieterse, Du Preez was able toborrow a vehicle from his father andobtain security to finance his notinconsiderable start-up costs. The fact thathe shares important links of culture andsocial identity with the ‘master class’ alsomatters. Not only does his pre-existingnetwork supply him with good clients, buthe is obviously also at an advantage whennegotiating and transacting with clientswho regard him as more of an equal thanthey would any other service provider.

In the end, the account of thedifficulties experienced by those whoworked for OutSource provides muchmore food for thought for those concernedwith ensuring labour justice for workers inthe contracting sector. Large and wellresourced, OutSource appears to be abusiness that is willing and able to providecontract workers with employment underconditions that comply with the minimumprovisions of labour legislation. OutSourcehas, however, dealt with the unstable andfluctuating nature of employers’ labourdemands by simply passing on all the riskto workers. In the first place, despite itsinitial claims or intentions, it has for allintents and purposes been forced to offerits services on a task rather than a timebasis. Secondly, because it wants to beable to cope with farmers’ demands duringpeak seasons and resist takingresponsibility during troughs, it needs tohave many workers ‘on call’ in order toavoid any real obligation towards themshould work not materialise. In themedium term, if OutSource decides toremain in the agricultural sector, it willhave to resolve some of the systemsproblems that led to workers’ anger.Despite this, however, OutSource will not

43

be able to provide anything like stable andadequate livelihoods for all but a few ofthe more skilled workers on its books.

Endnotes1 Names of persons and businesses have been

changed.

2 Afrikaans original: ‘Mens moet goeie salarisse

betaal. En moet hom soos ’n mens behandel. Dit help

nie ek betaal hom R100 per dag en ek vloek en skree

en skel en is heeldag op sy case nie. Dit is vir my om

vir hom te laat voel hy is menswaardig. Hy moet

voel hy werk lekker by my. Sy werksomstandighede

moet aangenaam wees. Ek moenie heeldag

polisieman speel nie. [Om stabiele werk te verskaf]

is wat ek in spesialiseer. Baie kontrakteurs sal

byvoorbeeld werk verskaf gedurende snoeityd. As

snoeityd verby is dan stuur hy hulle huis toe. Dan sit

hulle vir twee of drie weke by die huis en dan weet

hulle nie wat om te maak nie. Ek verskaf dwarsdeur

die jaar werk aan my mense. Behalwe vakansiedae.

Ek probeer vir almal [werk] verskaf want hoe meer

mense ek in die veld het hoe groter is my wins. Daar

is natuurlik tye wat dit stil is. Na parstyd is die tyd

wat die plase maar die meeste van die tyd stil is. Dan

is daar hoofsaaklik net paleplant werk. Dan kan ek

ten minste vir die mans werk verskaf.’

3 Afrikaans original: ‘[Party mense wil nie plaaswerk

doen nie.] Oe, hulle sê sommer, “Is jy mal, in ’n

parsland, ék?” Maar as jy kom met ’n stukkie druiwe

dan vra hulle vir jou ’n stukkie druiwe. En dan het jy

nog nie jou sak neergesit nie dan is dit, “leen vir my

’n twee Rand”, maar hulle sê hulle wil nooit in ’n

parsland gaan werk nie. Dis nou mense wat op ’n

plaas gebore is, wat hulleself haitie-petaitie kom hou.

Hulle sê vir jou, “Ek weet hoe om te werk, ek kan

daai doen”, maar hulle sien nie kans om saans … ek

raak so kwaad. Dan daar op die plaas dan kom hulle,

hulle sê, “Nee, ek moet my voete was, nee, ek moet

my dié was, ek kan nooit so huis toe gaan nie.”

Hoekom kom werk jy maar jy wil nie gesien wees jy

werk nie? Ek wil gesien wees ek werk, want ek moetsweet vir my stukkie brood. Ek het gewoond geraakom in die wingerd te werk ... Hulle wil nie vuilwerkdoen nie. Ek doen vuilwerk, want hierdie maag vanmy is baie belangrik. As ek nie brood het nie dan watgaan ek eet? Ek moet eet. Ek is die enigstebroodwinner ... My kindertjies wil eet ... Ek moet diewaarheid nou sê. Daar is baie manne wat R70 pay,

R50 pay, dan pay ons vroumense R150, R159,

R149. Dan het hulle 15 kratte, dan, ek praat van my

ondervinding, as hulle net 15, 13 kratte het dan slaatek al 45 kratte. Daar is van die manne wat 15 het en

hulle is meer moeger as jy om daai krat op te tel en teloop. Jy wat ’n vroumens is sien kans om daai krat te

dra. Dis nog nie eers brêkfis nie dan hoor jy “ek ismoeg”. Meeste van die manne kies maar vir dra.

Hulle wil nie sny nie want hulle weet hulle kan niesny nie. Meeste manne knip hulle vingers af. [Skater.]

