THE Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) has welcomed, as a ‘short term victory’, an increase in the minimum wage for farmworkers from R69 (£5) a day to R105 (£7.50) a day.
This was achieved by a massive uprising of farmworkers who were demanding R150 a day. Their action was inspired by the miners’ struggles at Marikana and other places which showed that all South African workers have given up waiting for the ANC government and the official unions to take decisive political and industrial action on their behalf.
FAWU states: ‘This raise of over 50%, by the Department of Labour . . . was the least that could have been expected in light of the unacceptably low minimum wage of R69 per day, enough to buy only four loaves of bread a day.’
A 50% raise allows farm workers with big families enough wages to buy six instead of four loaves of bread a day!
The union adds: ‘Our short-term focus will now be on ensuring that farm owners respect the law and pay workers no less than the new minimum wage. Our members will also be on the look-out for any unfair dismissals and illegitimate deportation of foreign nationals.’
It adds: ‘We remind media and the public that this is the minimum wage not the maximum. We therefore repeat our call to those farm owners who currently pay more than R105 to continue doing so . . . This clarion call is informed by the widely-acknowledged treble-crises of unemployment, inequality and poverty in our country.’
However, the Agri-SA and Agri Western Cape companies insist that the increased minimum wage for farmworkers will lead to mass sackings.
Agri Western Cape CEO, Carl Opperman, said the increasing labour costs would lead farmers to shed surplus labour. ‘We will have much more high-productive labour, much more skilled labour. So, we will not accommodate a lot of the unskilled labour on the farm any more . . .’
The Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) found that ‘if the average wage increases to more than R104.98 per day, many farms will be unable to cover their operating expenses, and hence not be able to pay back borrowings or to afford entrepreneurs remuneration.’
It also found that ‘the real problem is that even at what seems to be an unaffordable minimum wage of R150 per day; most households cannot provide the nutrition that is needed to make them food secure.’
The right-wing Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder, who is Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in the South African government, commented: ‘Where permanent workers will not be affected so much by the new wage determination, it will lead to the dismissal of tens of thousands of seasonal and temporary workers.’
He continued to suggest that black ‘ “Bantu-speaking” people have no historical claim to 40 per cent of the country’, and that the question of land ownership is an ‘emotional issue’ that has caused many wars.
The Democratic Alliance spokesman, Sej Motau, said the party hoped the new determination would put an end to the ‘disruptive farm strikes that have torn at the fabric of our rural heartland in the past few months’.
In fact, the struggle by South African workers in the factories, mines and on the land, however stormy it has appeared, has only just begun to get under way.
The South African workers will respond to attempts to impose mass sackings with revolutionary uprisings against the ANC government and the union leaderships – who are more loyal to the government than to their members.
The South African workers need a new revolutionary leadership that will transform the revolution that brought about the release of Nelson Mandela into a socialist revolution that will nationalise the industries, banks and mines, putting them under workers’ management, and hand over the land to the rural poor as part of the development of a socialist planned economy.
