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Minimum wage for farmworkers 'complex'
13/10/2002 22:47 - (SA)
Bloemfontein - "'n Boer maak 'n plan," Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana said - quoting an old Afrikaans adage meaning "A farmer finds a way" - while discussing his proposed minimum wage for farmworkers in a meeting with farmers at Zastron in the southern Free State.
The implementation of minimum wages for farmworkers in a
countryside growing swiftly poorer may prove to be far more complex than the proverb suggests.
In towns like Zastron and neighbouring Rouxville a human tragedy that has been in the making for many years is intensifying by the day. A shrinking rural economy, increasing unemployment and spiralling food inflation, exacerbated by the HIV/Aids pandemic, are driving the poor to desperate measures to survive.
The signs are many and ominous, Rouxville residents say more and more burglaries are reported in which only food is stolen. While six to eight sheep were slaughtered on average in the past for a traditional funeral, these days only one or two are bought to feed the hungry mourners.
Farmers say more and more people approach them to work, asking only for food as payment. Even the sharply
decreasing turnover of the local Lotto outlet indicates the
quickening slide into poverty.
Sanna Dithane lives in a shack in the township of Roleleathunya in Rouxville. She says she and her three children know no other dish than the mealie pap she prepares from the 80kg bag of maize meal her husband receives monthly from the farmer he works for. Her husband's monthly cash wage of R280 is usually spent even before he receives it.
There is no pensioner in the family to supplement their income
with a monthly state pension. If Sanna's husband should lose his
job and the monthly bag of maize meal, they will have literally
nothing to eat, except for the few leaves of morogo growing in a
corner of their barren township plot. Sanna cannot see how she or
her husband will find another job.
The circumstances of the Dithane family are common in rural
townships across the country, which is why setting minimum wages in agriculture is a difficult task for Mdladlana. Would a minimum wage be followed by widespread dismissals of farmworkers or would it - as intended - root out abuse of the rural poor?
According to a commentary by the Zastron District Farmers Union on the proposed minimum wages, economists recommend that labour cost in the livestock industry, which dominates in Zastron, should be between six and eight percent of total input costs. At present it already varies between 25% and 30%, and
agricultural wages provide 39% of the income of rural
households, the union says.
The Labour Tenants Act had already had unintended negative
results, contributing to an increase in rural unemployment, as is
now admitted in government circles.
Job opportunities for farmworkers have decreased dramatically
over the past few years, in some districts by as much as 50%, as farmers switched to enterprises needing less workers.
Farmers say they are not against a minimum wage, as long as the prescribed wage is affordable, which is, they say, not nearly the case with the current proposal.
Prominent Zastron farmer Manie Botha maintains that the proposed R750 for his district is far more than the average farm worker wage of around R500 paid currently by Zastron's farmers, let alone the minimum. He is convinced that a minimum wage of R750 will lead to widespread dismissal of farm workers in the district.
"Two years ago most farmers in this area showed a loss. Farmers here do not make five percent on their investment. Labour is already the largest single expense factor in farming. In circumstances like these, a minimum wage will definitely increase unemployment," he says.
The fact that Zastron was made an exemption from its
neighbouring and fairly similar districts of Rouxville, Smithfield and Wepener, for whom a minimum of only R400 is proposed, raises farmers' suspicion that the process of determining the different wage categories for different districts may have been flawed.
"The department does not tell us how they determined the
different categories, but we suspect that an extremely small spot
check (of farm income) was done in each district," Botha says.
Another aspect of the minister's proposal that rankles with
farmers is the prescription that food - compensation in kind -
should not exceed 20 percent of the total compensation. Botha says this transfers the risk of food price inflation from the farmer to the farmworker. Traditionally, farmers pay each worker a monthly bag of maize meal in addition to his cash wage and other payment in kind.
Botha says if a worker earning a cash wage of R400 had to buy
his own bag of meal in November 2001, he would have had R307 left. By the end of January 2002, he would have had only R198 left after buying the same amount of meal.
"Currently the farmer carries that risk for the worker. We do
not decrease their wages as the price of meal rises," Botha says.
On the other hand there are workers like Abraham Lwabi of
Roleleathunya, who retired five years ago at a monthly cash wage of
just R90 from the farm work he had done for 45 years. The
experience of people like him weigh in the balance on the side of a
higher wage.
- SAPA
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