Dis die waarheid!’4 Afrikaans original: ‘Daai boer betaal vir my R1.20,

en as ek nie daarvan hou nie dan kan die boer mosnou maklik vir my sê ek moet gaan. Ek is mos onder

OutSource. Die boere wil nie meer mense op dieplaas hê nie. Hulle wil nie meer sukkel met mense op

die plaas nie. Want hoekom, hulle het mos nouminder regte op hulle plase. As ek iets doen wat die

witman nie van hou nie, dan moet hy my uitlos, wantnou het ek te veel regte. Hy gaan jou eerder nie

aanvat nie. Hulle kry eerder vir hullekontrakwerkers. Dan het hulle minder moeite met

mense op die plaas. Daar is baie mense wat hullehuise en plekke verloor. En daar is baie mense wat

nie kan bekostig om ’n plekkie in die dorp te kry nie– hulle kry maar eerder ’n plekkie op die plaas. Maar

nou is die witman bang vir daai dinge. Nou wil hulleeerder maar kontrakteurs inbring.’

5 Afrikaans original: ‘In my opinie sal ek nogal regtig

waar sê, dit is ’n voorreg om op die plaas te wees.Want onder die omstandighede wat ons vandag lewe,

hier in Wesbank, sal ek sê dis ’n voorreg om weerterug te keer na ’n plaas toe, waar jy die rustigheid

het en ’n voorbeeldige lewe kan lei en kinders invoorbeeldige omstandighede kan oplei ... Sien,

hoekom ek so sê, dat ek sal terugkeer na ’n plaas toe:by ’n plaas kry jy ’n huis, elektrisiteit, water,

opvoeding vir jou kinders, vervoer. Hier in Wesbank– ek noem nou nie spesifiek Wesbank nie maar in ’n

gebied soos dit – die gevaar, die vervoer, dieelektrisiteit, die huur. En al daai ander besonderhede

wat nou gepaard gaan met dit. Dit is eintlik vir mymoeilik want ek kan dit nie bekostig nie ... Maar asek moet terugkeer na plaasarbeid toe, dan glo ekstellig dit sal beter wees vir my. Want op ’n plaas kanek miskien op ’n Vrydagaand nou met ’n R200straight huis toe stap en vir my vrou kan sê, “Kykdaarso is R200.” Maar as ek nou hier bly dan moetek my vrou R70 gee van al daai geld. Dan moet sy

kos koop daarvan en al die ander goeters ook.’


44



What changes, and what staysthe same?As argued at the beginning of this report,attempts to transform the social and powerrelations of labour on Western Cape farmshave relied on three key strategies: firstly,the extension to the rural areas of theformal rights enjoyed by urban workers;secondly, the extension to farms ofindustrial-style trade unionism; and lastly,the removal of the ‘policy distortions’ thatprotected farmers from market competitionand encouraged their dependence oncheap but inefficient unskilled andunproductive labour.

Clearly there were some tensionsbetween these strategies. Although criticsof the ‘social inefficiency’ of protectedagriculture did not stress this (Lipton1993), there were tensions between theaims of rural labour law reformersconcerned with protecting rural workersand those of economists who did not seemuch wrong with the massive use of cheaplabour where it was a resource in plentifulsupply. But eventually these differenceswere reconciled by a shared belief in rural‘modernisation’ – and by the politicalconditions of the 1990s, which enabled theformation of a broad consensus around the

need to end the protection of whiteagriculture. The arguments that theoppressive and exploitative labourrelations brought about by paternalismwere counterproductive and inefficient inthe long term, and that investment in‘progressive’ labour relations would resultin very real benefits to the bottom line,played a significant role in reinforcing thebelief in ‘modernisation’. Although labourlaw reforms would increase the costs oflabour and thus lead to some ‘inevitable’job-shedding, it was believed that theseshocks would also encourage farmers todispense with racist and backwardpractices and to create a more empoweringand egalitarian workplace culture.

However, these arguments were basedon an underestimation of the persistence ofthe cultural, political and socialframeworks that accompanied farmworkers’ subjection, and the flexibility offarmers’ strategies under new conditions.In the Western Cape, the business offarming has since colonial times beenentangled in a very specific web of fiercelyheld cultural values and socialexpectations. In its simplest form, this isarticulated as a firm insistence upon thevalue of the farmer’s autonomy,independence and right to have a final say

Chapter 5: Ensuringemployment justiceThe patterns described in this report so far are both significant andserious. How can they be dealt with? What courses of action are opento farm worker organisations and their allies? In order to answer thesequestions, it is necessary to look deeper than the surface of events � tograsp not only the direction and nature of these trends, but also theirunderlying causes and their meaning. We need to be able to interpretwhy these trends have taken hold as they have before strategic optionsand a course of action can be formulated.

45

in all decisions affecting the future of thefarm, as well as the assumption that thewhite farmer’s dignity and independence isclosely linked with an indisputableauthority over the land and all those whowork on it. Racist and authoritarian thoughthis framework may be, it is thoroughlycompatible with capitalist businessstrategy. The ‘culture of mastery’underpins the moral framework of both‘progressive’ and ‘repressive’ farmingstyles. The culture of paternalism is easily‘transported’ into the modern era. Its keyassumptions are not anachronistic forms of‘racism’, inherently linked to inefficiency.Rather, they are powerful and seductiveideologies about society and farming –easily adapted to new socio-economicconditions, and not easily relinquished.

While there are no pressing socio-economic arguments urging farmers toabandon authoritarian and raciallyexclusive forms of paternalism, theseunderlying frameworks and identities havebeen very strongly challenged by labourlaw and other reforms. The deregulation ofagriculture, while welcomed by some, hasclearly signalled to farmers their politicalmarginality, and has entailed the drasticrenegotiation of any partnership that mighthave existed between themselves and thestate. The introduction of the LabourRelations Act 75 of 1997 and the BasicConditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997served notice that they were no longerofficially regarded as benevolentemployers to whose care workers could beentrusted. Although the self-conceptionsand ideologies of mastery thatunderpinned rural paternalism lived on, theformal lack of rights and the absence oflegal regulation, which were theinstitutional lynchpins of paternalism, wereended by the extension of industrial-stylelabour law to farm workers in the 1990s.

Thus the old rural order started fading –with nothing very coherent to take itsplace. The old circuits of power andcontrol were increasingly prone tochallenge and interruption, but noauthoritative and decisively imposed new

institutions were ready to supersede them.No powerful alternative to the traditionalself-conceptions of white mastery has beenarticulated, and, though the centrality ofthe rule of law and workers’ rights hasbeen asserted, the state is in many waystoo far away to function effectively as acompeting sector of authority. In manycases, the regulation of conduct on white-owned farms is characterised by a strange,‘double’ functioning. Relationshipsbetween employers and employees arecharacterised by the simultaneous presence– and the simultaneous ineffectiveness – ofthe discourse of the law and the discourseof the ‘master’. Both farmers and farmworkers often play a complex strategicgame in which first one set of rules, thenanother is invoked. Farm workers mayappeal to a local advice office when the‘implicit moral contract’ of paternalismfails them, only to draw back from a legalconfrontation when some form ofsettlement or compromise seems tobecome possible (Flensted-Jensen 2002;Du Toit & Robins 1995). Similarly – andmore ominously – farmers may in someinstances rely on and appeal to theauthority of the ‘master’ and in otherinstances invoke the formal workings ofthe law, particularly when the law helpsthem absolve themselves from unwantedresponsibilities or liabilities.

Increasingly, it seems that the latter setof options has become increasinglyattractive to farmers. Paternalism involveda compromise between white masters andblack servants, one in which workers’submission to farmers’ authority was (ifworkers were lucky) exchanged for thefarmer’s protection of workers’ well-being– or at least the provision of services forwhich workers would usually not be ableto pay. Increasingly, the terms of thiscompromise are now being renegotiated. Iffarmers are no longer allowed to be‘masters’, then they will be ‘employers’,but on new and different terms. Ifpermanent employees are now to be thebearers of rights, able to make demands,and able to challenge farmers’ power, then

Chapter 5: Ensuring employment justice

46



the pros and cons of engaging a large bodyof permanent workers need to be reassessed.

This shift is not all that lies at thebottom of the job-shedding trends evidentin the rural Western Cape. If farmprofitability had not been under pressure,many employers may have found lessreason to let go of permanent workers.Falling farm gate prices for fruit and manywine grape cultivars and the fact thatlabour costs are one of the few elements offarm inputs that farmers can change,clearly play a role in job-shedding.Difficult employment decisions are oftenlegitimated by cold calculations about theeffect on the bottom line. But the note ofbitterness in many farmers’ observations istoo strident to be dismissed. Clearly, whatis happening in the rural Western Cape isnot only the outcome of the pressure ofeconomic realities, but also therenegotiation of the ideological andcultural frameworks that have legitimisedthe social and power relations of labour onthese farms in previous decades.

New realitiesThe resulting scenario is both uneven andcomplex. The drive to shed jobs is notuniversal, and is not neatly confined toparticular sectors or particular districts.Differing strategies exist, and many farmsare clearly still holding on to labour. At thesame time, there is a clear trend towardsshedding jobs, and this is unlikely to bereversed. In future, more and more of thework on Western Cape farms, currentlyprimarily being done by a relativelyimmobile, on-farm and tied labour force,will be done by temporary labour – eithersourced from the informal settlements andRDP housing schemes that are beingestablished around rural towns, or fromsurrounding on-farm workers who haveremained resident on the land but have lostthe rights and benefits of permanentlabour.

The trends and shifts described in thisreport are almost certainly irreversible. Thetrend towards job-shedding in theagricultural sector has been evident since

the early 1960s. It has been encouragedboth by the ‘market-distorting’ policies ofapartheid since the 1960s, whichencouraged mechanisation and thereduction of farm worker numbers inresponse to the perceived danger of theverswarting (blackening) of thecountryside, and by the ‘rationalresponses’ to increased economicpressures experienced by the farmingsector after deregulation and liberalisation.Since the late 1980s, these trends havebeen accelerating. It may be possible toreduce the pace of agricultural job-shedding, but where jobs have been lostthey are likely to stay lost.

For workers, the implications of currentshifts are complex. For some – those whohave managed to hold on to permanentjobs – the possibility exists of improvedlivelihoods, ‘empowerment’ and newforms of partnership with farm owners.Farm equity share schemes and otherforms of joint venture will clearly play animportant role, particularly if they were tobe imaginatively exploited by proponentsof land reform and equitable social change.But even if these do not exist, some variantof the old ‘paternalist’ set-up will remain areality for those remaining on farms –perhaps with a greater emphasis on workerself-determination, perhaps with rights andobligations more clearly spelled out, andperhaps with a more careful reckoning of thecash value of ‘fringe benefits’.

But these privileges will clearly beenjoyed by a smaller and smaller segmentof the Western Cape labour force. Moreand more, key parts of the labour processwill be carried out by workers who are notincluded in the circle of those covered bythe ‘paternalist’ relationship. Far frombeing ‘part of the farm’, these workers willfind that the relationships between themand employers will tend to be limited tocash payments for particular taskscompleted. For a significant number ofworkers, their key relationship will nolonger be with a particular farmer but witha third party, who either simply suppliesthe labour or takes responsibility for

47

completing certain set tasks within acertain time. Both temporary workersemployed directly by farms and contractworkers will be vulnerable to exploitation,and, at present, those who organise farmworkers do not appear to be interested inorganising off-farm workers.

There may be some grounds forarguing that the trend towardscasualisation and externalisation harms thelong-term interests of producers as well. Inan earlier study, it was found that workersemployed by a contractor on a deciduousfruit farm were more ‘productive’ in pieceterms than permanently employedworkers, but that this productivity gaincame at the expense of serious qualityproblems (Du Toit 2000). Care has to betaken in drawing conclusions from thesefacts. As a closer investigation of ourearlier case studies shows, none of thequality problems are inherent in thecontracting relationship; they stem from alack of investment in appropriate qualitysystems, which, in principle, can be easilyrectified. Clearly, the desire to controlquality will lead to some farms avoidingoutsourcing key tasks such as pruning andthinning, although many farmers in thestudy seemed to be relatively satisfied withthe quality contractors were providing.

More seriously, it can be argued thatcontractors and users of temporary off-farm labour are benefiting from theinvestment in training and the experiencegained in earlier years, and that a failure tocontinue to invest in the capacity of theworkforce will erode productivity andquality in the long term. It may be arguedthat a sustained failure to invest in trainingand the development of worker skills willact against the interests of the sector as awhole. Certainly, in the short term, thefluidity and mobility of contract workerswill mean that producers and contractorswill be reluctant to provide expensivetraining to workers on whose services theycannot count in the medium and long term.Without a systemic intervention in thesector as a whole, this problem is unlikelyto be addressed. The multiplicity of factors

that affect survival in the sector also meansthat there is no ‘invisible hand’ that willensure that producers and contractors whoinvest in training and capacity building foroff-farm workers will do much better thanthose who do not. Though there willcertainly be a niche for operators like DuPreez, who focus on providing qualityservices to selected producers and whowill want to invest in training, the reality isthat many fruit and wine producers willprobably be able to outsource tasks suchas harvesting with little or no investment inlong-term capacity building and withoutseriously compromising profitability. Andworkers who cannot argue that they havesignificant skills on offer will be in a weakposition when negotiating wages or tryingto ensure a stable income.

New strategiesThis presents those concerned with theliving and working conditions of farmworkers with new challenges. Clearly, oneset of challenges relates to the need toprotect existing livelihoods, and to findways of slowing down or even halting theprocesses that constitute South Africa’sagricultural unemployment crisis. An evenmore pressing set of challenges lies infinding forms of regulation andorganisation appropriate to the needs andinterests of the growing number of off-farm and temporary workers. These‘supplementary workers’, who willincreasingly come to constitute the‘typical’ labour force of Western Capeagriculture, will effectively find themselvesexcluded from the enjoyment of the rightsand privileges granted to permanentworkers. At the same time, theenforcement and protection of theirremaining rights will become increasinglydifficult. It will also be harder fortraditional forms of worker organisation totake hold among this group of workers.

These realities introduce freshchallenges. For the most part, a largeproportion of the legal and organisationalwork around farm workers’ rights andconditions of employment since the early


48



1990s has focused on permanent and on-farm workers. Although the genderblindness implicit in this approach hasbeen tempered by a concern with theconditions of on-farm women, off-farmtemporary workers have for the most partbeen regarded as supplementary. This hasbeen most evident in the heavy emphasison ESTA, but other processes – theextension of the Basic Conditions ofEmployment Act to farm workers,consultations around a sectoraldetermination for agriculture, discussionsaround the development of checklists formonitoring compliance with ‘ethicaltrading’ requirements, and trade union andother forms of farm worker organisation –have also tended to privilege the concernsand interests of permanent on-farmworkers. Off-farm workers have beenregarded as either impossible to organiseor not worth organising.

If it was ever appropriate to emphasiseESTA as farm workers’ most importantconcern, it is increasingly evident that it isinappropriate to do so under conditions ofcasualisation and externalisation. Althoughconditions are harsh, workers remainingon Western Cape wine and fruit farms mustincreasingly be seen as a relatively smalland privileged grouping in a sea of ruralunderemployment. Temporary workers notonly perform the lion’s share of on-farmwork and predominate in absolute terms,they are also the most vulnerable toexploitation. Important as it is to improvethe benefits of permanent workers – andeven to encourage their ‘empowerment’through equity share and other schemes –the emphasis and central thrust of work onemployment justice clearly has to focus onprotecting the rights and interests oftemporary workers.

This involves an important andunsettling realignment for those whosework has focused on dealing with labourissues in the relatively self-contained andstable context of permanent, on-farmlabour relationships. One importantdifference is that the circle of thoseaffected is much more open-ended and ill-

defined – both from the perspective of theproducer (who deals with a large, widelydispersed and much more fluid workforce)and from the perspective of the worker(whose working conditions are determinedby the practices of a range of different andoften geographically dispersed producers).Secondly, many of the core issuesaffecting workers’ welfare – services,housing, education, transport and healthservices – are no longer conveniently theresponsibility of a single, relatively well-resourced and easily available paternalistemployer. Instead, they are now theresponsibility of much more distant andoften overstretched rural localgovernments. Thirdly, temporary and off-farm workers have particular interests andconcerns of their own, and their rights canmost certainly not be protected by treatingthem as if they were merely on-farmworkers of a special type. Fourthly, andmost importantly, workers’ negotiatingpositions are much weaker, both becausethey are competing in an oversuppliedlabour market and because the labourrelationship is no longer regulated by theunspoken and implicit expectations andassumptions of paternalism.

Legal regulationOne important area of difficulty relates tothe enforcement of workers’ legal rights. Itis important to recognise that the issueshere are often different from those thataffect permanent on-farm workers. Manyof the issues with which farm workerunionists and activists are habituallyconcerned – the extent of working hours,the balance between payment in kind andcash payment, housing and other benefits– are either irrelevant or much less central,while other issues – particularly those thataffect gendered interests such as child careand the stability and level of income – aremuch more important.

Perhaps the most serious issue that willaffect the working conditions of temporaryoff-farm workers is legislation on both theform and level of wages. Legislativeprotection of a daily minimum wage, with

49

piece rates acting only as a productivity-enhancing bonus, could play an importantrole in protecting workers from undueexploitation and income insecurity. Otherimportant areas of emphasis must relate togendered interests and concerns. Thereality that a large number of off-farmtemporary workers are female means thatconsiderations of gender equity, as well asthe protection of women’s reproductiverights, must be emphasised. Although theissue of reproductive rights did not arise inthe research done for this report,international experience shows thattemporary employment often involvessystematic violation of these rights, forexample when women are refused the rightto maternity leave, or are dismissed or notre-employed when they are pregnant.Finally, another important area of concernis the exclusion of temporary workers fromthe protection of unemploymentinsurance.1 A key challenge in this regardis the monitoring and enforcement ofworkers’ rights. This cannot be done bysimply requiring that all contractorsregister as employers and then ensuringthat they stick to the provisions of the law.It will be difficult to enforce compliance,especially when adherence to the lawcould mean that a contractor may lose anexisting contract with a farmer to a moreunscrupulous competitor.

The situation in the agricultural sectorseems to be rather more straightforwardthan in other sectors where externalisationhas occurred, and where erstwhileemployees are now defined as independentcontractors. In such cases, any attempt toprotect externalised employees is likely torun foul of the privity of contract (Theron& Godfrey 2000). The labour contractingarrangements encountered in our casestudies do not suggest that the workers actas independent contractors. Rather, thesebusinesses seem to fall quite clearly intothe category of temporary employmentagencies. This means that both contractorsand their clients can be held jointly andseverally liable if the contractor violatesthe provisions of the Basic Conditions of

Employment Act (Section 82 (3)).However, this does not resolve thesignificant practical difficulties ofmonitoring compliance with the law in thisfluid and highly informal sector,particularly given the difficulties the statealready has in monitoring regularemployment. The same goes for the recentpresumptions in the Labour Relations Actand Basic Conditions of Employment Actas to whether or not someone is anemployee: while these laws create scopefor an expansive interpretation of theemployment relationship, they do notconstitute a response to the reality that,beyond the level of legal form,externalisation represents a real shift in thenature of productive relationships and theorganisation of work (Theron 2002).

Private sector self-regulationA second important area of interventionrelates to private sector self-regulation.This phenomenon is one in which keyfirms in a given sector – usually forreasons of self-interest and in response tonegative publicity which they perceive asharming their markets – develop a sharedapproach to the voluntary regulation ofaspects of their conduct around whichethical questions have been raised. Therehas been some activity on this front inWestern Cape horticulture, most notablythe development of the Ethical TradingInitiative (ETI), a UK-based consortium ofretailers, non-governmental organisationsand other stakeholders, which has pilotedthe monitoring of compliance with its codeof conduct in the wine sector.

It has been argued that such initiativesprovide significant scope for theimprovement of workers’ serviceconditions, particularly if auditables arenot narrowly interpreted to mean technicalcompliance with the narrow letter of thelaw (Du Toit 2002). One importantadvantage is that demands andcommitments can focus on taking workers’particular gains beyond those enshrined innational legislation. Another is thatenforcement and monitoring can focus onthe organisation of the supply chain as a


50



whole. Thus, one important achievementof the ETI has been that co-operativecellars, instead of simply saying that on-farm labour conditions are farmers’ ownaffairs (which they would have been ableto argue in terms of the law), have beenwilling to make gestures in the direction ofpressurising farmers to improveconditions. A parallel gain has been thesuccess of stakeholders in the monitoringof compliance with the Forest StewardshipCouncil (FSC)’s code of good practice inSouth Africa. Stakeholders have arguedthat forestry companies are responsible forwhat contractors do because auditors haveto make their judgement on the basis ofpractices in forestry management as a whole.

These considerations become especiallyrelevant in the light of the current wave ofrestructuring and reorganisation in keysectors of Western Cape horticulture. Inboth the fruit and the wine industries,deregulation seems to be leading to aprocess of bloc formation andconsolidation: not only are farm sizeslikely to grow, but both industries arelikely to be characterised by the increasingimportance of alliances between large co-operative cellars, pack-houses andmarketing concerns (for example Kromco,Two-a-Day, CFG and Capespan in thedeciduous fruit sector and groups likeKWV and Distell in the wine sector). Suchgroups will wield considerable economicpower and may be receptive to demandsfrom consumer advocacy groups aroundthe conditions experienced by farmworkers. In recent months, the existence ofa few widely scattered but prominentempowerment schemes for permanentworkers has played an important role inproviding legitimacy, albeit highly spurious,to the wine sector as a whole. However,these attempts at ‘blackwashing’ WesternCape horticulture may well enable pressuregroups to focus attention on the muchgrimmer working conditions experiencedby temporary and off-farm workers.

A less high-profile form of privatesector self-regulation may also be based onattempts to introduce a clearer

differentiation between exploitative and‘quality-focused’ contractors. Serviceproviders who are focused on the qualitymarket may well support initiatives for theregistration or certification of contractors.If a form of certification can be linked tothe contractor’s ability to deliver qualityservices, it may well be seen by contractorsas adding value by giving them anadvantage in marketing. Such a certificationprocess will, however, only be supportedby farmers and contractors if it genuinelyholds business advantages for both, and ifthe costs of compliance with labour lawprovisions is not seen to be too onerous.

Organising off-farm workersThere are also important challenges interms of organising strategies. Farmworker organisation should not berestricted to the core of ‘insiders’ who areincreasingly constituting a privilegedminority within the agricultural labourforce. This means that the organisation offarm workers has to occur off-farm.Organising those without permanentemployment rights, and without a clearrelationship to an existing employer, mayseem like a daunting challenge. At thesame time, it is worth remembering that thebiggest wave of rural trade unionism everto hit the Western Cape – organised by theIndustrial and Commercial Workers’ Union(ICU) in the 1930s – took root not onfarms but among seasonal and temporaryworkers based in small rural towns(Hofmeyr 1985).

There are important advantages to off-farm organisation, not least of which isworkers’ greater independence from thepower and authority of the farmer. In theUSA farm worker organisation hassuccessfully taken root among migrant andseasonal workers – evidenced not only bythe well-known achievements of theUnited Farm Workers under Chavez, butalso by the more recent gains byorganisations such as the Farm LabourOrganizing Committee (FLOC) in theMidwest. In these cases, successfulorganising depended not so much on the

51

ability to organise strike action amongworkers as the ability to link organisationto public campaigns highlighting abusesby prominent companies and employers.

ConclusionThe present study is a limited one. Itconcentrated only on a few of the WesternCape’s fruit and wine growing districts,surveyed a small number of farms, andfocused on a relatively circumscribed setof case studies. Yet within these limits, thefindings indicate that important shifts aretaking place in the organisation andmanagement of producers’ labourrequirements. Although the trends areuneven in sectors and in regions, it is clearthat many employers have been takingtheir businesses through a significantprocess of restructuring, and that theinstitution of farm labour paternalism isgoing through an unprecedented processof revision. Increasingly, the paternalistrelationship is functioning not in order totie a large pool of cheap and readilyavailable labour to the farm, but to securethe loyalty of a much smaller population ofskilled, relatively privileged, mostlycoloured workers. A small number of winefarmers are planning to deal with seasonalpeaks through mechanisation, but on mostfarms many core tasks are beingperformed by temporary off-farm workers– workers with whom the implicit ‘moralcontract’ of paternalism has been severed,and who now have to survive by findingseasonal employment or other jobs basedin informal settlements around rural towns.

As economists love to say, there arewinners and losers. It is the view of manyfarmers that Western Cape agriculture isindeed becoming ‘more efficient’. Morework is being done by fewer people, andmarket institutions seem to exist that allowfor the accurate and competitive labourcosting of a wide range of core farmingtasks. In social terms, however, theseprocesses are in danger of leading to large-scale waste and destruction of humancapacity by sweeping many relativelyskilled farm workers off the farms, therebycreating major costs to civil society.

These shifts have led to significant newchallenges in the enforcement ofemployment justice. Some of them relateto the enforcement and monitoring ofestablished rights in new contexts. Some ofthem require a new awareness of theparticular interests and concerns oftemporary workers. Solutions will have tobe found to the real practical difficultiesthat will be encountered in organisingworkers and monitoring compliance underconditions of externalisation. This willrequire new, imaginative strategies thatfocus not only on legal regulation, but alsoon the possibilities for applying pressureon agro-food businesses in the age ofglobalisation – forms of pressure that willhave to be applied on a new terrain, onethat is no longer confined to the workplaceor even to the employment relationship.

Endnote1 Until 2003, temporary farm workers who were

employed for less than four months a year were

not covered by the Unemployment Insurance Act

(Act 30 of 1966). Since 2003, all workers are

protected by the Act.


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The survey questionnaire was designed toelicit information on the size, nature andcomposition of the farm labour force.Information about economic activities,labour allocation and so forth was alsorequested. It became clear during the pilotinterviews that very few farmers were ableto supply information in the depth andformat required by the initial questionnairedesign. In general, farmers were not easilyable to provide detailed breakdowns of theallocation of labour to primary andsecondary activities, for examplespecifying how many workers worked forhow many months in the year in the cellaror in the packing line.

An important focus was the invisibilityof on-farm casual workers and women. Inthe implementation of the questionnaire,care was taken to ask farmers about allsources of temporary labour, including on-farm casual labour. In spite of this,respondents very often simply left outinformation about this source of labour. In

Appendix 1: Questionnaireorder to ensure accuracy, a second roundof follow-up interviews was done by faxand telephone, specifically to confirm theaccuracy of information about the extentand make-up of the on-farm temporarylabour force.

Another complex area related to theelicitation of information about farmers’future plans as well as their views on thekey factors affecting labour policy. In boththese cases, care had to be taken not to‘prompt’ respondents too much.Experience indicated that farmers wouldsimply say ‘yes’ to any and all of thepossible factors affecting labour policy.These questions were therefore asked in anopen-ended fashion, and results post-coded later. In all these cases, responseswere fairly complex, with respondentsciting a number of different factors in noclear order of preference. This means thatin the statistical breakdown of theseresponses, the totals for options will notadd up to 100%.

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The study relied on a profile of farmsbased on main farm activities developedfor CRLS by Jan Vorster of the Departmentof Sociology at the University ofStellenbosch. The profile was derived froma 5% sample of farms in districts that weredependent on horticulture for more than50% of their annual turnover. The profilewas broken down into the most importanthorticultural activities on these farms (seeTable 16).

guide for determining a farm’s mainactivity, but this proved impracticable. Forone thing, detailed information aboutturnover was not easily available.Furthermore, the key issue focused on inthis study – labour use per hectare – madean analysis according to a typology basedon turnover inappropriate.

For the purposes of data analysis, thesurvey distinguished between wine,deciduous fruit (that is, pome and stonefruit), table grapes, vegetables and mixedfarming. Where more than 66% of a farm’shorticultural land was dedicated to a specificcrop, that crop was taken to be the mainhorticultural activity. Where no such clearlypredominant activity could be discerned,the farm’s activity was listed as mixed. Asecond typology was developed for certainanalyses in which non-mixed farms, thatis, those that focused entirely on a singleactivity, were also distinguished.

Even so, there are some dangers here.The dedication of large areas to vegetablecrops can be deceptive, as vegetableplantings in some areas tend to vary withthe availability of water. Thus, one year’svegetable farm may become a fruit farm ina dry year. Furthermore, some of thevegetable farms were growing crops underplastic, resulting in much higher labourusage per cultivated hectare than normal.For this reason, vegetable farms wereignored when the data were disaggregatedby main activity, and some Ceres ‘vegetablefarms’ – fruit farms that happened to haveextensive vegetable plantings at the time ofthe survey – were counted as ‘fruit andother’.

As should be clear from the above, thetypology of farm activities focuses only ona typology of main horticultural activities.Some of the farms were also involved inother activities: some had extensiveplantings of field crops, some carriedlivestock and some were also involved in

Appendix 2: The sample

Table 16: The target profile of farms by mainactivity and district compiled from data obtainedfrom the Department of Sociology, University ofStellenbosch

District Wine Fruit Vegetables

Stellenbosch 6 2 1

Paarl 5 10 1

Wellington 3 3 0

Grabouw/ 0 9 0Caledon

Worcester/ 7 12 0Hex River

Ceres 0 6 2

Robertson 6 3 0

Although those farms in the sample thatwere visited broadly conformed to thisprofile, the refusal by some farmers tocooperate and a number of other factorsmade an exact match impossible. Inaddition, the distinction between fruit,wine and vegetable farming does not makeprovision for a distinction between thevarious fruit crops – that is, pome andstone fruit (tree fruit) on the one hand andtable grapes on the other – which haveradically different labour requirements.Secondly, another important factor was thereality that the determination of mainactivity is an inexact science. Officialstatistics use turnover as an important

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Table 17: A profile of the farms surveyed by main activity

Main Ceres Grabouw Paarl Robertson Stellenbosch Wellington Worcester/activity Hex River

Citrus 1

Deciduous 6 8 2 1fruit (tree-grown)

Mixed 2 5 3 1 2 1

Table grapes 4 1 12

Vegetables 1 1

Wine 4 4 9 2 5

Missing 2

Total 8 9 17 8 11 6 18

Table 18: A more detailed typology highlighting farms focusing on single activities

Activities Ceres Grabouw Paarl Robertson Stellenbosch Wellington Worcester/Hex River

Citrus 1

Deciduous 2 6 1fruit (tree-grown) only

Deciduous 4 2 2 1fruit (tree-grown) andother crops

Mixed 2 5 4 1 2 2

Table grapes 2 11

Table grapes 1 1 1and othercrops

Vegetables 1 1

Wine only 5 2

Wine and 4 3 4 2 2other crops

Missing 2


secondary activities. Because field cropsand livestock occupy negligible amountsof labour per hectare – a farm with20 hectares of fruit and 600 hectares ofcereals will use similar absolute amountsof labour as one with only 20 hectares offruit – these were ignored in the

calculation of piece rates. It should benoted that if this decision were to have animpact on the data at all, it would be toexaggerate the use of labour per hectare.Insofar as the study highlights relativelylow labour figures, this decision does notreally impact on the validity of the data.

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Table 19: Hectares planted to specific crops per district

Crop Ceres Grabouw Paarl Robbertson Stellenbosch Wellington Worcester/Hex River

Table grapes 0 0 330.5 2 6.4 252 606

Wine grapes 0 0 533.86 290 754.52 246 629

Pome and 1161 1132.5 716.69 204 78 43 73stone fruit

Citrus 300 1400 133.3 2 34.6 30 25

Vegetables 370.5 0 8.3 23 11.8 88 200

Field crops 700 0 0 0 0 0 140

Flowers 0 25 0.5 0 0 0 0

Rooibos 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Olive trees 0 0 2 7 0 2 0

Figure 9: Distribution of farm sizes in sample

1500.0

1400.0

1300.0

1200.0

1100.0

1000.0

900.0800.0

700.0600.0

500.0400.0

300.0200.0

100.00.0

Total Hectares under cultivation

Freq

uenc

y

40

30

20

10

0

Std. Dev = 233.04 Mean = 141.8

N = 75.00

A better assessment of the mix of farmingactivities can be made by looking at actualhectares of crops planted per farm for eachdistrict (see Table 19). The presence of oneor two farms with extensive field crop andvegetable plantings can be clearly seen inthe table. Also evident in the sample is therather anomalous presence of one farm inthe Ceres district, which had 300 hectaresof citrus. It accounted for one of the‘mixed’ farms in that district.

In terms of farm sizes, the histogramillustrates that there was a distinct tendency

towards smaller farm sizes in the sample:on average, farms had some 103 hectaresunder horticultural cultivation, while themedian for hectares planted to horticulturalcrops was some 60 hectares. The spread offarm sizes was extremely large – thesmallest farm in the sample had just fourhectares under horticultural cultivation,and the largest 625 hectares.

An analysis of the distribution of farmsizes across districts and by main activitieshighlights some further patterns. Table grapefarms tended to cluster in the smallest

Total hectares under cultivation

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Table 20: Distribution of farm sizes (quartiles) by district and main activity

Main activity 0�20 ha 28�60 ha 60�102 ha >102 ha

Citrus 0 0 0 1

Deciduous fruit 3 3 4 7

Mixed 4 2 2 6

Table grapes 8 4 3 2

Vegetables 1 0 1 0

Wine 3 7 9 5

District

Ceres 0 2 1 5

Grabouw 3 0 3 3

Paarl 3 3 5 4

Robertson 3 3 1 1

Stellenbosch 2 4 3 2

Wellington 2 1 2 1

Worcester/Hex River 6 3 4 5

quartile of the sample (0–28 hectares),while wine farms and fruit farms weremore common in the largest quartile (102hectares and above). The pattern of smallertable grape farms and larger deciduous fruitfarms also shows up in the breakdown bydistrict. The Ceres area shows a distinct

tendency towards large farms, theStellenbosch district is characterised byfarms in the 28–60 hectares quartile and theWorcester/Hex River region is typified bysmaller farms. These features of the sampleare broadly in line with what is known tobe the case in the districts surveyed.


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